Muscle and cars

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>
John, you're forgetting what the AMX/GT prototype looked like? It looked very much like a Gremlin! Built in fiberglass in 1968.
<<

Frank, I didn't forget it at all, but 1) it was a prototype for building the coming GREMLIN, not, as the thread read, for replacing the vanishing TWO-SEAT AMX, 2) the '68-'70 front end wasn't nearly as "wide" (whether visibly or dimensionally --- talk to Guigiaro about tricks he played on the eyes with his GG to make it look smaller (plus, if you're into AMC-Renault, ask how an FF was made to look larger AND ask what its working name was!) --- as the '71-up was, and, 3) as I already stated, the AMX shouldn't be a SQUAREBACK for America, as Honda {Civic Si) has realized.

Maybe you're forgetting that both generations (97" and 96") of "purest" AMX were -Italian- inspired.  And that one of them was even [partially] re-bodied in rossa and given -Ferrari- power.  (Seriously, I appreciate your comment --- and I don't expect you to know about that red "Spirit" with the yellow prancing horse.  That's one of the "AM Secrets" I might write about --- and illustrate --- someday when the AMC hobby grows up.)          

>>
AMX/GT prototype, which looked very much like a Gremlin with AMX nose. =
That would have been easy for AMC to have built! I wonder why Teague =
didn't proto one of those for the AMC execs instead of putting a 71 hump =
fender nose on his two seater?  Would have been a bit more work to put =
the 71 nose on a Gremlin, but nothing a good shop couldn't do in a week. 
<<

I have an, ah, "acquaintance" --- actually a friend of Renee's --- who writes a syndicated column and earns big bucks opining on anything from George W or George III to George C.   She earns even bigger bucks (and gets the "star treatment") for writing books that tell women they don't need men.  Why?  Because she's a smart cookie with lots of ideas.

(I only eat cookies and don't earn big bucks for writing anything, so I don't think she'll take me seriously if I suggest she -marry- George C.  She -looks- like a movie star; he -is- a movie star; she's 54: he's 45.  In 2006, many successful women marry younger men, so she needs a trophy husband.  Since I know someone who knows someone who knows him, perhaps it might fly; if it does, they might give one of their adopted children (from Outer Mongolia or Lower Slobovia?) a middle name of, say, "John."  See the spread in "People" and the swooning on "Entertainment Tonight!"  That would be both ridiculous and funny --- both at the very same time.)    

She recently noted two 2006 word trends: one appears anywhere from cars to coffee and one comes from the movies.  (The apex of American thought today?)  It struck me, as I read what she wrote from her heights on the "brainy" East Coast as I sat looking at sands on the "dumb-blonde" West Coast, that both applied to AMC.  From about 1965 until about 1983, AMC desperately tried to become "muscular" --- the 1970 AMX was designed to be more "muscular" than the 1968-'69 AMX and the '71 Javelin/AMX was so "muscular" that it was "hairy" --- suitable for those Burt Reynolds-to-Tom Selleck days.  Nair, Nads, and nude noggins offer another option to the "muscular" today, as the WWF, Goldberg, and Calvin Klein ads prove.  Yet every automaker, with every model marketed, from Chevrolet Aveo to Mercedes S, still tries desperately to be (or just look) more "muscular" than it did before.  Their goal is the same as Hollywood's and Silicon Valley's: to be "King Kong" in the box office and Xbox 360 in a big box gadget store.  "Muscular" where it really matters: in the bottom lines.

(I don't know how her "muscular" cup of "French Quarter" coffee should taste and I'm not qualified to wonder.  I don't drink coffee and I use public transit.  I bought 4 new AMC cars.  Proof positive.  I'm weird.  Obviously, I must be stupid, as well.  So she [and you?] could opine.) 

The other "currency" she sees being traded is: "[Blank], I wish I knew how to quit you!" apparently gaily uttered by a cowboy.  Like George W, I haven't seen many films lately (I don't even have enough time to look at cars!), so she'd have an opinion on that failing, also.  Nonetheless, such a phrase is applicable to my memories of, and this list named, AMC.  35+ years spent on the real things and 10- years in the digital haze of AMC legacy/lore.  Except for one Spirit (burgundy liftback driven by a young black woman in LA), one Alliance (navy 4-door seen in OR) and the surfeit of XJs (seen everywhere), I haven't seen too many AMCs "outside captivity" (at auctions or car shows) for years.  I haven't seen my own AMCs, stored 35 miles away, for about two years now.  So "AMC, I wish I knew how to quit you!" seems apt.

I've been thinking about putting cars up for adoption, piling boxes of paper in dead corners, and ceasing the writing of this occasional slog, er, blog, with AMC info.  Learning has languished, list has lost life, lust, or luster, while collector AMC lumbers on.  "Dull but sturdy" or "badly-built," (what '70s American car wasn't?) "yet cheap-to-repair" were all phrases applied to AMC once.  "Simple" served Nash-AMC well.  

AMC doesn't need me and I don't need to warehouse my AMCs for nostalgia.  I can remember AMC cars without paying for storage; I can read this List (if the Files site is working...) without contributing, just like all you lurkers do now.  Community and responsibility must be vastly over-rated in a world where the idea of "muscular" matters more than the substance.  "AMC, I wish I knew how to quit you?"  "On schedule, as a countdown, or cold turkey?"  Sounds so simple.  Until I began to read the list again yesterday.

>>
I'm keeping the list up and open regardless of the amount of donations
received. I can tell you that I've already received enough to pay for almost two years service in advance.
<<    
  
Cash + communication + commitment + CONTENT = opportunity for Classic, classic, Muscle Car, muscle car, mini or maxi cars and "muscular" AMC.

"Muscular" means strength, accomplishment, and rewarding.  So what now?  

As I wandered from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Montecito to Bandon to, in an unplanned hop to Donnelly and Sandpoint, I tried keeping a "muscular" head on --- despite the luxury of freedom from any schedule and sunshine (not that I minded the gray of Idaho) all around: my hosts had haciendas more luxurious than the Taj (which -looks- luxurious but is rather ratty in person...), even if much of the beachfront luxe was lost in translation to my Rambler mentality.  Many of the "million-dollar" models I saw were lost in space as well, but it's always good to look and learn something new; no matter how outré or wild.

That started at the auctions: the desert is a dangerous place to be.  

A $2.2M 'Cuda, a $1.25M Chevelle --- obviously, 1970 was a good Detroit year: a '70 Machine sold for $16,200 (same price as a '67 Chevy pickup), a '70 AMX for $43,200 (same as a '91 Camaro X/28 coupe), and a '69 AMX California Special for $54.000.  Everyone spent some big bad B-J green.

The "40 year rule" is functioning (or it's a few years ahead of itself) and the money is as funny as the car crazies seemed to be.  Gotta have; gotta spend; buy me more than an old Mer-say-deez Benz.  Boomers' bleat.

That Packard Panther concept (one of four; the sole roadster) by Teague sold for $363,000, one-tenth what the highest-priced Scottsdale Packard brought, yet precisely the same as the 1931 Cadillac V-16 Sport Phaeton (one of eighteen), a car finished in perhaps two shades of gray Mr. Tom Jennings may be seeking. 

DeLorean's '64 Banshee (one of two) sold for just over $200,000; blame that on the six under its hood or on the "bad boy" behavior of John Z.:  Detroit doesn't want wheels to squeak (and it still can't see clearly.)  

A '67 GTX CLONE sold for $118,000 (about $100,000 more than a REAL '68 Imperial convertible and almost twice as much as a '33 Auburn [Salon!] Convertible), a '60 Elvis Lincoln sold for half-a-million and a GM bus for four-and-a-half-million --- too much is not enough for some people.

So went one wonderful weekend --- during which I didn't buy one thing.

http://tinyurl.com/9v2hw

If you want to see some photos (and look for the AMX in them), click.

http://tinyurl.com/b7ffn

If you don't, don't tell.

After that fantasy finished, I saw another Elvis-mobile in Petersen's "Cars and Guitars" show: '71 Pantera with three holes he shot into it when it wouldn't start (what did he expect of the three year-old $2400 used exotic he bought for his gal pal, anyhow?), saw grins at "Classic or Muscle: Where Will the Real Money Be?" (In both Bub, but "Get Smart" about your history!), saw my Buffalo-Classic-car-in--car-museum; saw a hot rod exhibit in Pomona (you have 8 more weeks to see it, and you'll see where AMC first saw its race car livery),

http://www.so-calspeedshop.com/60%20years.htm

http://www.gremlinx.com/index.htm

but didn't get to see the Hudson exhibit in Sacramento (you have 7 more weeks to see it, and to see the '56 Met, '73 Hornet [sw], and '77 Pacer on permanent display.) 

http://www.toweautomuseum.org/html/cap.html

Then I saw one of the more experienced old (79 this year) old-car guys in SoCal, and we talked about everything from trucks to AMC.  He knows more than many AMC experts might imagine.  Some find him "forbidding." I've never found him anything but a goldmine.  He doesn't suffer fools gladly (at all?), but if you know what he thinks you should, you're in for some fascinating conversation.  He may be the last channel left to that GM-Chrysler-AMC world; RAT signed on with the General in '48; CMJ enlisted for battle in '49.  They saw Packard, AMC, and death in 1981; and retirement 11 years after that.  I like listening to all who -sold- old cars: I like listening to all who -designed- them more.  After all, style still sells as many units as any other part of the auto equation.

And when style is backed by substance, the road runs right into riches.

When less

http://tinyurl.com/asekv  

becomes more

http://www.mobilemag.com/content/images/6171_super.jpg

and when small

http://photos.velocityjournal.com/images/stk/1975/ty1975truck01.jpg

becomes so big

http://tinyurl.com/8of7h

than some cannot compete, the road runs to ruin --- through Detroit.  

Zetsche said something when he left Auburn Hills that's worth thinking about.  In essence, he was glad Chrysler is no long part of the Big-3.

If the Big-2 of GM and Ford is a Big-3 when one adds Toyota, what does that say about America?  Or does it not matter to anyone living today?

The Big-3 began when Chrysler acquired Dodge.  Before 1928, America's big Bigs were GM, Ford, Hudson-Essex, Willys-Overland, and Studebaker.
(Maybe no one living today recalls that H-E and W-O each sold 200k+.)

The Big-3 achieved their highest market share the year the fifties were mid, the year AMC and SBC were new, and the year a Packard -looked- new thanks to RAT.  In 1955, the Big-3 had 94.5% of the US market: AMC, S-P, K-F, and USA etc. split most of what was left.  29,000 Volkswagens were sold (so VW set up its first US sales and service organization in 1955), but only 23,000 other import cars were sold in America.  Renault, Rolls, Rover, and Et Ceteras from abroad.  In total, imports sold less than 1%.

50 years later, import marques accounted for 41.3% of sales in your US.

There will always be an America: will it be American owned and managed?

Detroit needs style, skill, and substance.  America needs to study and sweat.  Wake up before the dream is over.  And America can't buy a Kia.

The good designers are leaving American-owned studios.  Joel Piaskowski, whose father [Gerry] retired from Chrysler in 1991 (he'd been a stylist there since 1951) finished CCC and went to work for GM.  Over 12 years, he drew at Opel, Suzuki, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Buick: Corsa, Colorado, and Lucerne are his jobs.  Tom Kearns also graduated from CCC: he spent 17 years at the General: Monte Carlo, Envoy, Deville, and CTS.  Neither is anywhere near retirement yet: neither is ready to stop drawing cars.

Both now work for Hyundai: designing vehicles in and built for America.  However, the profits, the strengths, and the -future- will go to Seoul, not to Detroit.  America will assemble and consume what Korea can sell.

Ford's designers are going to Toyota, Nissan, Citroen, and elsewhere; Ford's execs are jumping off the sinking ship.  They're climbing onto other boats that float --- including Hyundai: Hyundai's VP of product development and strategic planning learned his "how-tos" in Dearborn.

It's not that Americans can't innovate or lead: Lincoln's electronic [LED] adaptive headlight cluster is cheaper, simpler, and easier to repair than Lexus' or Mercedes' Tucker-era mechanical answers to the question and, if you know any car history, in keeping with the past.  First US composite headlamps, first US HID arc installs, world first rear neon-tube technology, all on production Lincolns built by Ford. 

But it takes more than good ideas to light our way to future success.

And it takes more than reviving good ideas to light up sales charts.

Charger might hit a HEMI, but it's no home run.  88% are sold with rebates and Dodge dealers are "getting paid to reduce inventories."  Crossfire is offered at overstock.com [250-day supply; Toyota has a 27-day stock], Fusion (3-bar Ford, not 5-blade Gillette) needs incentives already, and Buick, once a car of dreams for Americans from doctors to business owners, has the lowest residual value of any 2006 car sold in America.  Buick, Roadmaster of an America that Charles Nash knew, now depreciates faster than Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and Kia.  Those are facts.   

But back to California and to the value of seeing strength in opinion.

Outside, Fairway is Green, roofs Sienna Orange, and sun Mellow Yellow,    

http://www.rsfgc.com/Association.html

http://www.kcrosby.com/lb.html#lb3

(and Der Bingle may croon a little),

http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/USPics12/PDRM2074.jpg

inside, black-and-white car concepts are sharply drawn: no dumbed-down diddling allowed.  You can agree or disagree, but you'd best have your brain (and every facet of auto history you remember) in gear.  Put the pedal to the metal and take off.  Great fun.

(And you'd better know more than just one old and/or new car company...)

Time over today, so tune in again for another report from an age when Detroit design was alive at both AMC and GM.

Until then, answer a question: What former AMC employee has just been re-hired by what Detroit CEO to help his firm recover, and what other automotive executive did he serve earlier?  AMC might be dead, but old AMC people just keep going on and on.