Re: Show-n-go

[AMC74Hornet@xxxxxxxxx]

On January 18, 2006 Mahoney, John wrote:

> A "lucky thirteen" 2006 Nash-Rambler-AMC events are listed at this URL:
> 
> http://amcrc.com/meets/meets.htm
> 
> (unless use of the internet as an information resource is now verboten)
> 
> and, according to all-knowing Google gurus, the closest to Rochester NY will be in Gettysburg PA (309 mi and 7h 3m), Somerset NJ (330 mi and 6h 42m), Sturbridge MA (337 mi and 5h 37m), Dublin OH (391 mi and 6h 59m), or Hampton NH (432 mi and 7h 11m) and (no CAMO location listed, but if it's where it's been before), Framingham MA (372 mi and 6h 13m) away.
> 
> I don't own any old-car "drivers" today; my A, B and P cars (no names, please, that could grate also) are either as-built preservation models or cars "pointedly" restored to whatever was deemed to be "original" (a moving target, unfortunately, moving in the wrong direction) upon their completion.  Three cars are in museums (on loan, so, in classic Rambler mentality, they cost nothing to store), two cars (jointly ~5k on them: one, a "world's lowest-mileage" example [and an object of desire by one of the world's top-400 billionaires {passed $2B around five years back} who can't have it until I'm ready to sell) at home (thus I drive rent-a-cars from November to May; no saltwater or salt air in the garage and an econobox-of-the-month parked near the road also means less shoveling of the driveway --- more Rambler smarts at play); the others are in cold, dead confinement halfway between home and lake.  The most "valuable" of those is a [lesser-value] six-cylinder example of a ni!
 che-market model that will never be a "hot" collectible and the least valuable, albeit most original, are the last AMC cars I held onto.  Their value is but two-fold: nostalgia (one is my first -new- car and one is, IMO, one of the better -looking- cars AMC ever built) and as historical documents: pattern cars for future collectors of seventies AMC.  I had hoped to donate them to a national Nash-Rambler-AMC museum (which does belong in Kenosha --- whether or not there's money or madness to build it there...) to become part of a permanent collection that would show and tell (like a URL) the full and accurate history of American Motors from 1954 to the present.   
> 
> One AMC has been in dry storage for 22 years; the other for "only" 12 years; for 10 of those, I have been watching and waiting: for the AMC hobby to mature and/or coalesce, for that Nash-Rambler-AMC museum and archive to become more than a dream fantasy, and for some kind of real WNY AMC Club to appear (or reappear; one was either idea or attempt at some point in pre-'90s AMC history) as a reality.
> 
> I'm glad 1998, 2002 and 2004 were good years for Nash-Rambler-AMC meets; I'm glad AMC shows took place in northern PA and western NY.  I'm glad I attended one and spent some time looking, listening, and learning about today's AMC.  I didn't find 1300 or 300 cars on its field, but the 30 or so there made it worth the required [in mi, h, and m] expenditure to go.
> 
> That same year, I spent even more time with one of the most respected representatives of today's Nash-Rambler-American Motors hobby.  I was hoping golden nuggets of "interesting" would gleam; I was saddened by how shallow the "dig" seemed to be.  Most of all, I was struck by an attitude I'd thought was anomalous in 1983; the year I bought my last new (later dead by drowning) AMC vehicle and I first tried to find an area "place" for sharing interest in and enjoyment of AMC as a hobby.  AMC wasn't yet dead (although the "real" RWD AMC cars were history...) but, since at that time, I owned '67, '68, '71, and '79 models of what AMC -had been- over nearly three decades (and I had been awake during the 1959-1966 declining days of the previous last independent marque),
> I though it was time to get serious about my collectible-history AMC.
> 
> Compared with what I had learned about collector-car people (I began to "learn the ropes" as a freaky-geeky 10-year-old among "wise-ened" (and wizened) folks filled with "interesting" --- in both the high- and low- marque AND income ends [no names or URLs, so let's simply say like Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson from 1928-1933 and S-P from 1954 to a bitter end], and I expected no different from AMC as a car hobby.  I found otherwise in 1983 (as I began to consider "mothballing " my '71 AMC), in 1993 (as my '79 faced the same action), and again from 1996 (when I "plugged in" to the online AMC hobby): I'm still seeking a place to appreciate AMCs.
> 
> I have enormous respect for anyone who drives an original-owner ordered '67 AMC to meets or drag strips; I am enormously impressed by those who publish books, 'zines, or articles, and by all who create AMC websites.  I am enormously awed by AMC fans who work hard to create, captain, and crew their choice(s) of regional and/or national car club(s), and I am enormously grateful for every AMC owner who still drives a decades-old AMC vehicle daily, weekends, or to cruises and shows.  I am enormously indebted to anyone who does anything to keep AMC from being forgotten: from, to risk more annoyance, becoming an Elcar of the second-half 20th century.  But I'm still seeking really -rational- reasons to revive my AMCs.
> 
> I'm not gonna drive them 600, 800 (or more) miles on public roads; not gonna dolly 'em to ~30-car shows; not gonna flatbed 'em or trailer 'em to where they are not found interesting or people aren't interested in things they don't already (or think they already) know about.  I'm not gonna "pay the freight" to "look for place" and find attitude.  Online AMC has copped plenty of [rude] 'tude: A to Z (B, S, and J [Jason]) all spoke eloquently.  Maybe they were just nineteen when they put feet in mouths and cracked eggs on the face of AMC; maybe they had suffered a falling muffler to the head, or maybe they'd been badly bitten by Bow-tie Beetles and 650-hp rice-fed SR20-DETs.  We all have days when we're not at our best, but that's no excuse.  So I'm still looking for a sun to shine again on AMC.
> 
> AMC seemed "cool" to me in 1967; AMC seemed "beautiful" to my neighbors in 1971; AMC seemed to scream "style" in 1975, when I couldn't resist a Cassini [a one-off; it turned out to be] in the window for months after the 1976 models debuted.  Nobody else loved another "weird" car by AMC?
> 
> Blame it on music, for we also wore polyester and sideburns only Elvis could beat --- or blame it on some new car smell that poked the hole in our ozone layer, but I also liked Gremlins, Hornets, Pacers and Matador sedans and wagons.  AMC seemed "hot" in 1979, whether the 125-hp 304 or 90-hp 232 gave some Spirit to its fastback.  The last Pacer, the final '83 GT and build-out Concord; a flame still burned after AMC candles went out.
> 
> A leftover Eagle Sport wagon was calling as the calendar turned to '84; and when it was dunked and dismembered, an odd Merkur that subbed as my VAM Lerma (what AMC man wouldn't have wanted a 5-door Spirit fastback?) was in the AMC "different --- and proud to be so" tradition.  But just like virtually every Renault (Peugeot, Citroen, etc.) auto ever sold in America, it didn't have a chance.  A German car serviced at L-M stores?  Good grief --- that wouldn't work until Cadillac learned the lessons of Cimarron and brought over an Opel Omega.  (Interested AMC fans all know what GM did with Catera: someone may have earned a Medallion, if not a Le Car or a Fuego) for that...)  I had learned -nothing- from my earlier "AMC-withdrawal" symptoms.  I had thought an '86 SVO would be just the ticket to replace my aging (teens mileage was "aging" in my mind 'cause I want my cars to be new forever...) Spirit.  Great car; terrible idea.  America at the hometown level just couldn't do what!
  it so desperately needed to.  Turbocharged, gas-saver, sophistication?  How un-American!  Let's just cram in an old OHV 5.0 V-8.  Ah, but now (and in the future) we have come to regret that.   How American.  Act first and think later.  People make cars and car people must bring car circles to suitable ends.
> 
> If all politics is local, all car-consumer satisfaction (screw the show-offs who insist on driving [?] exotics when they live hundreds of miles from the nearest Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, A M, and other stores; they're usually more interested in how the car -looks ON- them than how the car functions; and those who ship their classics off to Stuttgart or Sindelfingen or wherever are usually more interested in what those cars -say ABOUT- them than in how they sound at idle or at speed on a road) is even more local.  You can't love new cars you can't drive -reliably- and you won't [forever] love old cars you don't drive -at ALL-.  If cars are the king things, car people are what make the king things possible.  So I'm still looking for a season, a reason, and a place that makes AMC cool (and hot) once more.  Forget "interesting."  That must be DIY task today.
> 
> I don't care whether there's a 360, a 401, or a 560 under their hoods; all I seek are AMC cars, AMC people, AMC commentary, and AMC kindness: bring 'em on (starting right in the neighborhood) and I'll bring forth old AMC passion(s).  Since 1996, I've tried to make it happen, spending more than time and free info.  I've met maybe a dozen AMC people in the area in a decade: maybe only two or three of them still read this list.
>  
> I'm glad to read that AMC is successful in meeting its challenges; I'm glad to seek AMC successes across WNY.  I'm anything but vague on that.
> 
> I will be glad to see 400-500-car "all-club" meets each and every year.  If Olds-REO, Packard, and Buick can do that, so could Nash-Rambler-AMC!
> 
> But I'll never stop being as cryptic as a Motorola solenoid attached to an AMC wiring harness.  Firing up the electrons is what it's all about.
> 
> 'Cuz "thinking outside the box" means more than looking at a 2006 Scion xB, a 1986 Lincoln Town Car, or a 1926 Essex.  No URLs needed.  Just think and laugh.




Sorry I tried to read this but half way into it my eye's and head started to hurt. It's simple polish them and look at them or drive them!!! Mine are driven every chance I get.
"Doc" 




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