American dream

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

Put "absence" before "distance" and add three more out-of-time topics to yesterday's comment.  Which, whether un-written, un-received, un-read or some other sufferings, may serve some, stimulate others, or simply suck.  

At least it means that I still honor the self-made stipulation to submit -something- to the AMC List every single day I find time to read it.  As for the amcforums.com, am I missing something there that I should be able to see?  Despite what (to me, at least) is a clunky format (compared to the fast-forward scanning possible here), whenever I read "recent posts" and "archives" there, I rarely see much new and interesting.  Am I expecting too much, do I know too little (too much???), am I too old, or am I just losing it now in "My Life with AMC"?  That old "My Life in Kenya" author

http://atgbcentral.com/LIONEL.html

was "witty," "verbose," not "cuddly," and, at times, downright -cranky-.  Hmmm.  Maybe that's what's going on.  I have a case of AMC AMX SBC BBC.

Maybe I also suffer from the "show me" syndrome --- something I fear is NOT contagious.  The links I post for illustration or enlightenment are integral to the words I write.  If you can't or won't view them, you're missing -more- than half the point.  You're also missing portals to see beyond what I have time to note and you're missing an AM Funship cruise.  There's just so much interesting stuff about AMC (and about everything) out there to be enjoyed.  Grab as much of it as possible while you can.  If you couldn't (didn't, or decided not to) buy a new AMC car when you wanted (or dreamt of) doing just that, you didn't get a second chance.  It's no different now.  Carpe diem.

Too bad it's still so hard to successfully share good AMC info, given glitches, lost messages, and lack of reading time.  Maybe the big old -book- that Bentley won't budge on (maybe they're right that it wouldn't sell enough copies to go for less than 100 bucks) really -is- the only answer.  In ten years, we've certainly not seen an internet revolution.  Instead, we've sorta seen AMC slide away somehow.  Hard to understand.
 

I found Frank's words on what a "Big-4" American Motors Corporation may or may not have been.  I didn't (don't) have time to discuss that topic in depth, but I will try to say something somewhat interesting sometime.

Tom, there's a real "Rambler" font somewhere out there and it's based on the actual Nash badge, I believe.  I'll bet my website-designing, movie-making, music-composing-and-conducting IT "geek" could even find it.  If I ever can find -him-.  2 cell phones, 1 PDA, and AWOL?  Geez pleeze.

I think Frank wrote on:

http://tinyurl.com/q2pjw


i'm sure andrew wrote:

>>
the hummer [h1], true to its amgeneral roots, has amc20 differentials.
<<

http://media.gm.com/ca/gm/en/products/hummer/archives/2004H1.html

http://www.traction.eaton.com/prod1.htm

You read, I won't write.


And together both wrote:

>>
" The panel gaps along M-B's new decklid make AMC spaces appear narrow!

saab used to design wide gaps deliberately, so their doors etc.
couldn't freeze shut.

Americans tend to judge other cars and cultures by our own conditions and standards, not withstanding any real reason there may be for others to think/do otherwise. Hmm... I have to say other cultures do us the same way - human nature, I guess.
<<

I really don't think Mercedes sees vintage Saab 900 hood gaps as good (although they're good at what they're designed --- or more --- to do

http://f64.nu/photo/saab/nh-5-640.jpg

http://f64.nu/photo/saab/nh-10-1024.jpg

and even Saab closed the gaps with the latest dress for their old gal

http://www.rsportscars.com/foto/09/saab9506_04.jpg

which is creaky, but, like its big sister STS-V, blinks beautiful blue eyes to show the world how young it feels [young as 2007 hybrid Camry, which wears blue contacts, too, to show that conservation can be cool], 

but what's with the new taillights:

http://www.rsportscars.com/foto/09/saab9506_10.jpg
http://www.rsportscars.com/foto/09/saab9506_14.jpg

didn't anybody learn from the dis-likes of new BMW or old Avalon?]), so we're left to suspect some spaces that were not so swell on old S-Class 

http://tinyurl.com/lwcqd

and aren't super thin on supermodel CLS

http://tinyurl.com/mt4gy

(look near the bottom of the taillight)

http://tinyurl.com/rhajv

might not make the cut against any LFs

http://tinyurl.com/j7tc5
http://tinyurl.com/feyvb

(OK, it's a concept.  Check reality.)  

http://tinyurl.com/bws6r
http://tinyurl.com/pzugf

(Those taillights also are losers...)

or the other sweet treats coming soon.  Open your 4/06 R&T if you can't see what I see.  The car candy coming makes me think it's the late '60s anew.  I can't recall when such swell stuff sailed the seas to suburban streets to satisfy cravings.  Acura V-10 NSX, Infiniti GT-R, the above-shown Lexus LF-S and their more Mercedes-ier GTS.  A cheaper Supra will tee off again with Z.  Affordable goodies from Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi and GM-free Suzuki.  In the Korean Kandy Kitchen, can't you smell what Kia-Hyundai is cooking up?  Put the dentists on retainers!  America, at least that corner of America that can still qualify for consumer credit, a super-splendid (not Splenda toothaches.  But, unlike when '60s sweet muscle cars and strapping pony cars and sundae-sized plastic-wood '70s-show wagons were sold, America's next Candy Man won't come from a 'hood near Motown.  Someone else will be supplying America's sweet tooth with -all- its car-crazed fixes.  And hear, that someone is happy to be here.          

(Which gives me license to tangent [if not to tango] to another beat: 

Now hear this!  Hear isn't "here."  Hot topic!  Grille isn't to "grill."

As you were, men [and ladies, if the AMC List hasn't lost them as well; despite how hard anyone tries to make AMC matter...]  Don't do it again!)

And as we were saying:

Look eastward, angel cakes, to Confiserie Europe.  The store once known for selling the most desirable, most costly, most perfect car candy the world ever tasted now sees what can happen if other sweets seem sweeter.  Check under counters and count the calories.  MercedesMotown's "Malaga"   

http://www.swiss-chocolate.ch/

may seem but a trifle (as in eine Kleinigkeit, nicht Quark or Bird),

http://tinyurl.com/husgd

today, but trouble, double-dipped trouble, may melt both US and EU.  

Solstice can be super as [charged], C6 can succeed as America's super car to cheapen Porsche and Ferrari, G6 can be seen as America's cheap Accord coupe and, well, carloads of candy can be cooked from American sugar, but until a Lincoln is as luscious as a Jaguar; until a Montego is as must-own as MazdaSport; until American Chevy is cooler as Cobalt than Euro Chevy is cool as Corsa, Twin Top, or, heaven forbid, as GTC,

http://www.allcarwallpapers.com/opel/opel-antara-gtc/1203/1280x960/

(yes, another big buck prototype, but note the Lexus-like panel gaps...)

America can't recapture a recipe that made its '60s swing (its '50s had been fabulous, if not all fabulous-full of car candy from Nash and AMC) and its early '70s do the last-days-of-muscle hustle.  America can only save itself from AMC-dom, let alone again supply the sort of sweets the rest of the world wants to swallow, if it can build a new dream.  Isn't Coca-Cola one of the biggest American marketing successes on the entire planet?  Isn't it just sugar water imbued with implied American dreams?  Isn't that what Cadillac once was, even for Asia and Europe?  That's an American Dream.  That's the only place where America can again succeed.      

http://tinyurl.com/l4h5p

http://www.raymond-sepe.de/cadillac.html

MoparMercedes hasn't succeed at building Crossfire, but Ford has succeeded at building new "old" (as CMJ called it) Mustang (he calls new Challenger, along with several other hot cars from DaimlerChrysler, even worse, and I have to concur --- the new Imperial is a hideous joke beyond belief!); that new Mustang isn't beautiful, sophisticated, or well built, but it is an American dream for some buyers (and a blacktop burner for others) to send it galloping out the door.  Europe tried to build "our" Mustang, as did Asia and Australia.  Korea tried to build "our" Mustang with new Ferrari body.  Japan tried to build both "our" Mustang and "our" Vette.

Both of those --- albeit one no longer being truly "affordable" --- are still American dream cars.  Europe and Asia may build whatever they now build to replace their versions of "our" Mustang better than we do, but Mustang is still an all-American dream.

AMC may have been sold to Palmdale years back (does anyone remember all the info I posted about that fact so long ago --- and about how Merpar let some of your most cherished AMC trademarks languish?) and the new American Motors is an unlikely firm to recapture the American dream of cars like Ambassador and Rambler and Javelin and, the most American of all, AMX; but, if Chrysler built a new AMX that was as American as the first one; as beautiful as the best body Pininfarina ever drew, and as well-built (and reliable --- yes, CR may be full of it in some regards, but their "5-year" reliability reports should NOT be discounted) as the cheapest Honda or Toyota --- and as hot-to-trot-hop (not literally, of course, live axles may be good enough for new-old Mustangs but not good enough for any new-new AMX; if you know the -real- AMC history, AMX was -always- planned to be a much more, ahem, "worldly" [back then, read it "European"] car than most [too many, of course; most all too stupid to see] Americans could ever dream) as any AMX or SC/Rambler or Machine or SC/360 that ever drove any of -your- American dreams.

American motors still can dream up more American dreams.  Whether they can see more successes for them is another matter entirely.  It is not still your father's AMC, Plymouth, or Oldsmobile auto.  It is not even our -own- old American car dream.  It's reality.  We can either try harder or fail miserably.

Time to go.