Just think

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

When purring cats...

Auto history takes interesting turns.  Will the make that once wore AMC outside mirrors be saved by the maker that once saved AMC?  Will Jaguar be owned by Renault?  Time should tell.  If/when it does, I told you so.

drink pure ethanol...

http://tinyurl.com/ry3bq

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/

Packard and Pacer may be "all alone with the memory of [their] days in the sun?"  Do you have any clue where that comes from or where it's going?

Hum the Weber tune:  it just might help to restore your AMC List memory.

(But not the Weber tune some -still- hear through a Hornet grill [sic])

http://www.wps.com/AMC/1970-AMC-Hornet/images/engine-weber-side.jpg

(owner of the flame-grilled Weber Hornet shown NOT being among them...) 

Is your AMC history pilot light still ignited or have you burned out? 

The sound of silence when I posted this three-barreled Pacer problem: 

>>
What did the first production Pacer have that no other later-production Pacer would ever share, who was its first driver, and where is it now?
<<

was followed by a factory repair manual that no one took off the shelf. 

>>The answers are right "above" you.  Just open your eyes and see.
 
"Above" was second link in that very posting.  Didn't anyone click it?

http://tinyurl.com/mfdlh

If anyone had, s/he could have clicked forward (how hard is that???) to find the answers.  If anyone did, how come no one wrote, "We see!!" ???

First production Pacer had a sliding moonroof (remember Pacer's pop-up?)

http://amcpacer.panhorst.net/images/archives/ltd3.jpg

http://amcpacer.panhorst.net/images/archives/stekelenborg.jpg

and its first pilot was its designer, Dick Teague.  I have no idea what Wolfgang, Glen, Pascal, Jenni, and others know (or which of them still participate(s) in what I had once hoped would become the world-wide AMC -community-) about that particular Pacer's past, let alone about its future, but if there is no AMC community, no AMC museum, no AMC archives, no AMC List opportunity, no one needs know.  Nothing is good enough for AMC.

Or maybe everyone knows, and simply doesn't care to share enjoyment in AMC info: AMC is content to be a "me, myself, and mine" old car hobby.

Maybe that's why AMC cars are where they are and AMC is wherever it is.  

Maybe it doesn't matter.

If no, maybe answers do.

That car, still wearing an "AMC 75" Michigan manufacturer's license and mostly forgotten (or unknown?) by Pacer experts, owners, and P-wannabes, sits on stands and slowly deteriorates.  Just as do Detroit and America.

How emblematic of what seems so wrong today.  How preventable.  How sad.

http://tinyurl.com/s7b5h

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8992

(Your opinion may vary.  You might think everything is perfectly A-OK.)


Yesterday's Qs also went to an AMC dead letter (dead wood?) office, but maybe they deserve answers also.  Or maybe dead storage and more decay.    

1) What had 1970s-up AMC and Cadillac -repeatedly- shared?  (No, not Saginaw steering...)   

Upholstery.  It became a running joke between Dick and Dave [Holls, of Cadillac] that the same fabric would show up repeatedly.  I could give you endless details, recount conversations, dig deep in GM-AMC history, but if you don't care, I'll just say, "See."  Nylon on '72 Ambassador SST, Seville Custom on '75 Hornet, Brampton Plaid on '77 Matador, and Durham Plaid on '80 Eagle.  Kenosha Cadillacs came both big and small.    

2) How did AMC "adapt" -two- working names from the first small Cadillac (meaning '70s production, not '40s concept [or involving Pacer history]) for the last big (122") Ambassador?  

"LaSalle" became "La Scala" before "Seville."  Had Ambassador Last Gasp named "LS" (for "Luxury Sedan") been built, it would've been -the- Kenosha Cadillac.    
I could write much more (paint, design, etc), but won't bother anyone.

3) What design cue from the full-size fiberglass of that Cadillac showed up on sketches for the last small (108") Ambassador?

Both cars wore wide "whiteout" (with colored bulbs) taillight clusters: three decades before Lexus et al wowed a world with similar style cues.  Could tell more (or write about the "advanced" rear lighting on AMX Turbo), but won't.  AMC info vanishes into the nothing world.  No place for it serve.  

4) What not-an-Ambassador AMC prototype that looked surprisingly similar to the clay of yet another version of that small Cadillac actually -pre-dated- it by two years?

The initial all-new Matador coupe was prototyped in 1971; the "Coupe de Seville" (obviously not its actual name) was not finished until September of 1973.

I could seek photos, make tiny URLs, and serve it all up sweetly, but won't.  One link I once posted here got 17 hits.  One other (which happened to lead to a view my AMCs [one covered, one not] and YT) got 26.  Yes, it's a small, small AMC world.  I got the picture.  Maybe I should've gotten it a decade earlier.

Full-service   

http://tinyurl.com/mm5c7

and DIY food

http://www.cadillacforums.com/cadillac/

abound in the world.  While AMC starves.

AMC forgot February as AMC forgets March.

AMC (like an AMC List) will be forgotten.

Like a Pacer stuck in old-age status quo.    


In 4/06 HMN, "Durham" appears three times in an -article- on custom cars.  Apparently Chrysler experts have "forgotten" -Derham- easily.  Just noting what happens even outside the itty-bitty AMC confines. 

In the same issue, a '30 Chrysler 77 Roadster (#1-) sold for $80,300 because the "bidders were ignorant."  Just reporting.  But they pay $113,400 for a '69 Judge -coupe-.  Just reporting.

If auto ignorance concerns any old car people, why would an "extremely original" 1916 P-A Open Drive Limousine sell for only $45,100, when pony car -clones- sell for over twice that sum?  And if the reporter wrote, "Pierce-Arrows are considered by many experts to be the very best-built automobiles", why is no one heeding?  (I was just reading...)

Why was $22,100 an "excessive price" for a (#3+) '70 AMX 360/4sp BBB, when it was -half- the price paid for a '67 Camaro 396/4sp RS/SS?  Just asking.

If correct, and no one met the $14,000 reserve for a (#3-) '63 Rambler American 440 ragtop, why does a red/white '69 AMX 390/4sp ask $55,000 and a '73 Cardin 401/4sp ("older restoration") ask $21,000?  Just wondering.

If the ['68-'69] Charger "may be the best-styled muscle car ever created", what was the '67 Marlin 343/4bbl?  Chopped liver?  Bratwurst?  Just inform me.

If Charger's nose is too long and "light", windshield too upright, rear overhang too "plump" and sail panel too massive, is it forty times more car because it's forty times more common.  Just looking at things.

(Too bad no one looking at any Bangle BMW in the new Mercedes CLK will ever see any influence of the very first car he owned back at home in Wisconsin.
Just imagine if someone actually -did- something more interesting with forgotten AMC history.)

4/06 Automobile celebrates its 20th and one AMC body was invited to the party.  "Dick Teague's masterpiece."  Was it the "big-whoop" AMX?  Javelin?  Just
questioning.

(If "Better styling equals better sales" [posited against poorer-selling Liberty], then what about kind of styling has Scion xB?  Just comparing. 

In 4/06 C&D "gremlin fetish" and "Gremlin ... loved" appear in two inches (on page 20) and a new Audi Gremlin appears (on page 31.)  Just spooky?

3/06 MPH counts the Top Muscle Cars from 10 to 1: Plymouth, Buick, Ford, Ford, Olds, Plymouth, Chevy, Chevy, Plymouth, and Pontiac.  Just recall those fine old American muscle machines.  Just where is an -AMC- Machine?

If you look, you see AMC in 4/06 HR and 4/06 CC.  (Just look carefully.)

And if you looked at Tom Wolfe in his weirdly white wardrobe beside his weirder white Cad-boat [dudes with do-rags do nothin' his Fifth Ave set hasn't seen] and wondered just what (other than the first Eldorado, the last Matador, and this auto history whitewash I keep on posting) had to do with your wacky world of AMC, don't bother reading.  Just crash down on the couch, eat potato chips and watch a new DVD.  "The Last American Hero" (1973) has just been released and that film was based on Wolfe's words.

On March 26, 1972, Bobby Allison began your modern NASCAR era, when he won at Atlanta International.  His was the first super speedway win for Chevy since 1963 and Junior Johnson (Wolfe's subject) was team manager.

Just imagine if one of -those- guys ever drove for AMC.  Fuggadeboudit.

No one would bother to remember.  Let dead old AMC rust away in peace.

Pace yourself.  It'll take a few more years.

So much to be forgotten.

So little time left.

So it goes.