[AMC-List] Big bads

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

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http://www.planethoustonamx.com/amcdealerships/Long_Motors_Rambler.JPG
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Colorado mega-retailer (Ford, Saturn, Suzuki, Hyundai, KIA, Audi, Mitsu, Mercedes, and Chrysler) Long (in business for 60 years) also sells Jeep.

Owners in Rocky Mountains, high on AMC history, will look into it.  Ha!  

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The factory pin stripe has been polished off in quite a few spots so I will re-stripe that too. The 77 AMX flairs will be striped and primed with SEM plastic bumper primer. I will paint them with the Sherman Williams orange adding Morton's Impact 200 flexible additive to it. I used this product on the flairs I painted in 1979 on my yellow car and they have not cracked or pealed after all these years. Even though I am not a restorer I will keep as much of the original paint as possible since it is in such nice shape.
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Stop!  Even though you are not a restorer, you will keep as much of the original AMC -prose- as possible.  AMC -never- sold a car with a "grill" or "flairs" (or, intentionally, with orange "peal" paint...) and -nobody- ever "striped" anything before re-striping --- unless they were working on a zebra.  If you won't restore your -grille-, -strip- your -flares-, and eschew orange -peel-, your Hornet will not be "original."  Not even 85%.

Ah, but AMC is not alone with a grille on the grill and some bull cooking.

http://www.theraceforum.com/images/forum/3041-66-2.jpg

"Fortune magazine's Alex Taylor III described the grille as 'simply a travesty, a plain oval with the Jag emblem in the middle; it recalls the recently departed Ford Taurus, an inappropriate homage if there ever was one.'"

http://tinyurl.com/gvt2o

So "retorts Jaguar's chief designer Ian Callum: 'Get over it.'  Callum points out that the grille design is very similar to that of the 1960s E-Type, perhaps the most revered production Jaguar of all time."

http://www.docsjags.com/sales/e-types/series_1/201-1001/201-1001-6.JPG

http://www.jag-lovers.org/brochures/xke3/ultimate-v12_1_l.jpg

http://www.jag-lovers.org/brochures/xke3/ultimatev12_5_l.jpg

But what did he say about a reverence for AMC content? 

http://www.carolinabreeze.com/img/photo/connie-jag.jpg

Even when revered with perhaps a bit too much -flair-?

http://www.pjsautoworld.com/1960cars/1962jaguarxkefrt.JPG
http://www.pjsautoworld.com/1960cars/1962jaguarxkehood.JPG

Which the British would perhaps blame on the -French-?

http://www.pjsautoworld.com/1960cars/1962jaguarxkebk.JPG

If you don't know Hornets or Hot Rods, learn both now!

I had hoped that someone, on seeing some AMC pre-history

http://www.rmauctions.com/images/cars/az06/az06_r125_1.jpg

would have taken some time to show some more as AMC died,

http://tinyurl.com/godt8

but no one did.  Some AMC is still alive - if we seek it.

Some AMC is still dying.  Bit by bit.  Slowly.  Each day.

In 6/06 R&T, "Collectible Sleepers of the Lowest Rank" includes Kaiser, Frazer, Fiat, Triumph, Aztek (of course), "Renault Anything" (Alliance mentioned), America (not American) among assorted British sleepers, and A M (not AMC).  Pacer and Matador are not low-rank collectibles, only throwaway Pontiac jokes.

"Ugly stuff comes around again" they write (like CTS, Prius, and 300 C?) but they seem to be forgetting about AMC.   Slowly.  Surely.  Sleepily.  And gone.

As the "Baron of BALCO" bats at some sort of record, I read a new book on the "Bambino" ("The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth") and saw Kenosha dying.  In that book I found Fords [Frick and Henry]; I saw Stengel [Casey], Studs [Terkel], and steroids; I even batted a now battered Buffalo into the [Bisons] bullpen, but I couldn't see a single Nash.  It's as if Nash is becoming some sort of AMC or something.  How could that ever happen?

In Ruth's "automobile adventures":

"He drove fast and without worry."

"He parked anywhere."

"He hit things, including pedestrians."

"He gave his passengers internal injuries."
 
He crashed cars, he totaled them, and, of course, he drank a lot.

He lived life like some of today's American "royalty" and "heroes."

A "new green Essex roadster" was given him.  All publicity is good.

His maroon twelve-cylinder Packard (which he actually bought) "looked like a rocket ship" and "sounded like a fuel-burning calliope" (he had the early Midas touch), so it was dubbed "The Ghost of Riverside Drive" --- even if very few ghosts (not to mention coach built senior Packards) were ever painted -red-.  He drove it with impunity (the cops rarely chased him) on his way home (at 3 AM) from partying with his guys and gals (his wife was not among them) who hung with at the hottest spots.

He was Namath, he was Rose, he was Beckham, he was Kobe, he was phat.

(He was also fat...)

He didn't like fuel stops (at, say, fifteen or twenty cents a gallon), so had 48- and 55-gallon gas tanks installed.  Bigger, better.  Babe!

(If not Big Boom...)

In 1937, after he went hunting in Nova Scotia, his Stutz Bearcat drove back with "one deer tied onto the front bumper, two more tied onto the front fenders and a large, dead bear sitting in the rumble seat.  The bloodstained car, not to mention the bloodstained 'passenger', made quite a sight in midtown Manhattan."

He drove the Bo Stefan Eriksson Ferrari and the Paris Hilton Bentley of his day.  He was bigger than life, more than bad, and he once was paid to pose with Nash.  But while the book tells us how he "killed" (burned out the clutch) of yet another Packard --- under snow in his upstate NY backyard (back and forth until he built up a huge pile and still didn't budge...), it doesn't tell about (or show) one of his Nash "adventures."

I was talking about the "Sultan of Swat" with a young colleague (in his late 20s and a self-professed "huge sports fan" who watches only Sports Center while he works out at the gym, listened to sports radio while he drove halfway across the country to take a symphony orchestra audition [he doesn't play classical music in the car 'cause he'd concentrate too much to drive safely], whose brother is an Asian-car specialist [with a business school degree], and whose best friend has one Firebird in both spaces of a two-car garage [cars taken apart are known to do that sort of thing] at the moment, and who drives like he believes himself to be Fernando Alonzo on a sunny, dry Sunday) who should know about old cars.

"Nash?" he wondered, "Don't think I've ever heard of that kind of car."

Yes, oool kids (or nerd types), smarties (or dummies), history happens.

But it can be easily forgotten.

So how are you doing with AMC?

Put yourselves on the grill.

Do you remembering it well?

If not, do try a bit harder.

http://www.lelands.com/itemlist.aspx?categoryid=0&auctionid=512

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