[AMC-List] Seeing through things and seeing things through

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

>>
and btw i recall when the 472 came out, a caddy engineer said 'there
was room for 600 cubic inches'...
<<

...and it wouldn't involve see-through cylinder walls like the 304 had!

Huh?  What?  He's crazy!  He really lost it.  Which 304 does he mean?

Whoa.  Simmer down.  It actually was 304.5 and it wasn't an AMC mill.

In naturally aspirated 12.0:1 tune, it made mincemeat of its origins.

With dual blowers, it blew away just about anything on your old salt.

It, like that first AMX drawing I recently ("If a tree fell...") noted, dated to 1951; and, to give us even more fun when remembering, it began life as a 232.

He did it again!  Gone off the deep end.  He's yanking our AMC chain.

No, I'm pulling a switcheroo.  Remember your fourth quarter AMC game?

Remember who already had the small-displacement V-8 that Nash didn't?  
  
An engine that wouldn't have been quite so heavy a haul as Packard's?

Yes, history haters, the OHV 232 that became the 259 and the 289 that had beat GM and Ford and Chrysler and Hudson and Nash to the start of America's 1950s affordable-performance V-8 market madness, had been developed by the last large independent not to become a part of American Motors.  From its 120-hp birth

http://seattlesdc.hypermart.net/Odd2.JPG
http://seattlesdc.hypermart.net/Odd3.JPG

to 575-hp (or was it 635-hp?) death, it was a strong and stout little engine that could.  Its certified desert drive (to 196.62 mph in '63) proved that fact. It drove the flats faster (at 211.929 in '96) to prove that fact again.  

http://www.theavanti.com/JimLange.html

It drove the first -real- muscle car before GM did.  GOT-cha!

Almost one decade before GTO gotcha into a mood for musclin'.

Before Romney's Rambler Rebelled on a racy run of four doors. 

But that's another OT story the AMC List never got to ignore.

Would there have been a craze for "tri-five" Ramblers if they'd been marketed with a cheapo V-8?  Would there have been "Farina" hot rods cruising around car culture for the past 50-plus years if they'd been built with eight-hole 232s?  Would an AMX have been the Z-car to an Avanti that was the G-coupe and the GT-R super coupe that an almost-AMC was still building today?  Would the Skyline of American motors look any different than it does in 2006 --- as the sun seems  to slowly set over Motown?

"When the day is done of revel and romp and race", would AMC still ride "into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight?" 

http://www.charleswelty.com/images/jordan_ad.jpg

Or would that AMC be just another once brilliant, but now faded American dream?

http://www.tocmp.com/pix/Studebaker/Maxbarn/1963%20Avanti%20Ad-01.jpg     

Every day the sun sets on someone, but every night, some stars shine somewhere,

>>
this was a step down; since the 462 [and ancestor 430] was built only
for lincoln, they could afford to be more particular about it.  i read
in the lcoc club newsletter that every one of these engines was run
for 2h on a dyno, including 30m at full throttle, prior to assembly
line installation.  certainly it is true if anecdotal that they are
famous for going 250 000 miles without needing overhaul.

yet some of the best, brightest (or just the biggest...), sometimes slip away, 

http://www.adclassix.com/images/55lincolnmarkII.jpg

and sometimes what we realize was lost when that happens really can't be seen.

http://www.prn.ee/ajuvant/reklaam/1950/linc-cont-mark2-56.jpg

It's amazing that almost ten years have passed since my eyes saw an AMC List and almost seven years have passed since Detroit's "Eyes on Design" saw the best Teague design on display: if time doesn't fly, it does roll along, faster and faster with each passing year.  I have typed more words here than in a concours catalogue raisonee, yet there's still much more about AMC to be written, much more about AMC to be read, much more from AMC to feast the eyes on, and, since none of Dick's designs appeared on that year's poster

http://www.eyeson.org/html/poster99.html

(although both cars on it were designed by his good friend who, the last time I saw him before he died, joked: "You can call this -my- Pacer!" while he stood beside his slightly shovel-nosed one-off Auburn painted in the signature AMC shade of basic [non-metallic] beige), there are still more suns and stars to see in the future life of dead American Motors.  

http://www.eyeson.org/html/evn_eod_evn.htm

If I see something interesting this weekend, I'll write something about it next week.  After that, my ten-year AMC List enlistment will be over and my vow to "give" something every day I "take" something will be ancient history.

I may read; I may write; I may not.  You see what happens with history.

It's like a sunset.  Sometimes moonlight, sometimes the sky goes black.

Turn on your high beams.  You must drive your AMC safely into tomorrow.

Eyes will be on you.

Shine!

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