Re: [AMC-List] scenes from dayton

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eddie Stakes [mailto:eddiestakes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 8:13 PM
> To: Mahoney, John
> Subject: scenes from dayton
> 
> http://picasaweb.google.com/mightypilot/06AMONational
>  
> http://picasaweb.google.com/mightypilot/06AMONatAmericanCup
> Eddie Stakes'
> Planet Houston AMX
> 713.464.8825
> eddiestakes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> www.planethoustonamx.com


Eddie, thanks for sending several links while I was away.  I haven't read the AMC List since June, but hope you're keeping cool while the rest of the US has been having a Houston-style heat wave.  I can't wait for it to end.  It's too darn hot.  It's just crazy.  It's like cars.

While I'm sure you see lots of crazy cars in TX (up here in the hinterland, cars are getting crazier as well: I saw three '07 S-classes during this morning's commute and every one was painted some shade of grey or black.  Shouldn't anyone crazy enough to give crazy Dr. Z ~$100k for a daily driver choose Plum Crazy or something Big Bad?), but the craziest cars still are in CA.  Unfortunately, few are AMCs at this point: ancient history.  So why did I see a '64 Plumouth?

Sometime I'll send you some photos of crazy cars on the street, at the Starbucks, and as $300k shopping carts at Ralph's --- plus some taken by a 14-year-old car-crazy kid who'd sought an audience with the Pope of Propulsion in his Burbank Cathedral of Car Craziness.  I think he [the young man], his folks, and his buddies went home duly impressed with auto history (and jet bikes?); hopefully one of those kids may become a new-age Charles Nash or a new-look Harley Earl.  America needs something to meet its challenges.     

"Life, Liberty, and Pursuit" is as American as rap and bobbleheads (but I'm not sure the slogan is right for Cadillac...) so I hope that someone, somehow, will lead America back to its '50s-'60s days of auto successes; sometime before American motors are completely comatose --- if not as well-rememberd as is an AMC.

GM, Ford, and whatever-still-is-American-around-Chrysler (where's their Jeep icon?) shouldn't be let to slip under like AMC did: America should be too proud of its automotive history to stand silently again for that.

While Mr. Watanabe publicly bowed to show corporate regret before all of Japan, Toyota's drive toward its world automotive dominance barely paused during a downshift.  Then Ford was humbled.  Come tomorrow, GM.  American motors are, it seems, the British marques of 2006 now: going, going, going; then, silently, all gone.

That said, after spending a [hot] month in Japan and Asia, and [hotter] week in California, it's good to be back at [too hot] home.  I saw [too many] cars driven by [too many] car crazies [too many] places to count; but until I clicked on those links you sent I hadn't seen [too many] AMCs at all.  Anywhere at all.  You were right about the V-8 X Gremlin: Penfield is just two towns north of Pittsford.  The car was advertised in a local paper, at, IIRC, $13k.  The thing that struck me; however, was not its price, but that I had never seen it at any area venues: cruises, shows, parking lots.  Edelbrock-ed up as it was and certainly no garage queen, it looks like a "real" fan's kind of AMC.  But, like too many other Kenosha cars in WNY, it's been hiding out for decades.  AMCs won't be remembered if they're not seen; they won't be seen if there's no AMC scene.  What's the answer?  Maybe AMO knows.    

Although Mark's photos made Dayton look more AMX than AMO, the rest of AMC looked well-represented, the quality looked outstanding (some of the under-hood detailing looked up to Pebble Beach standards!!!) and the show looked like a real [hot] place to be.  So ring the bell for AMC's future (or, in 2006, peal the carillon.)  Peel is what the other American motors paint jobs did in the '80s: one never heard of a "peel-top" AMC that wasn't of canvas or by Renault.

Looks like it was a great show.         

As I often try, I saw several old guard Detroiters in CA retirement, and, as we often do, discussed cars.  The way it is and the way it was, way back when AMC was still possible and when GM, Ford, and Chrysler were still strong.  We didn't come up with any solutions for what went wrong or any way to turn the ship of American motors around, but we had fun.  -America- may be the problem as much as American cars.  -Survival- may the most that we can hope for; the future may never approach the level of our past.

As Toyota drives forward into -our- future, it seems to respect American automotive achievements more than we do.  I saw that too clearly this last visit.

I saw a building that first housed Toyoda

http://www.toyota.co.jp/jp/about_toyota/facility/sakichi/

and some of the houses Toyota would build

http://tinyurl.com/jeznb

http://www.tcmit.org/english/tour/tour5.html

when Japan built upon what America and Europe built when -they- were building the world's best in transportation. 

By far the best building was, for me, Toyota's historical auto museum:  Toyota owns a Pierce, a Packard (Franklin D. Roosevelt's by Rolls[t]on --- the first armored car with bulletproof glass ever built for use by any American Presidents) and, getting as close to an early AMC as it gets, a 1902 Curved Dash Olds.  It owns a muscle car built in Buffalo (a 1909 Thomas Flyer), a limousine built by Renault, an array of Cadillacs, and, of course, a Gordon Buehrig-designed Cord.  It chronicles compacts from a Bebe Peugeot to a Model T Ford to an Essex closed Coach; it also owns Europe's answers to economy, like Oxford, Chummy, and Citroen C.  Japan learned from all of them; Toyota learned to excel at building every one.

For the past 40 years America hasn't been learning, or learning enough: it now spends more on education than any country in the world, yet it does the worst.

That museum owns an Airflow, a Topolino, a prototype Bug, and a genuine 1943 Jeep --- built by Ford.  It doesn't own an Airflyte, a Javelin, an AMX, a Pacer, or a bug-eyed Matador.  Is there something to be learned from American Motors?  Was AMC good or bad?  Well, that's not a Toyota problem.  'Cuz there is none. 

I saw something about AMC one weekend outside Tokyo, when I was invited to dinner at a very exclusive golf club.  Not American exclusive or UK exclusive or even Middle East snow-in-the-desert-for-customized-Porsche-snowmobile exclusive, but Japanese exclusive.  Multi-million initiation-fee crazy.  Over the top.

When I drove up (in a silver Toyota), I saw that the lot was about half-and-half: half Japanese cars; half European; mostly German; mainly BMW, Audi, and M-B.  There were a surprising number of hulking SUVs; several of those were British.  In the row closest to the marquee, I saw marquee marques lined up, just like outside every show-off restaurant in SoCal.

I saw an M6, an SLR McLaren, and not one, not two, not three, but -five- Ferraris, among them a silver F430 Spider, showing not a pheasant, but a V-8, under glass.  Ah, but no, it wasn't the craziest car seen in the parking lot.  That would've been the sole American (or semi-American) vehicle on that overpriced patch of an island called Japan.  And it would've been the closest to an American Motors car I saw in the weeks of crazy car sightings.

I asked the concierge if its driver could be identified.  Yes.  Could I, then, perhaps, meet him.  (It's highly unlikely he'd be a she or a Ms. Wie.)  Yes.

"He" was a 26-year old employed in --- what else --- some sort of tech; his brother was currently attending a business school in --- where else --- the US.
His brother spoke English very well, he said; his English was about as bad as my Japanese.  We both spoke car talk.  It was his first non-Japanese car, he said, although he knew a lot about American machines.

As we walked around and "discussed" his small silver fastback, I asked if he knew the '68-'70 AMX.  Yes.  I said some saw similarities 'twixt it and Marlin (about which he knew nothing) and his American-car-in-Japan.  He said he hadn't thought about that, nor had he connected historical dots between an AMX and his current ride.  He simply liked the lack of commonality, the price, and the look.  He liked it just because it was different, affordable, and very cool.

He bought the Crossfire for the very reasons some had bought the AMX.

It was a European "American" car; AMX was an American "European" car.

Both made some sort of stylish and sporty "I'm different!" statement.

He agreed and we laughed.  The funny thing though, was what happened next--- and that funny thing was the only time I ever heard "AMC" said again in Japan. 

He asked what happened to the AMX company?  What does it make today?

I told him the AMX was only one small segment during one small chapter in the history of what once was the fourth largest auto manufacturer in the American industry.  I told him AMX was built by -AMC- and American Motors was the Nash-plus-Hudson half of the Studebaker-plus-Packard merger that was to create a car company to compete with Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.  With Europe.  With Japan.  And with the world.

I told him that what happened to American Motors was what's happening to the Chrysler Group, Ford in America, and the General Motors, the Renaissance Center of Detroit, and that AMC hasn't built a single AMX since he was born --- and a single "two-seat" "sportscar" since he was three.

I asked him if he knew which new cars Toyota was building in 1983.  When AMC built the last Spirit GT.

He said he knew all the cars that Toyotas builtthen , especially the Celica and the Supra.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v193/itrpower/supramk2.jpg

I said that's exactly what happened to the AMX company.

To American Motors then, and to American motors, today.

I don't think he understood what went wrong.

I don't think any of us really can either.

Car crazies are all the same: makes may disappear but dreams never die.

Even as our Packards and AMCs and Stanleys and Dobles run out of steam.

When they're older, maybe your boys can take a Big Dog garage tour too.

Again, thanks for the info.

And kudos to the AMO show.

John

PS - Gas was only about $4.50 (they clean windows, though...) but it just went up.  Parking is the real problem.  Your '72 Ambassador wagon would be a Maybach 62 on Osaka roads.  Too bad the AMX company wasn't bought by Daimler-Chrysler-Maybach-Benz.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060802a2.html

PPS - I'll copy to the AMC List --- if it's still alive.

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