[Amc-list] Shout

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

By now everyone on every AMC site (thanks for the words, Brien, but with the little time I have to play cars, this venue still seems the simplest way to stay semi-involved with American Motors) knows that Chrysler-Jeep really is on the auction block.  All the stops are being pulled out, all the future models are being displayed, and all the suits are wearing the best suits in their closets in hopes that the buyer(s) will keep them on the payroll.  While show-and-tell continues at AH HQ, the UAW/CAW troops keep digging their graves.  What would WPC think of what happened to his car company?

As petrol prices push pockets to empty and California courts count "cash cow" cars toward global warming, perhaps it doesn't matter that Chrysler probably will be chopped up and spun off.  Many, especially in Germany, won't mind that outcome; Chrysler has been driving down American Motors' highway for four decades or more: it almost died as often as AMC almost did.  But whatever happens, two truths can be taken to heart: Chrysler-Jeep doesn't make too many truly thump-thumping cars today, but its old cars that did --- or still do --- make blood run faster, can be enjoyed forever (or until they rust away.)  Appliances or collectibles.  That's the way cars can be.  Sometimes, though, cars can be both.  Eventually.

Yesterday, I forgot to include a link.

So better late than never, eventually.

http://www.parskhodro.ir/

Yesterday, I also asked if anyone knew how Hisso (a common nickname for the Spanish-French company led by the Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt, who, it happens, was born in Geneva on March 8 --- this very day --- of 1878 [died in Geneva on March 15 --- of 1953 --- very year I was born] which was one of the most technologically forward firms in auto history, built some of the most collectible cars of auto history, and built some of the most beautiful cars anyone had, has, or may, see, during its last decade

http://www.autoquarterly.com/hispano.html

http://www.pionnair-ge.com/spip1/article.php3?id_article=153

unlike what's seen [Avanti, Packard, Bugatti, etc.] as recent revivals

http://www.lahispano-suiza.com/

but like what was seen as similar [Hisso and Wills] birds-of-a-feather  

http://www.stm.or.kr/images/cms_images/maker_info/23/001.gif

http://www.european-concours.com/images/logo%20hispanobird.jpg

http://www.trombinoscar.com/usamichigan/wc220104.jpg

quality does speak in people, cars, and language.)  Your only response

>>
The Hudson was a supplier of proprietary engines for a number of British
Hybrid cars, so my guess is through that direction but I don't know how.
'Sides the Hisso was French I believe.
<<

was on the money --- although it should not be in pounds sterling.  John E was thinking about Hudson-Railton-etc. on the AMC family tree, but my Hudson engine was fueled by francs and pesos --- yes, the Marc Birkigt-designed Hispano-Suiza six that Hudson Motors licensed but never built.

Howzat?, you say, suspiciously.  History all the AMC experts don't talk about?, you yell, accusatively.  Yet another wild goose chase??, you squawk, loudly!  Well, for that flack, I'm gonna make you go hunt all the way back to 1916.

Until the American Motor Corporation (of Plainfield, NJ) merged with the Bessemer Truck Corporation in the wee days of 1923, it built "Americans" powered by a six.  Herschell-Spillman supplied the engines, from 3.4L to 3.8L (3.750; I'm rounding up just to simplify things and to annoy people) to 4.6L (still an American six, not Mustang V-8) to a whopping-big 8.0L.

Of course, through the scope of history, that's nothing.  Pierce had "small" (8.5L) and "big" (12.7L) sixes in 1914; Packard had a "very big" (12.0L) FOUR ten years before that.  That was designed by Charles Schmidt, who had come to America from the Mors.  No, again, not from England, AMC-Renault fans, but from France.  (And no, again, he did not design the 1906-1909 American Mors engine: that car was built under license by the St. Louis Motor Car Company which then built its own all-new design [a 7.8L OHV 6] for two years after that.)

After 1923 amalgamation, the old "AMC" became part of, duh, "Amalgamated Motors Company" that built American cars and Northway and Winther trucks for another year.  Car production stopped in 1924, so, just as it had in 1905 when another American Motor Company stopped building motor sleighs, so AMC could await another revival in auto history.

Herschell-Spillman six Americans never were as common as Fords.  Nor as common as Hudsons, Packards, or Cadillacs.  Around 1500 built for 1920.  But then an American Mors wasn't a big seller either, for in 1910, it cost nearly as much as a Locomobile, about as much as a Packard, about twice as much as a Hudson, and about thrice as much as a Cadillac.  $4k was a lot of money!  (Yet it only cost half as much as a Cunningham, so there still was something [Rochester-made] to envy, even way back when.

http://www.rochester.lib.ny.us/rochimag/rmsc/scm02/scm02449.jpg

A useless factoid I uncovered last fall: while the Cunningham mansion was demolished the very year your AMX concept was shown (a high-rise luxury apartment, with some suitably English-sounding name I now can't recall: something like "Sheffield House" perhaps) rose on that site; today, it is, as is common, a luxury condominium with a street number for a name. [A Sedan de Ville is a DTS and G4, -5, -6, -7, -8 may be Pontiacs; what ever happened to Star Chiefs and Bonnevilles??]  It also, as is common, looks like The Donald poured Moet on Mies.  There's nothing like plate-glass 1960s modern dripping with 2000s gilt and glitz.  Kinda makes one shudder; kinda like seeing 20" chrome wheels on a classic '68-'70 AMX.)

Where was I?  Oh yes, Cunningham.  The 1905 carriage house-slash-garage is still standing at the back of the covered parking lot.  Its brick is still solid, if its wood bits are not.  It has space for about seven of today's cars; one can only wonder how many carriages, horses, and 1900s autos it once held.  It is mostly used to store stuff (mowers, shovels, dead birds, and rats) today; someday, it will probably be demolished as well.  (I was informed that a new parking structure is planned: at almost forty years old [of metal, steel, and fiberglass] it looks worse than the 100-year-old garage.  Cars and buildings have much in common: both must be well designed and well built to endure.  Both are art objects: sculptures, if you prefer.  If the AMC hobby ever becomes well designed and built to endure, schedule a big national meet in WNY: I will lead your Cunningham-Pierce-Ford-Chevrolet-Nash-etc. tour.  I'll even show where the old AMC stores -used- to be.  Buy a Starbucks and 
 walk on hallowed grounds.  (No pun intended, so it's even funnier...)

But I can't show you the condo meeting space (paneled in English black walnut): the Cunningham Room is for residents and their visitors only.     

Now I'm lost again.  Oh yeah, an American Motors history six that might have been.  Hudson bought rights to build the new Hispano-Suiza pushrod OHV six after it debuted in 1930, but, because of the Depression, that Birkigt-design 3.0L engine license never was put to use.  Like the V-6, however, that I mentioned recently, it ran for a long time.  In France until 1938, in Spain until 1944, and, for replacement, sold until 1951.

But by then, Hudson didn't need a super six in-liner: it was going fast with its 5.0L Hornets.  What Hudson needed was money --- to develop its new V-8.  Soon that would prove fatal.  No matter that Hudson's big six was still a super power plant.

American motorists don't always want what's best, so "If you can find a better car, buy it!" cannot always save the American motors from death.

Farewell American, Cunningham, Hudson, Nash, AMC, and Chrysler Imperial.

It was good to know you; we're happy that parts of you are still around.             
      
(So explain how Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and -BMW- succeed selling sixes!)

Might it be a "foreign" mystique?

The 1978 Concord looked "foreign" --- maybe that was what made succeed!

Or maybe it looked new enough and was priced low enough to escape being "just" an AMC.  Whatever it was, it offered a nice big six: 232 or 258.  No liters here, please.

Now that I'm done littering the list with trivia, I'll let you sweep up.

But don't trash this PS.  If you read that I said that Bob Bahre had an un-restored Rambler as a daily driver,          

>> 
So what does a rich car collector, who can probably afford any
damn thing he wants,  drive every day?

The man's got good taste.
<<

I did not!  I said his -curator-, the guy who keeps his cars charged and fueled and as healthy and dust-free as is possible, drove that COY Classic.  I did not add that seeing it parked behind a barn that holds millions of dollars of car treasures AND parked behind what, in its time, was [is...?] always counted as one of the best (and always one of the most costly) of the world's finest autos (Tom attached the photo I sent him in his post)

http://www.amxfiles.com/archive/show.cfm?postid=115127&row=76&search=972
 
but I said more than words can: Rambler Classic behind M-B S behind one of the finest car collections in America.  Funny is formidable, in fact. 

http://www.channel4.com/4car/feature/feature.jsp?id=1143

If you think I wrote that RM is funny, wrong.  I think it's a class act.  I love seeing Hissos in anyone's fine-car collection (and BTW, FWIW, that aero-racer in Burbank leaks on the floor --- as does one of the funniest cars I've seen in Europe: one of the [what are they worth today, $15-20 million?] Schlumpf Bugatti Royales leaks prodigiously.  Oil puddles.  A hoot!) but what I love even more is seeing attractive-and-uncommon CHEAP cars that are either all-original or DIY-restored to original condition.  That's a love that's still available to anyone willing to put any effort into AMC.  And that leads me to Chicago.  And your question for the day.

What was the first AMC car to go into production -without- a hand-built prototype?  What was the month and year it then was covered in AMC ink?

If you don't have enough clues, it looks like a German English machine.

That looks perfectly fine in France, also.  As once did a fine Pontiac.  

http://tinyurl.com/387h5g

Ah, but now I've given you too many clues.  Give me a show of interest.

Without that, AMC is as dead as Chrysler.  We know that story too well.

Laugh, sing, and shout out.  Make some fun.

If you remember Honda and Oscar, do it now. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKIXW9wBWXo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdK85jkFx7Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzO3LXX_8sw&NR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeecuYoQ7iE
_______________________________________________
Amc-list mailing list
Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.amc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/amc-list