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For those of you now familiar with John Conde; he
worked for American Motors for 18 years and was head of Public Relations. AMC
commonly threw away (gee didn't we just have that wasteful conversation inthe
Chinese buying Steel thread?) but AMC would chunk all these photos, xrays,
drawings and sketches to name a few things away after they were rejected, or
management passed on them like the AMX Gt that looks like a Gremlin, which those
photos were salvaged fromt he trash dumpsters of AMC by none other than Conde.
As were hundreds of thousands of press releases,
photos, memos, in house, you name it. John wrote in 1976, and it is called
"American Motors Family Album" and was published by
the AMC Public Relations Dept.
Suggestion: If you ever find one, BUY IT. iT IS 200
PAGES OF AMC AND JEEP PHOTOS. One of the most invaluable books about AMC onthe
market by a legendary fellow.
I spoke with John 2 months ago as David Simon in CA
indicated John had been sick, which he had, and is in his mid 80s now. I asked
if he would want me to remove him from my vendors list on the website, and he
said yes, as he has sold off everything AMC to someone in California, but didn't
mention who, but I would have loved to own just a fraction of his massive
archives and collection. If any of you ever ran into John at any of the AMO
Nationals selling stuff, it was always worth your time to sit and chat withhim,
he had and has a wonderful amount of stories to tell from his time at AMC, of
which he retired I believe it was 1977 or 78.
And if you DID get to chat with John, you chatted
with a living legend, a piece of AMC history. John is one of maybe three living
AMC Historians left from a bygone era. Yup, hate to see someone get a gift from
John Conde then run to ebay with it.
That smacks of some of those people who got a
number of items autographed at the 2002 Kenosha meet by Wally Booth and Shirley
Shahan...for FREE, then took a early flight back to whereever they came from and
shoved it on ebay. Some fool had a hat on there for $250 (out of FL) and noone
bid on. I was still a member of the amxanarchyfiles then and a thread was
brought up about that. A majority of people thought it shoddy and sad, that
someone would do something like that. Myself? I didn't care as I was not going
to bid on it and thought anyone who did was a fool, and would be glad to email
them directly off the high bidder site to let them know that was a free item at
a just completed event. Granted, a few years from now is fine to auction it, or
God forbid, one day Mr. Booth passes away, or possibly he breaks sound barrier
with a AMC or something, THEN you I guess could auction it off!
Yes, I have several autographed copies of John
Conde's book, along with other autographed copies of different automotive writes
like Mays, Foster, and then legends like Shahan, Allison, Donohue, Booth,
Maskins, Kanners, and those who worked with AMC like a Mashigan. Not for sale,
just stuf I collected thru the years for my own walls and library!
Expect to pay over $50 for the Conde book if you
ever find one. You won't find another book with this many photos, many photos
never seen before, in 200 pages, I would guess that there is well over 500+
photos from the first experimental Ramblers, to mid 70s Jeeps and AMC, remember
this book was published in 1976.
Happy book collecting,
Eddie stakes'
Planet Houston AMX
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