Posts Tagged: AMC
The 1971 Javelin AMX wasn’t even supposed to be its own model anymore — AMC folded it into a trim badge the same year Penske and Mark Donohue drove the redesigned car to a Trans-Am championship. Here’s the real story behind the 401 V8, the Donohue-requested grille, and the designer interior myth that doesn’t actually belong on a ’71.
AMC’s smallest-in-Detroit budget somehow built a Trans-Am champion — then quietly let the Javelin’s final engine lose 20 horsepower on its way out the door. This 1974 AMX didn’t end up as a trailer queen: its current owner swapped in modern fuel injection and keeps driving it the way AMC intended. Only 4,980 AMX-trimmed Javelins were built that year, and this is one that still earns its keep.
Three days isn’t nearly enough time to see everything Chrysler ever built parked in one place, but the Mopar Nationals crowd tries anyway. Held at a drag strip with roots along the old National Road, the event has grown into one of the largest single-marque gatherings in the country. Read on to find out what keeps it growing after nearly four decades.
A Minnesota collector has spent decades keeping his 1965 Rambler Marlin on the road, and it still stops traffic at every show he brings it to. Before the Dodge Charger existed, this AMC fastback quietly set the template for the American personal muscle coupe. Here’s why almost nobody remembers it did it first.
AMC was the smallest of Detroit’s automakers, yet in 1968 it built a two-seat sports car that undercut the Corvette by over $1,000 and then quietly broke 106 world speed and endurance records with Craig Breedlove behind the wheel. Only 19,134 were ever built across three model years. Here’s the story of the AMC AMX, the muscle car most fans have never heard of.
American Motors never had Detroit’s budget, but for a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, its Javelin and two-seat AMX spinoff went toe-to-toe with the Mustang and Camaro on both the street and the Trans-Am track — with Roger Penske and Mark Donohue behind the wheel of a purpose-built 5.0-liter version. Watch to see why this overlooked underdog still deserves a second look.
AMC never had the budget of Detroit’s Big Three, and for one model year it stopped pretending that mattered. The Rebel Machine wrapped the most powerful engine the company ever built into a mid-size two-door and sent it to a drag strip for its public debut instead of an auto show. Read on to find out how a car built in such small numbers became the most patriotic-looking muscle car of the era.
AMC had a fastback on the auto-show floor before the Mustang even existed, then handed the idea to a new CEO who scrapped it for something bigger and slower to sell. The result moved barely 17,000 units in three years, yet one six-cylinder survivor from suburban Chicago shows exactly why the story still matters — and its owner bought it in 2011 for a reason that has nothing to do with horsepower.
AMC’s 1968 AMX was America’s only two-seat rival to the Corvette — built by chopping a foot out of a Javelin and priced $1,000 cheaper. Three V8 options, a 19,134-car total run, and 52 factory Hurst drag cars later, here’s why this forgotten muscle car still has some of the most devoted owners in the hobby.
The 1970 AMC Rebel Machine put 340 horsepower and 430 lb-ft of 390 V8 torque into a mid-size body for ,475, ran a 14.4-second quarter mile, and wore a hood scoop with the tachometer mounted inside it. AMC built 2,326 and never made another. Here is why the smallest automaker in Detroit’s boldest muscle car vanished after one year.