Posts Tagged: AMC
Somewhere in a shop that once belonged to a bankrupt car company, a wiring harness routed a few inches too close to the accelerator pedal linkage. It sounds minor. It wasn’t. American Motors issued a factory bulletin over it, and NHTSA logged it as a formal safety campaign. If you’re chasing a 1971 AMC Javelin because it’s one of the last genuinely affordable muscle cars from the era, that’s exactly the kind of detail that separates a great original find from a car that needs real attention before it’s road-trustworthy. Here’s what a 691,000-view full build episode, decades of AMC ownership experience, and the federal recall record actually say about buying one.
AMC built the AMX as a two-seat halo car meant to prove a budget-focused company could build a real sports car, and it worked almost too well: total production across three model years landed at just over 19,000 units. Its 390-cid V8 made 315 horsepower on a chassis shortened from the Javelin until the wheelbase actually beat the Corvette’s. That rarity is exactly why a wanted ad like this one still shows up decades later. Here’s what makes the AMX worth the hunt.
Jay Leno sits down with AMC historian Mark Fletcher and his 1970 Javelin Mark Donohue Edition — a homologation special AMC built exactly 2,501 of, one more than the racing rules required. Fletcher’s own philosophy on car ownership, ‘I’m not collecting trophies, I’m collecting smiles,’ has become one of the most quoted lines in the show’s history. Watch the full conversation above.
Every car at this drag race has to leave the line the way it left the factory — original engine, original exhaust, no shortcuts. This year’s two-day coverage from Mid Michigan Motorplex mixes in-car and drone footage of a 1970 Hemi ‘Cuda, a 455-powered Pontiac T-37, an AMC Hornet SC 360, and a 454 Corvette, all running bone stock against each other. Watch to see which factory legend actually backs up its brochure numbers.
American Motors built muscle cars on a fraction of what Ford, GM, and Chrysler spent — yet fielded a genuine two-seat performance car in the AMX, a Trans-Am-proven Javelin, and the tachometer-hooded 1970 Rebel Machine. This countdown video draws a passionate, correction-heavy response from AMC loyalists in the comments. Watch to see which cars actually earned AMC’s reputation for hiding real speed in unglamorous bodies.
AMC spent the late 1960s selling the Rebel as sensible family transportation, a four-door sedan, a wagon, and a hardtop built for buyers who wanted nothing flashy. Then it built The Machine: a 340-hp version of the same car, wrapped in a single red, white, and blue paint scheme with a hood-mounted tachometer. Read on to see how AMC quietly redesigned the Rebel for 1969 and 1970, and how The Machine turned an economy car into a genuine muscle car.
Owner Jeffrey Filz grew up two blocks from the Kenosha plant that built this 1970 AMC Javelin SST Mark Donohue Signature Edition, and the comments below Lou Costabile’s video turn up an even wilder story: a commenter’s father, a former Spitfire pilot, briefly owned one himself. Watch the full walkaround and engine start.
The AMC Javelin SST arrived for 1968 with safety features its bigger-budget rivals hadn’t even considered yet, plus a 343 V8 that could be ordered with a performance-oriented “Go Pack” four-barrel carburetor. It’s a pony car that out-engineered the competition in ways period buyers rarely noticed, and one that’s genuinely restorable thanks to shared GM parts. Read on to find out exactly what made AMC’s underdog pony car worth a second look.
AMC’s Rebel spent 1967 through 1970 quietly doing everything right, offering full-size room in a midsize body, backing it with the most comprehensive warranty in the industry, and proving the point with a record-setting endurance run down the Baja peninsula. Then in 1970 it produced The Machine, painted red, white and blue, with a 340-horsepower 390 as standard equipment. Read on for how the underdog got loud.
AMC spent forty million dollars and a million man-hours over three years before anyone outside the company saw the Hornet, then sold the base model for $1,994. It was the first American car with reinforced door beams, the first to offer a hatchback in its class, and the first to sell a designer interior. It also produced a 285-horsepower muscle car that only 784 buyers ever got. Read on for what killed it before it started.
American Motors had no performance reputation, no factory racing program, and no money. So in 1969 it handed a compact Rambler to George Hurst, dropped in a 390, and sold the result for under three thousand dollars. Only 1,512 were built, every single one with a four-speed, and the thing ran quarter miles that embarrassed cars costing twice as much. The SC/Rambler remains the strangest bargain Detroit ever produced.
A 1969 SC/Rambler and a 1968 AMX, both built by American Motors Corporation and both packing the exact same 315-horsepower 390 V8, meet in a quarter-mile race decided almost entirely by rear gearing. AMC loyalists in the comments are still defending both cars against decades of being overlooked by bigger Detroit names. Watch two underdog muscle cars settle an argument that started the same year they were built.