AMX: The Other American Muscle Car

When I was younger, my dad would take me to the drag races at a little strip close to our house. Southeastern Dragway was tucked behind a fence gone opaque with kudzu. It was a proper quarter-mile strip, with a "Run-What-You-Brung" program and enough rednecks to populate an entire North Georgia State fair. The track closed in 2006, the land was sold to Publix but never developed due to hazardous soil test results. But back in the day, it was the place to be on Friday nights.

The lights buzzed overhead, alive with thousands of volts and millions of moths, and the drip of taxicab-yellow cheese on nachos mingled with the smell of tire smoke. "Run-What-You-Brung" started every Friday night around eight-o-clock, and the muscle cars reigned supreme. And one particular muscle car always caught my eye.

A mixture of chrome, acres-deep black paint, and anger rolled up to the staging lane. It looked kind of like a Chevy Nova, but much shorter, stouter, like a punk-rock Staffordshire Terrier. When the light went green, the outfit reared off the starting line like a bull let out of the gate, chassis-twisting, left front wheel lifting off the ground in a cacophony of rage and 100-octane mist.

I've always loved the AMC AMX, but I never knew much about it. I was drawn to it at twelve years old. It wasn't like the Novas or the Camaros or the Mustangs. It was different, and I knew it right away. 

AMC was the company that built the AMX and it's younger, nearly identical brother the Javelin. The story of the company is an interesting one. American Motors Corporation marked the beginning of an automotive convergence, not unlike the convergence of American mass media corporations. The company was born from one of the largest corporate mergers ever, in 1954. Nash-Kelvinator, itself a merger of Nash Motors and Kelvinator Appliance Company, acquired Hudson Motor Car Company to form American Motors. Both Nash and Hudson had been huge players in the postwar car business; Hudson produced powerful, stylish sedans and Nash built practical, aerodynamic town cars.

The plan was to combine the strengths of Nash and Hudson and create a car firm that rivaled the established "Big Three"--Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler. American Motor Company quickly phased out the existing Nash and Hudson models and began producing the Rambler, a small car that borrowed heavily from the Nash Metropolitan. Soon, though, the Rambler became a truly individual American Motors product. Safety and practicality were its biggest selling points. By 1959, American Motors had solidly established itself as a player in the American car market, producing economy cars that were ahead of their time in both styling and standard features.

A fine example of post-war Nash: the Statesman Airflyte Coupe. This Nash was developed in a windtunnel--unheard of for a passenger car in 1949.

Ambassador, Marlin, American, and Classic models gained a strong foothold in the small car market in the early 1960s. In 1960 and 1961, the Rambler ranked third in domestic automobile sales. Small cars were in fashion, but soon American Motors would face a bigger challenge. 

On March 9th, 1964, the first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line in Dearborn, Michigan. And with it, the American automotive industry changed almost overnight. AMC had a fine reputation for building basic commuter cars by 1967. But Ford's Mustang had the country enthralled with the muscle car. It was cheap, available with a multitude of different and exciting engines, and stylish. By 1967, Chevrolet had caught on, introducing the Camaro. It was clear that AMC needed to adjust their approach if they wanted to continue chipping away at the big three.

A 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang Convertible on display at Ford's Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.

American Motors threw every bit of fuel it had to the fire. The company launched a fully-redesigned line of full and midsized cars in 1966. In 1967 they hired an outside company to develop a new lithium battery for automotive use. The next year, AMC became the first company to make air conditioning standard on a line of cars. Things were looking up. But they still didn't have a muscle car.

The answer came from AMX, American Motors' experimental division.  Dick Teague,  a designer at AMC since 1959, penned designs for a sleek, two-door muscle car. Two prototypes were displayed on the company's own auto show tour in 1966 and received excellent reception. Work on the production car began immediately. 

And immediately there was dispute: whether to build the car with a fiberglass or steel body. Fiberglass was cheaper, friendly to American Motors' limited budget, but steel was stronger and easier to manufacture and repair. Both fiberglass and steel prototypes were initially developed, but AMC quickly decided to stick with traditional steel bodies for production models. In September of 1967, AMC began offering the Javelin for sale in the United States. 

Like the Camaro and Mustang, the Javelin was available with a wide range of engines from 3.8 liters to 5.6 (a 6.4 liter option was added mid-1968). Optional "Go packages" offered the 5.6 V8 with four barrel carburetors, upgraded suspension, dual exhaust, and chrome wheels.

The Javelin quickly became a cult favorite. It had the smallest wheelbase of any of the pony cars, and weighed less. But even though it was smaller, interior and luggage dimensions were the largest in class. Combine these with attractive styling and a low starting price, and the Javelin started looking like a big contender.

In February 1968, the AMC AMX was introduced. This was the car from the drag strips of my youth, and from the start it was a niche special. The AMX was marketed as a pure American sports car. It was one of the very few two-seaters on the American market--Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Thunderbird were the only other options at the time. The "twin venturi" grille from the Javelin was combined into one piece, broad C-pillars created a fastback look at the rear, and red-stripe tires set off the Magnum 500 alloy wheels. 

If the Javelin was a exercise in good styling, then the AMX was a full-on muscle car masterpiece.

AMC was taking the "pony car" establishment head on. Along with the Javelin came marketing plans that directly addressed the car's biggest competitors. 

The AMX stacked up well against its competition. AMC nixed the smaller V6 options available on the Javelin. The AMX started with the 4.8L, and climbed up to the 390 cubic inch V8, which had entirely different internal components to support the extra power. It was a truly unique car, sacrificing the class-leading interior and luggage space of the Javelin for style and performance.

And like most cult classics, the AMX never achieved record-breaking sales numbers. Over its three years in production, American Motors sold 19,134 AMXs (a whopping majority sold in the 390, manual transmission configuration. By 1970 the AMX was gone from the lineup. The Javelin remained for four more years until succumbing to the changing economic climate of the American car industry.

After 1970, AMC dropped the AMX, but would continue making face-lifted Javelins, like this 1971 example, until 1974.

I believe, like most, that those were the glory days of the American automotive industry: the muscle car period of the mid-90s and early 70s. The Mustang, the AMX, the Camaro; these were cars that came to define the American automotive industry for years to come. What happened to AMC after the muscle car collapsed? It was nothing unlike what happened to the whole of the American automotive industry in wake of the 1970s energy crisis. 

As early as 1970 AMC was producing the Gremlin, a two-door subcompact with a 96 inch wheelbase and a 2.0 liter, Volkswagen-sourced inline four engine as the base option. The Gremlin and it's later iteration, the Pacer nowadays appear near the top of "worst" and "ugliest car(s) of all time" lists. But both cars displayed the same ambition as seen in early AMC, albeit not executed nearly as well. In 1977, as a result of dramatically lower small car sales in the United States, it was reported AMC had lost almost $74 million since the Pacer's introduction two years earlier. By 1978, their share of the US automotive market was less that 2%, so they signed a partnership with Renault. By 1980, AMC was out of cash altogether, and had to turn to Renault for a large loan--by 1983 Renault had 49% stake in the company. 

Despite all of this, American Motors managed to make it into the 80s, but it was clear that things were just about over. AMC created four-wheel-drive versions of their truly hideous Spirit and Concord, calling the line Eagle. The Renault Alliance, a restyled Renault 9, was built at AMCs Kenosha, Wisconsin plant and sold as a two-door coupe, a four-door sedan, a two-door hatchback, and a two-door convertible. AMC had ownership of the Jeep brand, having bought out Kaiser-Jeep in 1970, and this helped keep AMC going in its final days. The Jeep Cherokee and Wagoneer were produced in 1983 for the 1984 model year, both available with an American Motors-developed 4.0 liter inline-six--an engine that would become legendary for its toughness and use in many Chrysler products, including the Jeep Wrangler.

The wildly-popular Jeep Cherokee's design was first penned in 1978. This "XJ" generation was produced from 1984 to 2001, many models using the legendary, AMC-developed 4.0 liter inline-six, which would be used in Chrysler products for years to come.

By 1985, Chrysler was working closely with AMC, drafting agreements to develop chassis in a Chrysler-beneficial partnership. Meanwhile Renault, which had controlling stake in AMC, was having its own troubles, which came to a head in 1986 when a French capitalist leader was assassinated in retaliation for his firing of 25,000 Renault workers. 

Finally in 1987 Chrysler bought out Renault's shares and the remaining shares in AMC. AMC became the Jeep-Eagle brand under Chrysler's umbrella--designs for the Jeep Grand Cherokee being the sole motivation for the buyout. AMC's roller coaster ride was over.