Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Forty-one years ago today, the last AMC Pacer rolled off the assembly line.

The 4x4 eagle was kinda cool, the gremlins were just pinto clones forced on us by Jimmy Carter.

The Javelins were hot cars, and sorta a cult classic now.

Had a coworker once who had a yellow Gremlin. His coworkers gave him constant [bleep] about his ugly car. After a few years, he showed up with a slightly used...Pacer, also yellow. Guys fell over laughing when they saw it

The Pacer and Matador were a whole 'notha level of ugly.

The Gremlin, on the other hand, had some charm and attitude. My brother and I had an orange and white '72 with the straight 6. It was first used as a backup car while he was getting his '73 Chevelle SS back to original. When he was done I drove it while we converted my '69 Firebird from an OHC 6 to a 350 SB Chevy and full body resto.

By the time I was driving it the reverse gear was shot from doing 60mph reverse drops. Parking had to be planned out carefully. We cut the rear roof and side sections off to turn it into a mini pickup. The exhaust fell off at the manifold and was never replaced. A 2.5 gallon roundup jug was painted to match the car and installed as a hood scoop. A large # 5 was painted on each door.

I drove Unit 5 to school for a few months my senior year with an expired temp tag. Police would pull up beside us and just laugh. They might not of noticed the expired tag due to being distracted by the large Anhydrous Ammonia sticker on the back.

Once our primary rides were back on the road we decided to kill it. We ran laps around the field, jumping hills and repeatedly running into a bulldozer bade. The radiator became completely detached early on in the torture so she was running dry for at least an hour. The only intermission was to refuel. It was still running when we called it quits. It was then lovingly smashed into a pancake with an excavator, loaded into a dump truck and hauled to the scrapyard.

My brothers and friends still fondly bring up the memory of Unit 5 on occasion. Unfortunately, we have no pictures of it.

At one time a dealer, Randall American I believe, was selling Pacers with 401's in them and a factory warranty, Folks who had them were impressed.

If you catch them at the right angle, an earlier Jeep Compass looks like a 4 door Gremlin. I saw one sitting at a local car lot one day, and had to do a double-take.

The Gremlin didn't bother me much, but the Pacer was pretty bad. A buddy had a Javelin, it wasn't much of a head turner, but none of the cars in the early-mid '70s were really spiffy. Most of them were bloated crap with poor quality abounding. On a quiet night, you could hear them rust, too. I don't miss them at all. I had a two year old '73 Plymouth Duster that was practically falling apart when I got it, the doors weren't hung right, and it was generally a POS.

I’ll say a prayer tonight😄. The Pacers were ugly!!

I had a Gremlin X right out of high school. Might have been butt ugly ,but it sure could scoot. Finally rusted to death ,but still ran good. Still have the hankering for a 69 AMX. Love the body style.

AMC = "Ain't My Car".

AMC made one good looking car. The Marlin, 1965-1967. Resembled a Charger built during the same time frame.

On marrying her - or totaling the Gremlin ???

Knew an old drunk goober with two Javelins in his back yard. Me and a bud went over there to see if he would sell them.

He says “if i sell them i wont have any place to keep my alum cans”

my cousin had an AMX

Neighbor had a Javelin - turned it into a dragster, then totaled it, driving to a race (got away from him on a hill)
Back in '92 he told me turning it into a race car was the worst mistake he'd ever made - as back then, an un-molested Javelin would go for WELL over $40K !
Some even pushing $100K !

Loves me some AMC...well AMX's and Javelins anyway. Everything else from AMC...errr, not so much.

Here's some pics of the 68' AMX I drove my Junior and Senior year of highschool. Loved this car. Most of my peers had old camaros, mustangs, trans ams and a few even drove GTO's. Funny, as nobody even knew what an AMX was. It was definitely an anomaly. I was the 3rd owner. Car had 47,000 original miles on it when I bought it in1985. Also had original paint and interior. The motor was completely rebuilt buy the 2nd owner right before I purchased it. He had the heads reworked and also installed a fairly radical cam spec. Car was fast and dayum did it sound good with the big cam. It ran high 12's in the 1/4. Had a blast with the car, but unfortunately my dad made me sell it before heading off to college in the summer of 87'. Good times!!

We had some 1970 or 71 Matadors for MP sedans at Ft. Sam Houston in 1973 and 74. The cars had no power steering and no power brakes with a 304 V8 under the hood. If you stood on that little V8 it would flat haul the mail. They ran pretty good for a small V8. This was back when the gasoline was leaded and was at least 88 octane. Yes they were homely but if a guy had some tune up talent he could of made a real hot rod out of them.

kwg

AMX's are cool as schit.

Didn't Penske Racing run Javelins in the Trans Am?

A friend IN college had a baby blue 69 AMX with White interior.... He got it cheap brand new off the lot, because of the color of it..
Dealer couldn't sell it....

One college break, I rode with him out to Ohio to visit a high school friend.... he proceeded on to Indiana to visit his sister for a week
after she had married some guy out there... Dave was from Schenectady NY, we went to college outside of Boston..

He picked me up in Ashtabula, Ohio on the way home...spent the night at my buddies house and we hit I 90 at about 4 AM..

About 6 AM, we can up on a Shelby KR 500, that Dave passed as he was doing 80... the Shelby picked up to 85. then we did 90...
soon after crossing into PA, we were doing 140 in the AMX... door handle to door handle with the Shelby....

There was a railway bridge over I 90, and as we came up on it, you couldn't see what was on the other side...

As we fired under the bridge, or each side of the road were a bunch of PA State Police Cruisers, in the Median and on the side of the east bound lane...we fly past at 140 mph, as the Troopers were all looking at a map on the hood of one of the cruisers..I saw coffee cups go flying...
shocked the schitt out of the Troopers...

The Shelby honked the horn, and took off like he found another gear....I had Dave take the next exit.... because I saw a housing project
going up near the freeway.....Had him head into that, and here was an empty house, with the garage door not yet installed....

Quick, pull into the garage and get out and head into the house....couple of cruisers went thru the neighborhood, but none stopped in front of the house... we headed east on the back roads for 30 miles... and then did the speed limit until we hit the NY State line... we dodged getting arrested..

we use to pull that in High School in Northern VA, when cops got after us... go zip into a development, and pull in front of a house, or into a garage of a new home, not yet occupied....worked for us plenty of times....

That AMX was FAST, but that KR 500 was a big cut above.... I miss those days.... we cruised at about 90 across the NY State Thruway, until we hit the Mass Pike, and continued at 90 until we hit Rt 28 outside of Boston.. we covered 750 miles in around 8.5 hours....

that was freeway speeds in those days...

Guy over here in Medford has a Javelin he bought new, with the 401 in it...

Cherry shape... and a fast car... 10 mpg at best...

Their styling was ahead of it's time. See a lot of new cars today that remind me of AMC cars.