In getting to know the AMC slice of the old car hobby over the last few years, it seems to me that everybody wants a Gremlin. From the people in their 30s and 40s just entering the old car hobby who remember driving a Gremmie as their first car, to the connoisseurs who are finally realizing that something from the 1970s is worth adding to their collections to regular folks looking for a cheap alternative collector car that’s good on gas, the Gremlin’s becoming hot stuff.
But what about parts? Most AMC outsiders tend not to pull the trigger when it comes to buying a Kenosha kart for the simple misbelief that there are no parts available. However, two Gremlin collections that will offer a good source of both projects and parts recently hit the market.
First, the James Hahn Gremlin collection in Texas, though it came to market under unfortunate circumstances when the Houston SWAT team shot Hahn to death last year. Hahn’s friend, Eddie Stakes, a prominent figure in AMC circles, is making sure the two dozen or so Gremlins either go to good homes or provide parts to good homes.
Second, a Michigan collection of about a dozen Gremlins and Spirits (the successor to the Gremlin) that a fella saved from the junkyards over the years has been threatened with an en masse return to the junkyards. Richard Estermeyer, another prominent AMCer, has taken it upon himself to make sure that none of the collection are crushed in vain. Richard indicated to me that he may know of another Gremlin stash – one in Virginia – that will soon become available. So if you’re looking to restore a Gremlin, now’s the time.
Continue reading "And Who Doesn’t Want a Gremlin?" »
I thought I read this ad wrong the first time around--a Chevrolet 427 V-8 stuffed into an S197 Mustang? I know Roush had a 427R Mustang, so maybe the seller confused the two engines somehow.
But no, the pictures that Muscle Carz out of Houston, Texas, placed alongside the ad for this 2006 Mustang indeed show a Chevrolet LS-series engine in the unlikeliest of places. And according to the ad, it’s not your typical 7.0L--instead, it’s a Procharged C5R from the Corvette racing program built with billet connecting rods, a billet crankshaft and forged pistons to develop either 758hp at 6 psi or 1015hp at 18 psi. Oh, and a Corvette six-speed transmission right behind the engine. And 20-inch wheels, natch. All yours for just $70,000. Explanation why apparently not included.
Continue reading "Corvette? Mustang? How About Both at Once?" »
Last year, both Jen and I wrote about artist Jonathan Schipper, a self-proclaimed artist who baffled us by one of his creations, a gear-driven machine that slowly pushed two 1/18th-scale muscle cars together in a twisted slow-motion Ballardian statement of some sort. I earned a degree from college in something I can actually make money at, not in art, so I guess I don’t have the capability or pretentiousness to understand that statement.
What really made me cringe last year was the vague threat that Schipper promised to recreate the creation on a full-size scale with two actual muscle cars. And it appears he did just that recently in Belgium, though he used two cars that fall outside the bounds of the traditional definition of muscle: a 1988 Monte Carlo and a 1992 Camaro RS. Not to say that I don’t appreciate late rear-wheel-drive Montes or third-gen Camaros, but at least he didn’t use a second-gen Trans Am and a Hemi Charger, as he did in his first piece.
Still, I don’t get it. He did all of this so he could take an elaborate time-lapse video and speed it up? And if he’s going to make a statement such as he did in the title of the piece, then he should back it up with, ohidunno, an actual argument. Maybe this is actually some sort of stunt in which he shows how easy it is to get gallery space and, possibly, public art funding.
Most people know only of the AMC-Jeep connection in one way: That the former owned the latter for 17 years. More attentive students of military history could make another connection via AM General, which AMC spun off to handle its military contracts. But Kenosha had another equally as strong, but lesser known connection to the military in the M-422 Mighty Mite.
Similar to the original Jeep, a team of Bantam designers whipped up the idea of a light quarter-ton four-wheel-drive truck, and a pair of automakers competed to build it, but in this case, Willys lost out to American Motors, which built the M-422 from 1960 to 1963 with an aluminum body, four-wheel independent suspension and an air-cooled AMC-built 52hp V-4 engine designed specifically for the Mighty Mite.
American Motors produced just 3,922 Mighty Mites in two or three different configurations, which makes the one we found on the Hemmings Motor News classifieds sorta rare. The fact that it's a short-wheelbase (65-inch) version narrows it down to one of the first 1,045. Just as rare are the included photographs of the air-cooled V-4 in the Mite’s engine bay. Volo Auto Museum in Illinois has the Mighty Mite for sale for $11,998.
By the way, the Mighty Mite is not to be confused with the Mini Moke or the M-151 MUTT, two similar, but completely different, small, independently sprung Jeep-like vehicles with much larger production runs.
John, Jen and Sean are all out of the office today, which makes it kind of lonely here at CarDomain world headquarters. It also means I don't have anyone to delegate the crap work to. Here's the news:
- F1 champ Michael Schumacher crashed his Triumph Daytona 675 motorcycle on the French track of Bresse. Maybe he should stick to four wheels. Jalopnik.
- Looks like the Tiburon is going bye bye. I guess that's not a huge surprise with the hot new Genesis Coupe coming out soon. Autoblog.
- Chrysler will remain unprofitable for 2008, but they're, like, totally cool with that. Motor Authority.
- The Hemmings guys had this amazing slab side Cobra pull into their shop today. I'm jealous. Hemmings Blog.
- Looks like DUB edition Chargers and 300s will be hitting the showrooms this spring in limited quantities. Upgrades include 20 inch wheels and Kicker surround sound stereo. MotiveMag.
While I was in Florida for last weekend’s Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach auction, I decided to check out Russo and Steele’s inaugural Hollywood collector car auction and then head up to Daytona Beach for the spring swap meet. Coincidentally, I found a Chevrolet-based Ferrari knock-off at each event.
First, at Russo and Steele, what the seller was calling the Camarossa, “a one of a kind hand built, steel exotic car” based on a 1986 Camaro. While the auction description went into lengthy detail about how the new body panels were applied, it simply appears the builder stuck most of them on over the top of the stock Camaro sheetmetal. Granted, the builder did indeed go the distance with the interior--including the gated five-speed shifter--and with an alleged 500hp small-block under the hood. But it appears his efforts to sell the car at Russo and Steele went for naught and his reserve sat a little too high.
Next, while cruising the car corral in the infield at Daytona Beach, I came across a fourth-gen Corvette-based “Testarossa.” The seller claimed it came from California, where it was assembled from a kit and a 1985 Corvette donor, which included the Tuned Port Injection small-block V-8, the four-speed automatic transmission and the removeable targa-style top. “Very fast car,” he said, before revealing his $25,000 asking price.
I really hope seeing these two cars in the span of two days was some sort of coincidence rather than an indication of an overall lack of taste and sophistication in that little corner of the country. You can see the rest of the pics after the jump.
Continue reading "The Many Pale Imitations of the Maranello Style" »
I’ve never seen one measly minute of the Sopranos. I also have never seen any of the Godfather movies, and I found Goodfellas only mildly interesting. So I don’t know squat about this Paulie Walnuts or Patsy Parisi. Nor do I care.
But I do know that $18,000 for a 2003 Cadillac CTS with nearly 100,000 miles on the odometer is about twice what any similar car without HBO provenance should go for. Then again, the Barrett-Jackson auction over the weekend where the car sold at no reserve did take place in Palm Beach, Florida, the epicenter of God’s Waiting Room--or, as a friend of mine calls it, America's Wang. Plenty of well-off retirees were on hand all weekend, so maybe one of their like snapped it up.
As for the other six cars that formed the Sopranos collection at Barrett-Jackson, a 1997 Mercury Villager sold for $3,100 (normally $4,000-$5,000); Vito’s 2000 Cadillac DeVille, complete with front-end damage, sold for $7,500 (normally $8,000-$9,000 without the front-end damage); each of Patsy's bullet-hole-ridden 1993 Cadillacs sold for $2,500 (normally $2,000-$3,000 sans ventilation); and each of the 1999 Lincoln Town Car “hit man” cars sold for $2,600 (normally $4,000-$5,000). Thus, save for the Paulie Walnuts Caddy, collector cars these weren’t. Two more pics after the jump.
Continue reading "Sopranos Cars Cross the Block" »
It seems as if the Pontiac G8 sport truck, announced over the weekend and scheduled for its debut at this week’s New York International Auto Show, came straight out of the blue. Sure, we knew Australian buyers could choose a GM-built, Holden-badged ute for decades now, but we had little idea, save for a few hints here and there over the last few months, that GM had thought of bringing a sedan-pickup back to the United States. But it appears somebody in GM yearned for the return of the El Camino SS more than a decade ago. On the same trip to the GM Heritage Center where I spotted the awesomest Aztek I’ve ever seen, I grabbed a couple snaps of this 1994-1996 Impala SS-based El Camino SS. At first glance it appeared to have used a slightly modified body from a Caprice station wagon with a Plexiglas-type rear window.
The concept seems to have debuted in 1995 and, according to what I could glean, could have entered production, but the increasing popularity of GM’s SUVs during the mid-1990s sidelined the El Camino.
It’s only now that gas has become so expensive and SUV and big truck buyers started looking for more wallet-friendly options has the sedan-pickup idea has turned into a reality. Funny how things work out that way.
I don’t think the (somewhat oxymoronic) term "instant collectible" really came into being until the mid-1970s, when, for a number of reasons, people started to buy new cars and stuff them away in climate-controlled garages. The idea is to just sit on the car, not drive it, and, theoretically, watch it appreciate in value. But what fun is that?
The only upside is that if you missed out on your chance to buy such a car when it was new, you’ll likely get the chance down the road to buy a showroom-fresh example. Such is the case with this 2000 Mustang Cobra R, one of just 300 such factory-built race cars that Ford’s SVT built with the 385hp DOHC 5.4-liter, six-speed manual, independent rear suspension and absolutely no extras--no A/C, no stereo, no cruise control, not even a rear seat. Hemmings Muscle Machines has all the details and driving impressions on the Cobra R in its March 2007 issue. This one in particular, No. 37, has had only one owner and shows just 38 miles on the odometer. Judging from the plastic still on the driver's seat, it's probably never turned a wheel in anger. Thus, a perfect starting point for racing; after all, you’re darn sure the previous owner never messed with it, never changed a thing, never did that crappy radio install that you always find in used cars. No price listed, but consider that they sold for just under $55,000 new.
The Hemmings blog recently put together a nice collection of international General Lees. This little smart was my favorite. See the rest over at Hemmings.
By Dan
Hemmings Motor News
Everybody's a documentary producer nowadays. Cheap video cameras have led to innumerable media passes at every automotive event in the country, including Bonneville. Travel to the salt flats in August and you’re sure to run across dozens of camera-wielding "journalists" aiming to create yet another documentary about the pursuit of land-speed records. Only problem is, where's the end result?
Benn Karne, however, is one of the few who actually delivered a DVD from his time spent both on the flats and with a handful of racers in preparation for Speedweek. He originally released Bonneville: Wide Open as a 52-minute documentary in 2004, but recently re-released the DVD with double the footage in bonus features.
It's by no means a Hollywood production; it lacks narration and jumps from topic to topic with little transition. On the other hand, neither is the topic; land-speed racing remains the last ad-hoc, do-it-yourself racing venue where a slick entrant from GM might follow a rough-and-tumble entrant from a guy from Pocatello, Idaho.
Most of the bonus footage, however, really should have been included in the original version of the documentary. Some of the material expands on the stories of the individual racers that Karne profiled, but the real treat is the complete footage of a run--after all, what better use can one think of for a video camera on the salt flats?
