Yup, I bet all 3 of them will need therapy.






I keed I keed.    

My cousin (HUGE FORD guy) built a maximum effort jeep to play with on the trails/rocks.

It came with a 304 in it and him bein him, that wasn't enough.

So he built a 401 short block for it and bought a new set of Edelbrock heads. He's thinkin about 2 Ford throttle bodies to feed it. It ought to be pretty keen when he ever finishes it.

Then the drag racin bug hit him HARD again so the Jeep sits unfinished while a 572 BBF is being built up to go in a chassis he already has.

He just received the rotating assembly this week from Kaase after waiting on stuff for about 6 months. Still no Eliminator blocks yet though.

I wish it would come on. It's been a while since I built a good one and I'm ready.  

OP What AMC model is that?  

Just watched the other day videos on jay leno channel about gremlins and another episode which some guy put a ls4 in a pacer wagon , nice install too.

This is one of my neighbors.
The car has been sitting under a tarp since the 80's.
This is what it looked like the last time the tarp blew off.
Not sure how much worse it is now;

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That Olds has an amazing amount of Rust. Rates as a fail for preservation purposes though it could be rebuilt.

Cars need to be kept under a shelter  at least. Car covers and tarps just don't work long term.

I saw one of those on the road in WV three years ago. It was in much better condition.

Rebel Machine
I wonder if the 390 is still in it.

AMC Rebel "machine" .....based on the Matador

Looked like a Matador sized body.  Friend of mines dad growing up was a cpa/accountant. One of his clients owned the AMC dealership and he bought the family car from them. Had a matador at one time. He was frugal, who'd a thought.

There was a Nova SS not far from my house that sat rotting away for years.
Someone stopped and asked if it was for sale, and they said:  "I'm going to restore it".
What a load of bull crap.  It was junked six months after that.  

I hate old cars that sit and the owner is always going to ''restore it'' when they are full of shit.

I knew where a Toyota land cruiser fj45 [pickup] was sitting in a old barn. LHD, those are pretty damn rare in the US. Body had surface rust but was pretty good otherwise. Engine needed work but was still the original one. Stopped, finally caught the guy, nope, going to fix it up, sat for 6-7 more year untouched until one day I drove past and the barn had collapsed on it partially crushing it. Dumb ol' SOB could have made decent money off it. Barn had a basement, it ended up down there, guy i ran across a few year later bought it but the crane operator was an ass and destroyed it further by lifting it out of the basement improperly and it still sits in that guys garage trashed and partially pulled apart. It'll never get any further then that as that guy was in his 60's with heart issues when I saw it. [one of my customers]

When I was 16 I was driving a Ford LTD, some guy cut me off on the Berlin Turnpike by the drive-in, and when we got to the red light we were both first in line.  The light turned green and we both put the skinny pedal to the floor and took off southbound.  

As we were approaching 90mph I spotted a speed radar trap- cop hiding in a parking lot on the right side.  I didn't bother braking- if he had me he had me, and I figured there was no way he was going to start his car and get on the turnpike before I was far enough away to duck down a side road.  

I didn't know about the chase-car....  

It was an American Motors AMX and it was inches off my rear bumper within seconds....  

I had to go to court.  I had to go to court in a suit.  

Not for sale, I'mma fix it up one day!

Not that I have a lot of room to talk, I have a bronco waiting in my driveway

I still do an autotempest search for an AMX every once in awhile hoping to find a reasonable priced driver.

@DamascusKnifemaker

Jay

Worst of the horders

I drive much around Oregon/Washington and see yards full of cars just wasting away... can't help but think the person is inside, smoking cigarettes and in underwear is saying "Those are collectors out there... I'm going to fix em' up soon"... yet

Guy on my road has a 72 Bronco 302 that has been sitting in his yard the 30 years I have lived here. Tried to buy it a lot time ago.

A guy a few miles away has a 60s Jeep Wagoneer that has been sitting in his yard the 35 years I have lived in this state.

I drive by a place with a 57 Chevy rotting in driveway at least 22 years that I know of, probably a lot longer.

But they plan to fix it up one day!

It's sad to see such iconic cars rot into nothing

Nevada cars have a rust free life most of the time.

@fxntime


https://www.duncanimports.com/vehicles/702/1981-toyota-land-cruiser-fj45

MMMMMMM, That was the color of my first one, a 1972 with the factory PTO winch.

The Rebel Machine is one of my all time favorite cars. They are just so damn cool, in a dorky kind of way. Plus they made so few of them.

I think the bashing of the folks who have these cars "just rotting away" need to realize that those cars represent someones Dreams and Hopes. Will most be restored? Probably not, but at the end of the day its a piece of metal that brings happiness to someone, even if it is just sitting in a field.

Think of all the cars that Garage Squad has got running in the Illi-noise area that would have otherwise been left sitting to rot.
$10 says that a good amount of those cars will be back in the garage again when something fucks up that the owner can't fix.

Oops

Knock on wood... I’ve never been caught


Edit:  full disclosure... I don’t do (most of) the stupid shit I did in my teens/twenties anymore.  So there is that

Found a 66 mustang in a guy's field. Hood was off and engine out. A tree about 12" in diameter was growing between the front fenders.

I stopped and asked the guy if he would sell the doors.
"Naw, I'm going to restore it".

It's toast now.

Sometimes you gotta show them the money.

When I went to flight school at Altus AFB OK I got there with no car- not enough time to drive from Travis.  I had developed some techniques for spotting undriven cars so I drove the neighborhoods looking for a beater to use during the short period I was going to be there.  Spotted a 70ish Ford Galaxy on some guy's front lawn and knocked on his door.  

Me: "You want to sell that car?"  
Him: "No, I think..."
I pull a $100 bill out of my shirt pocket, "I'll give you $100 for it.
Him: "Let me go get the keys."

Drove that car the whole time I was there, and have the most "adventure" stories from that short time span than from any other car I've owned.  Battery exploding in my face, several police encounters, buddy asking, "I wonder what would happen if...".

Sold it to someone starting class about the time I was leaving for $600 so it all worked out.  

Rebel?

its dusty in here...
now u went and did it

Agree.  That and the AS/Rambler.  That was a Rambler American, basically a 6 cylinder econobox with trunnion front suspension that was given a 390 V8 with a t-10 4 speed or an automatic, and one of two red-white-blue paint jobs.  They had hood scoops that did more or less something, probably less.  American Motors made a few thousand in 1968-69, just before the American was replaced by the Hornet.  The SC/Ramblers and their larger brethren the Machines had dreadful brakes.  So I think most of them were wrapped around trees and poles by people with testosterone poisoning.  

Back when I really wanted a SC/Rambler, Pacific Telephone was auctioning off their fleet of olive drab Rambler Americans with 196 or 232 cubic inch 6 cylinder engines.  What I wanted to do, but couldn't for lack of funds, was buy a SC/Rambler and replace the hood with a normal one that had no hood scoop.  Then paint it Pacific Telephone's olive drab and have fun on East 14th Street.  It's probably best that I didn't have the money, because I can look back on it now.  

The Rebels came first.  Then the Matadors.  They were the same car, from circa 1967 through 1976.  (All the AMC passenger car fleet changed to ball joint front suspensions in 1970, and that made a difference in handling.)  AMC/Nash also sold a model called the Rebel in the late 1950s.  Those are uber rare now.

My family's history with the brand began in 1936 and ended when I traded my full size Wagoneer in on a Dodge truck in the late 1990s.  Actually, it ended a couple of years later when my mother stopped driving by turning her showroom condition mid-1970s Hornet in front of a minivan.  I used many of the parts from that car on a Concord I rebuilt for my daughter.  The seats ended up in a Hornet that's now in New Zealand.  

I still have the factory shop manuals for all the AMC cars we owned, from 1971 on.

I grew up in Hornets.  My parents had a couple of Hornet sedans and a wagon.

I saw this beautiful triple black example at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in 2019.

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I took pics of this 71 Challenger not long ago. 318/auto car. No fender tag so the best I could figure out is they sprung for the extra cost high impact FY1 Top Banana paint. As well as the H5XX black and white houndstooth interior and A/C. The car is very rough.
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That car (left shitty looking)would be so fun with a Hellcat, or even a Turbo LS swap.  Maybe even have an line to drip oil into the exhaust to complete the POS illusion.

The oil part.

Always thought AMCs were cool

This is my dads