Our latest book for Motorbooks, The Complete Book of AMC Cars, hit the shelves on October 29, 2024. Patrick Foster and I created a definitive history of American Motors, the small automaker that achieved great things. driving.ca gave our book a glowing review while also praising my employer, Hagerty. You can check it out here!
Our updated Dodge and Plymouth book, The Complete Book of Dodge & Plymouth Muscle Cars, hits the market on June 18! You can view Motorbooks’ preview here. We also are working on a marketing blitz including book reviews and radio interviews. Mike Mueller did the heavy lifting when he created this great book, Kelly and I just brought it into the 21st Century. What a wonderful journey this has been!
Today I begin a new journey as Researcher and Catalog Writer for Broad Arrow Group, a subsidiary of Hagerty (NYSE: HGTY). Broad Arrow Group offers live auctions of collector automobiles along with web auctions on Hagerty Marketplace. As an automotive author for over 40 years, with hundreds of published magazine articles and six coffee table books, they reached out and asked me to join their team of experts in this field. It is both a privilege and an honor to be part of Broad Arrow Group and Hagerty.
I’ve been trying to contact Midwestern stock car racing great Tom Reffner to interview for The Complete Book of AMC Cars, and I had a feeling something was wrong. Tom passed away on October 22 at the age of 82. Tom and his childhood friend Dick Trickle shared a shop in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, during the 1970s, and Trickle, the greatest short track stock car racer of them all, won an astounding 67 races in 1972. Back then these racers could compete on the asphalt ovals of the Midwest four or five times a week, but Trickle’s performance that year was thought by many to never be duplicated again. Then in 1975 Tom Reffner won the same number of races, 67, while earning pole position in 81 of 116 races. But Tom (the “Blue Knight”) was racing an AMC Javelin on a Howe second-design chassis powered by a 380 AMC V8! The first time the Javelin turned a wheel he knew he was on to something, telling Stock Car Racing magazine: “ Yea, I came in from hot laps with a big smile on my face. I knew it would be a good season when I first stepped on the gas after warming up the engine.”
Reffner raced the Javelin again in 1976, then had Bill Bembinster’s Bemco Engineering built an AMC Hornet Hatchback for 1977. I took these photos of the Hornet at The Milwaukee Mile and Capital Speedway in 1979, still highly competitive though never approaching 67 victories in a season. Keep in mind the racing in this area was so competitive future NASCAR stars Dave Marcis, Dick Trickle, and Arkansas transplant Mark Martin, and NASCAR champions Alan Kulwicki and Matt Kenseth, would hone their talents there. Tom Reffner last won a stock car race in 1999 at the age of 58! But the cover story in Stock Car Racing magazine in 1978 said it all: “The Blue Knight Rides a Rambler.” RIP Tom!
Back in the 1960s the factories could build just about any combination of components — if you knew someone. The gentleman that ordered this one-of-a-kind 1966 Mercury Parklane Q-Code, powered by the Police Interceptor 428 V8, with a multitude of options including the rare factory Child seat, didn’t have that advantage. So when his order was rejected by Ford, he called headquarters in Dearborn, and eventually spoke to Lee Iacocca himself. Iacocca finally relented and made a phone call, order accepted. This Mercury was recently purchased from that original owner, has just 43,300.9 miles on the odometer, and is completely original, right down to the factory windshield washer fluid. It is now part of The Automobile Gallery museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and will be a future Photo Feature in Collectible Automobile magazine.
The 1974 AMC Matador Coupe looks like it was born for the race track. Instead, this sleek coupe was designed to compete with personal luxury cars like the Pontiac Grand Prix or Chevrolet Monte Carlo, although the slippery shape certainly benefitted Roger Penske’s NASCAR team. Unfortunately the coupe was launched just days before the first Arab Oil Crisis. The victim of bad timing and bad luck, the Matador had excellent first year sales but rapidly declined afterward. This 304 V8-powered Matador Coupe came from Wyoming and had just 9,123.9 miles when photographed!
“Introducing the American Eagle. Totally new, totally exciting and totally right for the 1980s!” Roy Lunn was the Technical Director of Engineering for Jeep after engineering the Ford GT40, GT Mark II and GT Mark IV that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966–69. Working with FF Developments and GKN Ltd. in his native England he created the revolutionary four-wheel-drive AMC Eagle. Based on the AMC Concord sedans and wagons, the 1980 Eagle was first mass-produced 4wd automobile. Later versions could be switched to two-wheel-drive, and were the official vehicle of the National Ski Patrol. They were also used by the California Highway Patrol and rural letter carriers due to their excellent traction. This immaculate 1987 Eagle Limited was one of just 5,203 Eagles built that year, and on March 10, 1987 AMC was sold to Chrysler, who then built the final 2,305 Eagles in ’88, the last AMC vehicles. We just photographed this Eagle for our upcoming book, The Complete Book of AMC Cars.
The sleek fastback shape of the Rambler Marlin was quite striking when introduced in 1965, a year before the 1966–67 Dodge Charger and three years before the 1968–69 Ford Torino fastback. It would have been even more attractive had American Motors’ CEO, Roy Abernethy, not intervened. A tall, large man, Abernathy felt cramped in the rear seat and demanded his designers raise the roof over the rear seat by 6 inches. Stylists sweat fractions of inches to get the right profile, imagine what 6 inches did to Bob Nixon’s design! Still, it’s a great automobile with a beautiful instrument panel and interior. Most Marlins were V8 powered, this one is a rare 232 six-cylinder car. Look for it in The Complete Book of AMC Cars published by Quarto/Motorbooks next year.
The 1964 Rambler American was a critically important product for American Motors. As their low-price leader, it would carry on the Rambler legacy in a throughly modern compact. The 1964 Rambler American 440 Convertible we just photographed for The Complete Book of AMC Cars is proof an inexpensive car can also be very stylish — designer Bob Nixon made sure of that. This the second AMC we’ve have photographed that was purchased by a grandparent and is now in the hands of a 20-something grandson dedicated to its preservation.
Since I was in Grade School I’ve had an interest in Formula 1 racing. Back then I had to read about these events two months after they happened in Road & Track magazine, but those stories transported me to exotic places like Monaco and Monza, and my heros Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, and our all-American driver and team, Dan Gurney. Over the years I lost interest until I could watch the races live on ESPN in the 1990s, following the exploits of the great Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari rebirth. Then it all became boring again, and the once beautiful machines becoming hideous, skate-wheeled monstrosities. That changed last year with the new ground-effects rules, plus the addition of Formula 1 races in Miami and later this year in Las Vegas.
The next issue of ⎘Linkage magazine (#014) features my cover story on the rebirth of Formula 1 in the United States and previews the Las Vegas event this coming November. You can find in newsstands later in September.
