Renault Alliance: Still On the Scrapheap of History
While the US government was saving Chrysler with the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979, American Motors had to go to the French government for its bailout. The debut of the AMC-Renault...
View ArticleCould This Be The Ideal Colorado Winter Car?
I moved to Denver over the summer and am now experiencing the joys of proper snow driving for the first time in the 29 years since the State of California saw fit to give me my first driver’s license....
View ArticleSo Many Eagles In Colorado, But Not All Can Fend Off The Subaru Hordes
Yes, there’s a place where you’ll see AMC Eagles on a regular basis; there are several parked on the street in my Denver neighborhood, and you see even more when you go into the mountains. Even the...
View ArticleCould There Be Any Vintage Wagon Greater Than This?
Well, yes, there are a few wagons greater than this, but not many. An Intermeccanica Murena 429 GT, maybe, or perhaps a 9-second Buick Sport Wagon. The important thing to understand here is that this...
View ArticleEl Diablo Went Down To Georgia: The 1981 VAM Rally AMX
Sales of the Gremlin-based AMC Spirit in the United States were pretty dismal, but perhaps that was just the result of the suits in Kenosha choosing the wrong ad agency. Let’s head south of the border...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1984 AMC Eagle
How many Eagles did AMC sell? According to the Standard Catalog, 24,535 Eagles rolled out of AMC showrooms in 1984… and I betcha that 20,000 of them were sold in Colorado. You still see plenty of...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: Parade of Doomed Eagles Continues
With the AMC Eagle being such a historically significant car, let’s hope at least a few of them survive the next decade. We saw this brown ’85 Eagle wagon last week, and this black ’84 wagon will join...
View ArticleDown On The Junkyard: Time Stops At Ancient Colorado Yard
Most of my junkyard-prowling experience has taken place at the modern-day self-service yards, where the inventory turns over fast, prices are standardized, and 90% of the cars on the yard tend to be 15...
View ArticleBecause 454 Cubic Inches Just Isn’t Enough: AMC Marlin Racer Gets Twin...
The Speed Holes Racing AMC Marlin took home the Organizer’s Choice award at last year’s Colorado 24 Hours of LeMons race, because A) it has a 454 yanked from a wrecked GMC truck set back about three...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1979 AMC Eagle
Since I’ve only been wandering about in Denver junkyards for a year, I have no way of telling whether the current glut of junked AMC Eagles I’m encountering (e.g., this ’84, this ’84, and this ’82,...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1974 Oleg Cassini Edition AMC Matador
I never thought I’d ever find an Oleg Cassini Edition AMC Matador in the junkyard. Oh, sure, I’ve seen Givenchy Continentals, Mark Cross New Yorkers, a couple of Etienne Aigner VW Golfs, even a Levis...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: Iron Duked 1981 AMC Eagle SX/4
I find a lot of AMC Eagles in Denver, both in and out of the junkyards, but almost all of them are wagons. During a recent junkyard visit, I spotted the first Spirit-based Eagle I’ve seen in a long...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1965 Rambler Classic 770 Convertible
Many of the older cars you find in the junkyard clearly spent a decade or three moldering in a side yard or driveway before taking that final ride behind the tow truck. The project that never gets...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1982 AM General DJ-5 Mail Jeep
AMC got a (brief) new lease on life in the early 1980s when the French government, via Renault, invested in the staggering Wisconsin car company. Meanwhile, huge purchases of DJ-5s by the US Postal...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1991 Eagle Premier LX
While it’s cool and all to find genuine, everyone-agrees-it’s-a-classic cars in the junkyard, what I really like to find is the cars that serve as evolutionary dead-ends or corporate-merger footnotes....
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle
Ah, the Malaise Era. By the late 1970s, AMC was on the ropes. The Jeep Cherokee still sold well, however, and the brains in Kenosha decided they’d go for the Acapulco Gold-smoking generation and throw...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1985 Renault Alliance
By 1985, it was clear to everyone that the Renault Alliance, product of the strange AMC/Renault mashup that failed to save the “not too big to fail” Wisconsin automaker, wasn’t quite as good as the ’83...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1972 AM General DJ-5B “Mail Jeep”
US Postal Service-surplus right-hand-drive DJ-5s were once cheap and plentiful. Actually, they’re still cheap and plentiful. Some got converted to four-wheel-drive, some got used as farm vehicles, some...
View ArticleJunkyard Find: 1980 AMC Eagle Coupe
The AMC Eagle must have sold better in Colorado than in any other part of the world, because I see so many of the things in Denver junkyards that I don’t even bother photographing most of them. This...
View ArticleLook What I Found: No, That’s Not A Jeep Cherokee. Wrong Tribe.
One of the cool things about car shows in the Detroit area is that you will most likely start seeing interesting cars before you actually enter the show. I like to call them “parking lot prizes”, but...
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