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AMX-Clamation!!!VolumeVolume 17 Number 4 July-Aug. 2008

American Motors Ramblings We Did It! Dale Veverka June 8th, 2008 has come and passed. The “School’s Out” car show now needs to be critiqued. Tempera- tures were in the high 80s when over twenty cars graced the show field including a dozen member cars. Cars included AMXs, Javelins, Gremlins, Rogues, Pacer, Rebel, Hornet and . One car arrived from Dayton, others from Grandville, Norwalk and a forth from Pittsburgh. Club members traveled from Sheffield Village, Medina, Middleburg Heights, Parma, Ashtabula, Wickliffe, Akron, Bath, Brooklyn Heights and Brunswick. Members with no healthy AMC available showed up in whatever they could find. New members were added to the club. Everyone interested left with a door prize. Food offerings included burgers, hot dogs, potato chips, pizza, popsicles, pop, donuts, pasta salad, and more. We were so busy that the 50/50 raffle never got off the ground. Gary and Debbie Steely spent the night at the farmhouse to help with the final preparations in the early morning. Javlynn Sue and Amber Veverka had cameras full of pictures. Amber quickly assembled a slideshow on her computer that included individual car pictures along with Forrest Barber’s aerial photographs that were taken as he battled wind gusts over the show field. Lessons were learned and additional feedback is needed. Many of the people on hand suggested that a date further from high school graduation time might be better. People seemed to indicate that the show was a success, but… we discovered that the entry fee was actually too low to adequately fund the show. Folks that arrived with- out their AMC rides bought dash plaques. Some plaques remain and may be purchased from the president for a mini- mum $3 donation to the club treasury. Here’s hoping that we have another great showing of AMC cars at the Independence Home Days Car show where the theme is “All American”. We had over a dozen AMCs last year.

Contact Information... President: Dale Veverka 6934 Brookside Rd., Independence, OH 44131, Phone: 216-524-5977, E-mail: [email protected] Past President/Club Historian: Scott Campbell 5340 Columbia Rd., Medina, OH 44256, Phone: 330-725-3824, E-mail: [email protected] VP/Membership roster: Shaune Zavertnik 1254 Catherine Dr., Brunswick, OH 44212, Phone: 330-220-7264, E-mail: [email protected] Treasurer: Debbie Steely 701 E. Schaaf Rd., Brooklyn Hts., OH 44131 Newsletter Editor: Javlynn Sue Leair 4904 Edsal Dr., Lyndhurst, OH 44124, Phone: 216-381-7859, E-mail: [email protected] Web Master/Events Coordinator: Ken Walker 8800 Tiffany Dr., N. Royalton, OH 44133, Phone: 216-392-5699, E-mail: [email protected] Deadlines... Sept./Oct. newsletter – Sept. 1 Sept. 1 for articles/Aug. 21 for classifieds Nov./Dec. newsletter – Nov. 1 Nov. 1 for articles/Oct. 21 for classifieds Events…… Ken Walker

Weather permitting, every Thursday evening 6 to 9 is Grace Church cruise in night. Grace Church is located at 7393 Pearl Road, Middleburg Heights, south of Bagley road and north of Webster road on the East side of Pearl. Good food at good prices and good company.

Out east be sure to check out cruise nights like Annabelle’s Diner Friday and Saturday nights. Annabelle’s is located at 8637 Twinbrook Road in Mentor. Also Saturday nights check out the Super K Cruise in at the plaza located at 9200 Mentor Avenue in Mentor.

August 16th from 1pm to 5pm is the Chalet Debonne Vineyards Classic Car Show in Madison. Registration is only $3. Food, cheese, and wine are available at The Grill all day long. A little more up scale than your normal run of the mill car show. It was fun to watch the reactions as people passed by the AMC group last year.

August 17 - 21st Annual Motor City All AMC Family Meet at Greenmead Historical Park. SS AMX #50! Shaune Zavertnik

At the Holley Hot Rod Reunion during Fathers Day weekend there were several vintage drag cars, one of which was an original owner SS AMX. This is known as car “#50” of the 53 on the registry owned and raced by Bill Ridekoph for the greater Kansas City Dealer Association. Hurst assigned this as car #47. He gave Don and me the honor of starting it for us. Hopefully someday I can figure out how to put this video on our web site. It has a stock oil pan with no cross member cut out when delivered. First pass ever was 11.00 @128 mph, and has run a best of 10.50. This car was ordered in a r/w/b paint scheme for a suggested retail price of $5994.00 (with no warranty of course) and had a shipping weight of 3,050 pounds including the jack and spare tire.

Events cond……

August 27 - Woodside Village Car Show – Bedford, Ohio - 6pm to 8pm is a car show at Woodside Village Indepen- dent and Assisted Living. There will be awards and enter- tainment provided. 19455 Rockside Road in Bedford. The Chilson Event in Lawrenceville Pennsylvania is an all makes car cruise in on Friday the 29th and an AMC only car show on Saturday the 30th. The cruise in will take place at the Chilson-Wilcox , , and Dodge dealership in Painted Post, New York. The AMC show takes place at the old Chilson AMC dealership in Law- renceville. The Chilson AMC dealership is a mini museum frozen in time and the Chilsons pull out all stops to see you are well fed. I hear the buffet can sit 90 people at a time. This event is nearly legendary. Some very prime AMC iron has been known to appear there. Can you say Wally Booth cars and S/C Ramblers? There are a number hotels in the Paint Post and Corning area that are close to the event. As Gordy Chilson told me, “It starts when you get there and ends when you leave.”

September 13 - American Parts Depot, APD, 7th Annual Car Show & Open House! Lots of fun, food, music, and gifts, plus our annual townwide yard sale! Questions? Call APD (937) 678-7249.

Porter’s “Crap” is Our Treasure Amber Veverka

While browsing for books at the library, a certain title caught my attention: Crap Cars. “Come take a ride in fifty of the most craptastic cars ever to hit the American highway” the inside flap said. Richard Porter, the 33 year old author and screenwriter for BBC’s Top Gear, and also co-author of “Top Gear”: My Dad Had One of Those, takes some humorous stabs at cars like the Suzuki Samurai, the B210, and the Dodge Dakota . Since the cars inside were produced from the 60s to the 90s, I scanned the index for AMCs and was surprised to find that the author had almost as many AMCs on the list as Chevys! Among the crap list, I found the Pacer, the AMC/ Alliance, and one of my personal favorites, the Gremlin. The first Pacer I remember seeing up close was Scott Campbell’s. I recall liking it right away, but apparently Mr. Porter has different taste. He jokes that if the Pacer was a cartoon, “it’d be teenage mutant mangy turtle” and ranked it #3 on the list just behind the Yugo GV at #2 and the II at #1. Mr. Porter isn’t as hard on the Pacer as he is on the offspring of AMC and Renault. Even though the AMC/ took home the award for Motor Trend’s Car of the Year in 1983, Mr. Porter thinks very lowly of it (ranking it #36) and American Motors as a whole. Not only does he say that no one liked the Alliance, he implies that AMC produces the most unattractive group of cars out there. As a proud owner of an AMX, this was a poke in the eye. However, I tried not to take it too personally as I moved on to the Gremlin, my first love. Porter thinks that the excuse for such a car was that in order for the designer to make a deadline for the subcompact and to get home to his wife on time, he just hacked the back end off of it. Ranking it at #15, Porter says, “Sometimes a car can look like its name. And a gremlin is a small ugly monster that causes trouble.” As much as I didn’t like the author making fun of the cars I like or have even driven, I did enjoy reading about where we agreed on the others that made this self-proclaimed crap-car expert’s list. But you can be sure if he made fun of an AMX, I would have used his book as fuel for my dad’s garage stove.

No matter what you think about pink cars, they’re really chick magnets. The One I Just Let Get Away Gary Steely

Here we go again, Gary makes a wrong turn and guess what happens.

On our way home from Kingston, Ontario, Saturday, July 5th, Gus and I were heading into Toronto, just before sunset. The map I had taken off the internet only showed two highways entering the city from the east and we needed to exit the QEW at Route 10 in Mississuga and head north to our hotel. The sun glare was pretty bad and I had let Gus do the driving for a while, needless to say, there were four highways entering Toronto and all had those damn express lanes. We got off at the exit for Route 10 (Hurontario Street) and headed north. When we crossed into Brampton, Ontario, it was clear we had done something wrong. Up ahead on the right was a small shopping center, so we pulled in and Gus noticed two men at a table by a coffee shop, took the map we had and went to ask for help. While he was gone, I decided to drive the last leg for the day and moved over to the driver’s seat. Next thing I knew one of the men approached me and told me I needed his phone num- ber. Reluctantly, I gave him a piece of paper and a pen so he could furnish it for me. Finally I asked him why I needed his number and the response freaked me out, “there’s a Pacer for sale just down the street, you ought to check it out” he said. I thanked him and said I would try and check it out. Gus returned, said he now knew how to get to the hotel and then told me the same story about the Pacer. Down a side street we went. We turned right at the stop sign and then left at the next intersection (all this with Deb’s Pacer on the car dolly behind the Jeep). We then start looking in driveways on the right. Unbelievable, there it was, a blue ’78 Pacer , with factory AMC mag wheels, fresh ‘Earl Sheib’ looking paint job and a FOR SALE sign on the windshield. On went the four way flashers and out we jumped right there in the middle of this little street. After we looked the car over and knocked on the door of the home, a woman responded, came out and talked to us about the car. Gus asked if we could hear it run, so she got the keys and opened the hood. I reattached the battery cable and she ‘fired-it-up’. That’s when I noticed it was a factory V-8, four-speed. I had seen the dual exhaust as we walked around it earlier, but didn’t think anything of it at the time. I think this is a pretty rare car so I did take down as much info as I could. By the way, the V-8 sounds smooth and ‘tick’ free, odometer shows 83,000+ miles (US miles, not Kilometers), owners name is Marc, can be reached after 6:00pm @ 1-905-478-4991 and the asking price was $ 5000.00 OBO. If anyone is interested, I now have a map to the exact location of this vehicle. I’m going to have to pass on this one, but I’d hate to see this one get away. Gary Steely AMO #8499 A Little History Lesson Gary Steely

Last news letter, I shared a little historical note about the Nash-Healey. In the article I made reference to the chance encounter of George Mason and Donald Healey in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and presumed ev- eryone knew what I was referring to. I apologize for making that assumption.

Let me share what I have learned about a most amazing individual. He was the mastermind of the plan to bring American Motors Corporation into existence. Lets back up to about 1936; Charles W. Nash (the founder of ) wanted to retire and at the recommendation of Walter Chrysler he approached George W. Mason with a proposition: lead my company. George Mason already was the chairman and CEO of the Cor- poration beginning in 1928 and his counter offer to Charles Nash was, let’s merge our companies and then I will run both. The union of Nash Motors and the Kelvinator Corporation in 1937 was the largest merger of two unre- lated companies in America at that time. Following WWII it became apparent to George Mason that the survival of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation’s Nash Motors division would require a merger with the other independent auto makers to remain competitive with GM and Ford. He approached Studebaker, and Hudson with his plan, only the agreed to join forces. On Jan. 14th, 1954 the papers were signed, and by May 24th, 1954 all Nash and Hudson cars carried name plates stating “division of American Motors Corporation”. Things were looking bright for the new company and it’s chairman/CEO George Mason. Little did he know that his time was up. On Oct. 9th, 1954 he passed away from acute pancreaitis and pneumonia at the age of 63. According to his obituary in Time Magazine, had Studebaker-Packard joined AMC, it would have resulted in the 2nd largest auto maker in the world behind . What is not widely known is George Mason was a conservationist also. In his will he left a gift of 1500 acres of land with 14 miles of shoreline along the Sable River to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources with the contingent that the area be used as a permanent game preserve, that no part shall ever be sold by the state and that no camping be allowed in the area for 25 years. The state of Michigan has continued the no camping restriction to this day and the only addition has been a simple log cabin chapel constructed by the Mason family in 1960. I share this tidbit in response to an article in the AMO newsletter about the Nash lodge re-dedication on page 5. I’m just wondering if some kind of event might be possible at this location in the future. In closing, we all have a bit of George Mason in each of us, every time we turn the ignition keys of our Ramblers, Nashes and AMCs.

Thank you George W……..(Mason that is) for your vision.

Some of the AMCs at the Independence Day Car Show on August 2nd. About fifty cars showed, and out of that number, twenty were AMCs. Good Time to Own a Machine Shaune Zavertnik

Okay, S/CRamblers have been fetching mid to high $40,000 lately, and down at the Daytona AMC show I saw a drop dead stunning Machine that the owner had purchased off Ebay BEFORE it ended for over $39,000 up in Vermont and shipped it to Florida where he lives. I used to make fun of the “clown cars” or “Captain America” rides but now they have come into their own. As I was eyeing up the Machine, the new owner had stated that it had new interior seat covers from Legendary Auto Interiors, as the ‘70 Machine buckets are unique to their AMX and Javelin counterparts. Available in four colors, interestingly the brown (or tan as I think it is) is from N.O.S. material. Classified Corner

For Sale: I own a 1966 American that has been sitting on my friend’s property for a number of years. It is in bad shape, and it has not run for at least 5 years. I need to get rid of it, and fast. Do you know anyone who might like to have it, perhaps for parts? It is a 3-speed stick, 199 , very rusty. Don’t know where the title is. I live near Wheeling, W. Va. Fred Ottoson 4300 Highland Ave. Shadyside, Ohio 43947 740-676-6253

I will be selling my 73 401 Ambassador wagon, plans have changed. Yes it’s a Z-code 401 car and original with heavy duty 727. It has 62,xxx original miles and runs out great. Price is $3K OBO. If not close, I will be pulling the motor and trans for a different project, and putting the car back in the bushes. Rather than have to type a book, please just call me if seriously interested. It has inner rocker rust and also a little rear quarter rust but this car has a ton of potential. Todd Jesme NW Minnesota [email protected] (218) 686-4257 cell

My name is Tom. What I have are two sets of hubcaps. One set from a 1974 AMC Sportabout (full 14”). One set from a 1965 (small 14”). Also owners manual 1965 Rambler American. Believe the caps to be worth $40.00 each set.Throw in the owners manual. Let me know if you are interested, I live in Brook Park. Respond to: [email protected]

To everybody; Info on these may not be current or may be sold. But who knows? You just may find the love of your life here. 1969 Javelin SST 343 4 sp Project car. 440-840-4282 no price #’s matching. 1974 Javelin Restored 3 yrs ago,green-gold stripe,new tires,bumpers,exhaust,extra parts,$6500;Manitou Beach Mi 517-467-6547

Listed in local news- 1967 Marlin 232=6 auto 35,000 miles white-blue,blue int $6500 OBO 419-420-9541 Seen at Brunswick on August 2 1959 Rambler, 29,000 miles, Phone: 440-476-1551

1969 Ambassador SST - Brown with white top, 4 door, 343 V-8 Auto. Trans., 16,059 original miles. Ask for Paul at 358-1439. $2,3000

1967 770 Classic Convertible. V-8, PS, PB auto, white, black top. About a #3 car. Located in Toledo. Owner wants $11,000 Hagerty insured it for that much. New water pump being in- stalled. You can contact Dave Macy at [email protected] for more information.

Wanted: Jack Harvey is looking for an AMX 68-70 with air conditioning. phone 330-372-3313

Attention! Tranny Kings is now know as Transcolonial Auto Service and are now located at 8228 E. Washington, Chagrin, OH 44022. Their new phone number is 440-543-3355. 6934 Brookside Rd. Independence, OH 44131