Alizium Auto Blogs: station wagons

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Rambler Love: Hemmings is full of it

This past Sunday, the Wally Parks NHRA Museum at Pomona was host to the 3rd annual Socal AMC gathering, a show so big that we haven’t seen its like since there were still AMC dealerships (speak for yourself – DS). The bulk of the interest was around the AMX and Javelin models, but there were still Ramblers, Gremlins, a Concord, a Pacer, and the most gorgeous restored Hudson pickup we’ve ever seen. As a bonus, if you were part of the show and entered a car there, you got to go poke around the museum for free. Sweet!

1954 Nash-Healey

As regular blog readers recall, after finding the AMX/3 pushmobile, Tom Delaney envisioned creating replicas, and here he displayed his efforts along that path: a fiberglass replica body and a chassis to go underneath the body.

American history read in dealership nameplates

In May, we schlepped ourselves down the 12-hour super slab run to the southern Piedmont and to AutoFair at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. One of the highlights there was the Tom Mack Classics auction, which may have assembled the biggest collection of American Motors products ever sold at a single event, easily about two dozen, most of them with extremely low mileage and complete originality. That prompted me, having once lived around the corner from an AMC retailer (Shore Rambler, Lumberton, New Jersey) to check out the cars and see how many still bore the stickers from long-gone dealerships. Let’s have a look.

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I love the sound of the name. This was on an Oleg Cassini-edition Matador coupe. Chilhowie Motor Corporation remained in existence at least through 1983 at 100 Lee Highway. The closest it gets to that address is Greever’s Drugstore, on the corner of Lee Highway and Whitetop Road.

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An all-original Hornet sedan – did I really say that? – came from this store in copper country. We actually see two listings for AMC dealerships in Anaconda, Montana: Fitzgerald Motors at 204 E. Commercial Avenue, and Tony Quick Jeep at 1400 E. Commercial. The latter now appears to be the site of Anaconda Automotive.

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Cool town. Great seafood, I hear. No more AMC dealers, though. If I remember right, this was about a 1972 Ambassador station wagon. We see no listings for AMC dealers in Mobile, Alabama, which just means Colonial went out of business before 1983.

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Southland, which sold this late-stage Gremlin, resided at 6976 Pearl Road, the current location of Ganley BMW.

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From the hometown of Harry S. Truman, Bill Rodekopf AMC, a dealership whose applique was on the back of a killer Javelin AMX, one of this auction’s most impressive offerings. The only listing we see for Independence, however, is for Galen Boyer Motors at 3107 S. Nolan Road, a location which doesn’t seem to come up in Google Maps.

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Another Southern sweetie, an early Pacer, seemingly untouched by anyone or anything since it first left the Abernathy AMC lot. Well, except for maybe hailstones. Abernathy (suspiciously sharing the family name of an AMC president…) was located at 527 New Franklin Road, which now appears to be the site of Northside Motors, though the Nissan dealership in the Google Maps photos appears to belong to Larry Rich Nissan.

ToyotaFest 2009

I know it seems unlikely to those who grew up in places where cars rust, or if you’re old enough to have looked askance at Japanese cars when they started rolling out on American soil in larger numbers, but there was a ToyotaFest this past Saturday. More than 350 Toyotas of all sorts showed up: Corollas, Starlets, a lone original-owner Tercel, plenty of Celicas, Supras, AE86s, MR2s, two red LHD Toyota 2000GTs, more Cressidas than we’ve ever seen in one place since they were sold new, and more Scion XBs than you would know what to do with. There was even an all-original, unrestored ‘58 Crown.

The nicest thing about events like ToyotaFest is that everyone respects everyone else. The XB folks appreciate the old-school stuff, the street-stock crowd seemed interested in the latest and greatest mods that people were making to their cars, the rear-drive faithful didn’t speak ill of the front-drive brigade, and young and old alike appreciated each other’s efforts. It’s an atmosphere that a lot of other car shows would be wise to emulate.