AMC AMX 1st Gen

Dick Teague's team had about five months to turn the Javelin into something else entirely, and the trick was proportion: chop the wheelbase, delete the rear seat and its glass, and the AMX reads as a genuine two-seat sports car rather than a cut-down pony car. The fixed rear quarter windows, unlike the Javelin's true hardtop glass, are what technically make it a coupe, and they give the greenhouse a tighter, more purposeful look. The shape traces to two 1966 Project IV show cars, a fiberglass two-seat AMX and a four-seat AMX II, developed under Charles Mashigan's advanced studio before a steel Vignale-built show car proved the concept could reach production. For 1970 the facelift brought a genuinely new front end: a full-width flush grille, integrated headlamps, and a twin-scoop power blister hood feeding a real ram air system on Go Package cars, plus a factory-optional matte black shadow mask treatment over the hood and fenders. Inside, all three years share a one-piece molded dash, cited in the AMX's back-to-back SAE best-engineered-car awards, and from 1970, wraparound clamshell bucket seats with integrated headrests.

The two-seat AMX never raced Trans-Am; SCCA ruled it ineligible for the series that made its Javelin sibling famous, so its competition record was built at the dragstrip and in SCCA's amateur B-Production class instead. An AMX finished second in the 1969 B-Production national championship, sixty seconds behind the winning Corvette at Daytona, in the same class as the Shelby GT350. On the strip, NHRA slotted the factory Super Stock cars across several classes at various points, and independents including Wally Booth and Herman Lewis, credited with roughly 200 event wins in his own AMX, kept the marque competitive through the Nostalgia Super Stock scene that still races these cars today. Before the car was even on sale, AMC sent two specially prepared AMXs to Goodyear's Texas track with land speed record holder Craig Breedlove, who set 106 records there in January 1968 and later took one to a sanctioned 189mph at Bonneville. A dozen more served as pace and courtesy cars for the 1969 Pikes Peak Hill Climb. None of it is Trans-Am silverware, but it is a genuine and verifiable competition history.

The best-known individual AMX has nothing to do with racing: a Playmate Pink 1968 example built for 1968 Playmate of the Year Angela Dorian and handed over at an AMC dealer meeting held, fittingly, at a Playboy Club, with a dash plaque reading her measurements instead of a production number. It resurfaced decades later on Jay Leno's Garage, still pink. American Motors leaned into showmanship generally: Breedlove's Bonneville runs earned magazine coverage the sales figures never did, and the AMX picked up the SAE's best-engineered-car award in both 1969 and 1970, for its molded dash the first year and its early laceration-resistant windshield glass the second. Away from AMC's own marketing, the car's presence in wider culture is modest and mostly retrospective: collector and hobbyist press, Hemmings named it among the hottest cars of 2007 and later among its Top 100 American collector cars, rather than film or television. That is honestly the more interesting story: a genuinely rare, genuinely capable car that never got the movie cameo or the TV lead role a Mustang or Charger did, and is only now being rediscovered outside a small, devoted AMC following.

The generation splits cleanly by engine and by rarity. The 390 cars, whichever year, carry the real performance and the real values: 315 horsepower through 1969, bumped to 325 for the facelifted 1970 cars that also gained a functional ram air hood and the new ball joint front end. Below that, the 343 is the sweet spot for a lighter, more balanced drive, and the base 290, dropped after 1969 and replaced by a 360 for 1970, is the honest entry point. The genuine grail is the SS/AMX, 52 factory and Hurst prepared drag cars built for 1969 with twin four barrel carburetors and 12.3 to 1 compression, sold with no warranty and no heater for a base price nearly $2,000 over a loaded street car. NHRA rated them at 420 horsepower against AMC's own conservative 340. Fewer than 40 are thought to survive. One step down in rarity and up in story value sits the 1969 California 500 Special, roughly 32 Big Bad Green cars built for Southern California AMC dealers to mark the Riverside 500, and the mid-1969 Big Bad color option (electric blue, orange, or green) on any trim, a good value way into a genuinely eye-catching car without chasing dragstrip history.

What breaks on an AMX is mostly what breaks on any late-1960s unibody: rust in the frame rails, torque boxes, trunk floor, and rear quarters, worse on cars that spent winters on salted roads. The one AMX-specific weak point is the 1968 and 1969 front suspension's trunnion design, a wear item that needs regular lubrication and eventually replacement bushings; AMC recognized the problem and redesigned it with conventional ball joints for the 1970 facelift, so it is a known quantity rather than a mystery. The 290, 343, and 390 V8s are unfussy and long-lived when maintained, sharing internals and machining with other AMC engines of the period, so bottom-end failures are rare and rebuilds are conventional work for any competent shop. Electrics are basic points-and-condenser ignition with nothing to fail beyond the usual old-car list: worn distributor bushings, tired voltage regulators, brittle wiring insulation. Trim and interior pieces are the genuine long-term worry, since AMC's low production volumes next to the Big Three mean reproduction parts arrived later and cover less ground, particularly for dash pads, weatherstripping, and the exact fabrics used inside. None of it should put anyone off driving one hard; it just needs an owner who enjoys sourcing parts.