Stop me if you’ve heard this before: this is the LAST muscle car! Har har har! No, but seriously folks…I really do have to stop. I’ve got over 100 cars now just in this fleet. The bottom line is, I simply don’t have room for anymore. I mean…unless I buy another case… But man, did I ever make room for this one! After some “adjustments” (in other words, a couple of cars migrating out to The Super Stock fleet), I had one space left in my 2nd muscle car case…what was going to fill it?
I had a friend from out of state drop in on me for a spell while he was passing through, and we spent the night talking about the virtues of the 1968-70 AMX. He has owned 3 of them in his day, and is thinking about looking for another one. That caused us to spend a bit of time watching videos of them, and the whole time, I was thinking: what an awesome car! I need another one of these in the muscle fleet!
Sadly, Auto World’s copy of the Aurora original has been made in a lot of colors I don’t like or want; there are 3 shades of blue, 2 of which are a snoar; I didn’t want a white one or a black one, and the pink one-in spite of its cool homage to the Playboy Bunny cars of the past-was hideously ugly, IMHO. I already have the “good” blue and the purple one, and while AW did just reissue it in lime green – another good color – I looked at my case and decided I had enough green… no, I knew which one I wanted; that early issue in the unforgettable color AMC called “Big Bad Orange!”
This is from Auto World Release 2, which dates from around 2004 or so if I have my dates right. That makes it around 20 years old, so almost an “official” antique an no longer easy to come by! I’ve been after this one for a while…in fact, a misfire is hanging on my wall; I actually bought this car a few months ago in mint original packaged condition, and though I fully expected to open it and customize it the moment it arrived, I decided that the nearly 20 year old package was so pristine that I just couldn’t cut it open. I wound up hanging it on my display wall near the track, and then I went and bid on another one! And though this second one was used, it wasn’t cheap…and I had to wait for it to come up for sale again anyway! So yeah, it’s been a few months that I’ve been waiting to fill that last slot in my case! Of course the car’s age also meant it was shipped on its original early AW chassis with no traction magnet, so the chassis went into the reserve stash for The Road Crew, and I had to provide a brand new Ultra G of my own. So altogether, this addition was not a cheap prospect.
The other 2 ’69 AMC AMX’s in the fleet run on Magnum wheels, which is wholly appropriate since that’s what almost all the real cars had, but I wanted a more stripped down “street fighter” look for this one, and I figured the orange body would be nicely complimented by a set of black 5-lug reverse “Factory” wheels via Vincent, wrapped in a rare set of RWL tires from Road Race Replicas. Truth is, I’m out of these, so they were robbed from another car. I hated to do that, but results don’t lie; I think it came out fantastic!
Not that it was a cinch, mind you. The other 2 AMX assemblies were easy builds, but since this is an older one, its clear Auto World learned a few things over the years about finding ways to open up space inside their bodies for those Ultra G chassis, because this was a very tight fit. I got it to work by cutting a metal shim in half and fitting it onto the rear screw post, a very light shave to the rear wheel wells, removing some material from the back of the rear window insert below the view line, and a good amount of patience and adjustment. Worth all the effort; the blue windows in the orange body with the white stripes and black wheels come together to make a bitchin’ looking muscle car! They didn’t call this color “Big Bad Orange” for nothing!
Of course it goes without saying that of the 3 engine options available in the AMX, this one-like the other 2 in the fleet-is the big bad 390, mated to an updated Tremec 5-speed manual, adding a touch of modernity and an extra gear to play with allowing for a super low 3.90:1 limited slip rear axle. That left only The Lore to work out: owing partly to his devout Christian upbringing and partly to the bad-ass-ness of it, Tennessee native Elliot “STANDOFF” Stanton named his car “The Revelator.” That creates an interesting contrast with another veteran driver of a 390-powered AMX, the bright blue one named “Sinner,” raced by Mike “Red Devil” Ryan. One can only wonder what sparks may fly when those two meet on the track: I bet all hell will break loose! With the Muscle Car Monster’s Ball just around the corner, we’re gonna find out!
First of all Pink is not a color, it’s an attitude. and then look at this beauty. Now here’s a muscle car i can get into.