Have you ever tried to sneak a wet, dripping ham onto an airplane by zip-tying it to a roller skate and then dragging it on a leash and claiming it’s your emotional support pig, assuming that because it’s made of the same stuff as a real pig, nobody would notice? And then the security guard starts asking too many questions so you grab the ham and make a run for it, but they tackle you and you smack your head, hard, into the unforgiving linoleum of the floor, and then while you’re sitting there sobbing, the guard tells you that there’s not even a rule against carrying a ham onto an airplane and you’ve wasted everyone’s time? I guess we all have, at least in God’s eyes. That sense of regret and despair that you’ve felt at that moment, cradling a bruised ham in your arms, as you slowly rock on the floor, that’s not the sensation you’ll get from this 1970 AMC brochure, which is full of delightful weirdness. So let’s have a peek!
First, there’s that delightful composite image of the AMC lineup from 1970 up top there. It’s worth noting that of all the cars (or vertical sections of cars) seen there, the only one that would survive the decade would be the humble Hornet, which would kind of become the donor car for much of AMC’s lineup to come, getting its ass chopped off to become the Gremlin, getting tarted up with stripes and window louvers to take over the muscle car role from the AMX as the Hornet AMX , and eventually getting spun off, in 4×4 guise, into the whole Eagle lineup.
But 1970 was its introduction, and this brochure does a lovely and quirky job showing it off. Like how the engine options are shown:
Look at that! Have you ever seen another car brochure showing engine options painted in candy colors like this? Some citrusy sixes and a big, Pepto-pink V8! I love it! I want to put these on plinths and display them in a gallery. Also, the decision to leave the starter motors black on the sixes was somehow just right.
I also love this image of these exuberant plaid seats, done up in two shades of apple-colors. I also really like how the copy says the Hornet “offers more unbridled luxury per square inch than any other car of its type.” That “of its type” is doing so much heavy lifting that it’s got to be positively ripped, because I’ve been in a Hornet, and unless you think Versailles was covered in vinyl and rubber, you’re not going to think the words “unbridled luxury.” That shit is well bridled.
Also, the line about “scientifically designed contour seat backs” is hilarious. What science was used here? A scientific study that says the upper half of a human is best kept kinda vertical when sitting? Because that’s about all these seat backs do.
I also like these “four little rich touches” that include a glove box door, air vents at “dash level,” door handles that “are not just stuck on” and a foot operated parking brake, because it seems hand levers are “awkward,” somehow. I’d love to see the kinds of shenanigans that people get into trying to operate an awkward hand parking brake lever. Do they get themselves pinned under it?
Anyway, yeah, you can just carry your ham onto an airplane.
It would behoove me to find a more ham-handed metaphor. It’s probably better porcine than heard.
Oh, by the way, I love those pigments on those engines.
This article was definitely not boaring.
I wonder if DT wants to take back his comments on the 304/360 after seeing how cute it looks in Pepto-pink.
This brochure doesn’t seem to imply that competing models lack gloveboxes altogether, but that they aren’t properly *closed*. I can’t adequately express how off-putting it is to be browsing cars at the dealership and seeing all the gloveboxes constantly dangling open like your estranged uncle’s jaw at a stripper convention.
By the way, I’d love to see the Autopian’s daydreaming designer conjure up a scenario where AMC survived and was still producing the Javelin for 2023. Can I get some ayes from everybody?
“…constantly dangling open…”
Oh no, no, we aren’t talking about a Volvo 240 situation here, where the latch may as well not exist after a while and the door becomes a permanent passenger tray table. Glove compartments, especially with doors, simply weren’t standard fare on all compacts at the time – the Maverick, for example, didn’t get one until ’73.
Please feel free to store your gloves in this gaping dash hole!
Aye!!! I would LOVE to see a 2023 AMC Eagle! (Or Javelin or any AMC) It would be awesome if it looked like original & not like any new car
Please do not, and I insist, DO NOT follow the misguided advice that Mr. Torch offers here. DO NOT board a flight with ham or any other pork meats and pork byproducts if you are departing from Spain towards the US. There is indeed a ban and you will be subject to heavy fines and to seeing your very expensive iberico unceremoniously dumped into the trash.
Important information we all can use.
I’ve carried Spanish ham onto US-bound flights. But mysteriously my bocadillos disappeared over the Atlantic.
I always loved the tactile feel of the fly away emergency brake lever in my Triumph TR3B.
I miss floor mounted high beam switches.
Amen! Gave the left leg something to do besides operating an increasingly rare clutch pedal.
My 67 Volvo has the floor mounted dimner but no glove box, just a shelf under the dash on the right side. Which was missing when I bought the car.
Argh! *Dimmer*
Oh, and a handbrake lever on the -left- side of the driver’s seat because a front bench seat was an option (but I think only in Europe).
“I think, therefore I ham”
—J. Torchinski
Pedal-activated parking break — cue memory . . .
Helping a friend with a jump-start, my Dodge Dakota 5-speed is idling in neutral on their inclined driveway. I nonchalantly reach into the open driver-side window and yank the hood release.
But it was the brake’s release I’d grabbed, not the hood’s.
The truck starts rolling backward, swinging to the driver’s side. A quick thinker (I liked to think), I dive into the window, reaching down for the brake pedal. Turns out, it’s not so easy to push a brake pedal by hand.
The truck continues out onto the residential street with my butt & legs hanging out the side. There happened to be no traffic, and it would have made a great “Funniest Home Video” — but if the thing had turned more sharply, it could easily have scraped me in half against a nearby tree.
Dumb.
I would argue that a parking brake with a foot pedal instead of a hand lever is way more awkward, for hooning.