1968 AMC AMX: The Two-Seater That Broke Records Before It Reached a Showroom

The first AMXs anybody saw at speed were not for sale. In early 1968, on a test track in Texas, land-speed record holder Craig Breedlove drove specially prepared AMXs to 106 speed and endurance records. Old Cars Weekly and Ate Up With Motor both place the runs in February; other accounts say January. The cars were not showroom stock. Later accounts say AMC performance manager Carl Chakmakian brought Breedlove in, and that the engines were bored out, the 290 to 304 cubic inches and the 390 to 397. The records proved what American Motors could do with the shape. They said nothing about what a customer's AMX would do on the way home from the dealer.^1,2,3

American Motors needed that kind of noise. Robert B. Evans, who became the company's largest shareholder and then its chairman in 1966, agreed with the press of the day that AMC's main failing was what Ate Up With Motor calls its “staid, fusty image.” The two-seat Marlin fastback had not fixed it: its sales fell from 10,327 in 1965 to 4,547 in 1966 and 2,545 in 1967. The AMX idea came out of that same search for a younger audience. In October 1965 Chuck Mashigan's advanced styling studio drew a sporty two-seat fastback on the Rambler American platform, and styling chief Dick Teague dubbed it AMX, for American Motors Experimental.²

AMC took the idea on the road before it had a car to sell. The Project IV show toured 10 North American cities in 1966, and according to Ate Up With Motor, Teague commissioned the Italian coachbuilder Vignale to build a running prototype that replaced the fiberglass model in later showings. The production AMX took a different route to the street. It was the new Javelin with 12 inches cut out of its wheelbase and the rear seat removed. That left a 97-inch wheelbase, and Old Cars Weekly calls the car the first steel-bodied, two-seat American production model since the 1957 Ford Thunderbird. AMC showed it to the press at Daytona Beach and at the Chicago Auto Show in February 1968.^2,1

The weekly production series credited to Linn Barton records the formal introduction on 28 February 1968 and showroom arrival in March. By then the factory had already built cars. Sixty 1968 AMXs came off the line in calendar 1967, and the first 550 carried no dash serial plate at all. The plates that followed ran from 00001 to 06175. That detail explains a figure that could look like a production conflict: 6,175 is a serial count that starts after the unplated cars, and 6,175 plus 550 gives the 6,725 model-year total. AMC's 1968 VIN key gives the car its own series digit, 3, and encodes the three V8s as N (290), T (343) and X (390).^4,1,5

The order form was simple and the price was pointed. Old Cars Weekly reports a $3,245 base price. The standard car had the 290 V8 with a four-barrel, rated at 225 horsepower in the period gross-era advertising, plus a four-speed, heavy-duty suspension, E70x14 Goodyear Polyglas tires, reclining buckets and woodgrain trim. The options were the 343 at 280 horsepower and the 390 at 315. With either of the bigger engines a buyer could add the Go Package, which brought dual exhaust, power disc brakes, redline tires, Twin-Grip, a handling package, heavy-duty cooling and over-the-top stripes. Planet Houston AMX lists one interior trim, Ventilaire vinyl with reclining seats, in black, tan or red.^1,5,6,7

Buyers went straight for the big engine. The engine-and-transmission table at Planet Houston AMX splits the 6,725 cars into six combinations. The 390 accounts for 4,399 of them (2,112 four-speeds and 2,287 automatics), about 65 percent. The 343 accounts for 1,317 and the 290 for 1,009. The single largest combination was the 390 with an automatic. The four-speed was standard, yet 3,673 of the 6,725 cars left with an automatic and 3,052 with a four-speed. The table's column sums and its option list agree on those numbers. So in its first year, AMC's short-wheelbase sports car was bought more often by people who wanted the big engine than by people who wanted the clutch pedal.⁷

The option counts show a car ordered for performance. According to the same compilation, power front disc brakes went on 4,445 of 6,725 cars, about two in three, and the Twin-Grip limited-slip on 4,958, nearly three in four. Stripes appeared on 4,226 and Rally wheels on 3,065. Air conditioning went on only 967. Black was the favorite interior at 3,676, with red at 1,626 and tan at 1,418. Two cautions come with these figures. The source warns that dealers could install many of the options, and it prints exactly 4,619 for both power steering and the AM radio. That coincidence is reported as printed, not corrected. The compiler does not name the underlying AMC document for any table.⁷

Car and Driver's 390 AMX, as reported by Old Cars Weekly, ran from 0 to 60 mph in 6.6 seconds and covered the quarter-mile in 14.8 seconds at 95 mph. The magazine estimated its top speed at 122 mph. Those numbers belong to that one test car, whose transmission and axle the secondary report does not give. Old Cars Weekly lists a 390 AMX's curb weight at 3,205 pounds on 97 inches of wheelbase, and one Wisconsin owner of a 315-horsepower four-speed car described the result plainly. Dump the clutch, he said, and “there will be instant smoke,” and the back end “wants to come around really quick.”¹

Breedlove's run also left a showroom souvenir. About 50 red, white and blue Breedlove AMXs followed the record attempt. The Old Cars Weekly figure is an approximation, and the literature does not explain how anyone arrived at it. It stays an estimate, not a registry count. Meanwhile the Javelin carried AMC's actual racing program in the 1968 Trans-Am. Jim Jeffords and Ronnie Kaplan ran it with Peter Revson and George Follmer, and the team finished third in the standings. The AMX's job was different. It was the image car: the proof, before a customer turned a key, that the company that had built sensible Ramblers could build something short, loud and fast.^1,3,2

The image lasted three model years. Planet Houston AMX counts 8,293 AMXs for 1969 and 4,116 for 1970, and 19,134 for the whole two-seat run. Old Cars Weekly repeats the three-year total, but it belongs to the same lineage and is not an independent check. By Ate Up With Motor's account, Teague argued hard to keep the two-seater as an image builder. President William Luneburg decided its sales did not justify the production complications it caused. For 1971 the AMX name moved onto the top model of the new, longer Javelin. In 1968, though, that ending was still ahead. That year 6,725 buyers, two-thirds of them with the 390, bought a steel-bodied American two-seater from the company best known for sensible compacts.^7,1,2