1978 AMX: a single year on the Concord

This record's own overview describes 1978 as the year the Hornet became the Concord, with the AMX name moving onto the new Concord platform for what JavelinAMX.com's own entry records as a single model year only, offered with a choice of the 258 six or the 304 two-barrel V8. This record's own title and dek both describe the car directly as a Concord-based AMX rather than a continuation of any prior body style, framing 1978 as a distinct, one-year configuration of the nameplate.¹

Production is put at approximately 2,500 units by Wikipedia, itself attributing the figure to a 2014 Hemmings "Find of the Day" feature, and this record's own key facts state plainly that this is an approximate figure with no exact count found in any source consulted. The underlying Hemmings article was not read directly by this record's research, so the approximation is carried with its attribution chain intact rather than treated as a verified factory total, and this record's own production note adds that the method behind the roughly 2,500 estimate is simply not known.²

A manufacturer's suggested retail price of $4,649 is recorded from AMC's own 1978 and 1979 dealer price list and ordering guide, specifically the master price table's "AMX (50 States)" row for the two-door hatchback body. Both the 258 six and the 304 two-barrel V8 are documented as available engines for the year, but neither carries a horsepower or torque rating in any source consulted, an unusual gap given how detailed the factory catalogue's own equipment and specification pages are elsewhere for the same model year.^3,1

Transmission availability is described as a four-speed manual with the 258 six only, or a three-speed automatic on the floor shared across both engines, with the 304 V8 restricted to the automatic alone; this record notes that this transmission picture comes from Wikipedia specifically and has not yet been checked against AMC's own factory literature for the year. The standard AMX equipment package itself is extensively documented from the factory catalogue: side identification, painted front and rear bumpers, a front air dam, front and rear fender flares, rear window louvers, dual flat-black mirrors, a roof band, color-coordinated slot-styled wheels, a blacked-out grille, a floor console, rally gauges with a tachometer, a brushed-aluminum instrument panel, a soft-feel sport steering wheel and vinyl bucket seats.²

Five exterior colors are documented for the year: Firecracker Red, Sunshine Yellow, Quick Silver Metallic and Alpine White alongside a special Classic Black finish this record describes, per the factory catalogue's own wording, as carrying gold accents specific to the AMX. Three interior colors are recorded, all in the same soft-feel vinyl bucket-seat material: black, blue and beige, with no further trim-level distinction found among them.

Specification detail is limited to a single combined engine entry covering compression and bore-and-stroke figures: the 258 six at 8.0:1 compression and 3.75-by-3.90-inch bore and stroke, paired with the four-speed floor-shift standard and automatic-floor optional already described above, and the 304 V8 at 8.4:1 compression and 3.75-by-3.44-inch bore and stroke, restricted to the automatic-floor combination alone. No performance-test data, identification detail, or logged conflict is recorded anywhere in this record for the 1978 model year.