1968 AMC Javelin: American Motors Picks a Fight With the Pony Cars

The Javelin's first race was the 12 Hours of Sebring on 23 March 1968. Two cars started. The one driven by George Follmer and Jerry Grant did not finish, and the one driven by Peter Revson and Skip Scott finished fifth. That account comes from Ate Up With Motor's history of the car. Before the season began, AMC engineering chief Victor Raviolo had told reporters that the company did not really expect to win and was hoping for a “solid third-place finish.” It was an unusually modest target for a Detroit racing program. It also fit a company that had spent a decade selling economy and was now entering the pony-car market that Ford and Chevrolet dominated.¹

That modesty had a history. Robert B. Evans became American Motors' largest shareholder and then its chairman in 1966, and Ate Up With Motor says he shared the press's view that the company's main failing was its “staid, fusty image.” AMC's earlier sporty car had shown how hard that image was to change. The fastback Marlin sold 10,327 in 1965, 4,547 in 1966 and 2,545 in its restyled 1967 form. The 1966 Project IV show, which toured 10 North American cities, put AMX concept cars in front of the public. Behind the scenes, AMC was working on a four-seat car aimed squarely at the Mustang. Special events manager Guy Hadsall Jr. proposed the name that stuck: Javelin.¹

The people who launched the car were not the ones who started it. At a board meeting on 9 January 1967, Evans stepped down as chairman. Roy D. Chapin Jr. became chairman and chief executive, and William Luneburg replaced Roy Abernethy as president. In September 1967 AMC hired Victor Raviolo, a former Ford engineer associated with Ford of England's Lotus Cortina race cars, as group vice president for engineering and styling. The advertising went to Wells, Rich, Greene. Ate Up With Motor says the agency broke an unwritten Detroit rule by comparing the Javelin directly with its competitors. The new management was willing to name its rivals in public.¹

AMC showed the Javelin to its dealers by closed-circuit television on 31 August 1967, and the public saw it on 26 September. Chapin set a sales target of 35,000 to 40,000 cars, a small fraction of what Mustang and Camaro sold. The car rode a 109-inch wheelbase and measured 189.2 inches overall. It came as a base Javelin and a better-trimmed SST, both two-door hardtops. Ate Up With Motor says a basic Javelin started under $2,500, more than $100 below the six-cylinder Camaro and Mustang. Planet Houston AMX lists factory prices of $2,482 for the base car and $2,587 for the SST, without stating what those prices include.^1,2,3

The engine list ran from mild to serious. AMC's 1968 VIN key encodes a 232 six at 145 or 155 horsepower, a 290 V8 at 200 or 225, a 343 at 235 or 280 and a 390 at 315. These are period gross-era ratings, and the key covers the whole AMC line rather than the Javelin alone. The Go Package cost $266 with the 343 or $320 with the 390. It added a four-barrel, dual exhaust, power front disc brakes, red-line tires, six-inch wheels, a handling package and stripes. Planet Houston AMX rates the Go Package 343 at 285 horsepower. The factory key's 280 is the figure used here, and the other is noted as a conflict.^4,5

Inside, the two trims looked different. According to Planet Houston AMX's trim codes, the base car had Tahiti basket-weave vinyl on fixed-back seats, in black or black and white. The SST offered black, tan or red, in Strata Stripe fabric with reclining seats or in all-vinyl reclining seats. On the outside, the brochure presented the Javelin and the two-seat AMX as separate models. That matters for the production record, because the AMX, introduced in February 1968 on a wheelbase 12 inches shorter, has its own count of 6,725 and is not part of the Javelin figures. The Javelin was the four-seat car meant to sell in volume. The AMX was built to draw attention.^3,1

It did sell. The body-number table at Planet Houston AMX, which JavelinAMX.com repeats, gives 29,097 base Javelins and 26,027 SSTs, so the SST made up about 47 percent. Those two rows add up to 55,124. Wikipedia, citing Gunnell's Standard Catalog, gives 55,125, and the one-car difference is unexplained. Ate Up With Motor calls it more than 55,000 sales, about 40 percent above Chapin's target, yet still less than 6 percent of pony-car sales that year. No engine, transmission or option counts for the 1968 Javelin were found, so the number of Go Package or 390 cars is unknown. That is a gap in the record, not evidence that there were none.^3,2,6,1

On the track, AMC put its program in outside hands. Jim Jeffords and Ronnie Kaplan ran the team, hired Revson and Follmer, and used John Martin as co-driver and crew chief. The engines started as 290 blocks bored to 304.3 cubic inches, which kept them under the 305-cubic-inch limit. By Ate Up With Motor's count the Javelins won no races but finished second in six of the 12 rounds and ended third overall, the result Raviolo had forecast. The same history says Raviolo was fired not long afterward and Carl Chakmakian took over AMC's performance work. These results have not yet been checked against the 1968 SCCA result sheets, so they are given as that history's account.¹

The team that won the 1968 contest was Chevrolet's. The Trans Am series' own history credits Mark Donohue, driving Roger Penske's Camaro, with ten wins that year and says the title went to the manufacturer. The series did not award a drivers' championship in the period. For AMC, third behind that kind of program was a respectable first year. The early seasons also left lessons. Ford hired Revson and Follmer away for 1969, and Ate Up With Motor says their replacements' best finish that season was fourth. Javelin sales slipped to 40,675. For 1970 AMC went to the team that had beaten it. Roger Penske moved his Trans-Am operation from Chevrolet to AMC and signed a three-year contract.^7,1,8

The 1968 Javelin was the car that made that move possible. It gave AMC a four-seat performance car to race, sold well enough to beat the company's own forecast, and shared a body with the AMX two-seater. Its numbers are modest beside Detroit's best sellers: 55,124 cars by the body table, split almost evenly between base and SST, in a segment where it held less than 6 percent. But the Javelin proved that American Motors could build a car buyers wanted for style and speed rather than thrift. Three seasons later, a Penske Javelin would bring AMC the manufacturers' title that the 1968 team had never been expected to win.^3,1,9