In the late 1950's and into the early 1960's, American Motors, or "AMC", had carved out a nice niche for selling cars that were smaller than what The Big Three sold. However, once GM, Ford and Chrysler came out with economy cars of their own, AMC's sales began to founder. To make matters worse, AMC's cars were construed as being stodgy and unhip. They determined that the quickest and most efficient way to change their image was to go directly after the, no pun intended, booming youth market. That pursuit resulted ultimately in the two-passenger, 1968 to 1970 AMX like the 1969 in ""butternut beige" pictured above.
The AMX wasn't AMC's first salvo at younger buyers. On the left we have the goofy, "3+3", Rambler Marlin, AMC's first attempt at appealing to "kids" in 1965. Not surprisingly, it flopped. On the right is their second fore ray, what they called "Javelin" in 1968 that was better received. You wouldn't be alone in thinking it a Ford Mustang or a late '60's Mercury Cougar. Or some Australian derivative of an American car design. If I was of the age and means back then to buy a new car, I'd look at a Javelin. Then probably buy a Camaro, Firebird or Mustang.
The origin story of the AMX is fairly convoluted but it boils down to executive management demanding a two-passenger car that emulated the 1966 AMX concept car. Problem was the suits upstairs hamstrung designers and engineers with budget constraints.
The result was the 1968 1/2 AMX, which was little more than a Javelin with a 12-inch shorter wheelbase, no back seat and holy blind spot, Batman, the funkiest rear end this side of a Tatra T77. The kind-of-cool but at the same time dorky as any Rambler that came before it little car didn't appeal nearly as well to buyers as the Javelin did.
In their review of a 1968 AMX, Road &Track magazine applauded AMC embracing the sporty, two-passenger car market they predicted would become prevalent after Ford introduced the four-passenger Mustang back in 1964. Newsflash, they were wrong about the public's buy-in of two-passenger cars.
They tactfully chastised the AMX for its awkward proportions and its close resemblance to the Javelin. They downplayed any notion that AMC was attempting to compete with the Chevrolet Corvette noting that the Corvette wasn't a mainstream automobile whereas the AMX, given it shared so much with the Javelin, was supposed to be. The only thing the AMX and Corvette intrinsically had in common was they both were two-passenger cars.
R&T found the steering heavy and slow with plenty of understeer although cars with the gross-rated, 315-horsepower, 390-cu. in. V-8 could easily pull drivers out of it. The optional four-speed manual's ratios were too closely spaced and the rear brakes locked up easily. Fuel economy was abysmal but typical of the era at 11-to-13 miles-per-gallon of premium fuel. They clocked a 390 car like our butternut special here going from zero-to-sixty in 7.2-seconds. Not bad for a car with serious traction issues.
Mattered little, though. AMC sold less than twenty thousand AMX' in two-and-a-half years of production making them extremely rare. These cars do have their ribald fans, though. AMX' in decent shape like this one can command more than $25,000, ones in showroom condition go for more than $40,000.
AMC pulled the plug on the AMX after 1970 using the suffix on top-of-the-line, four-passenger, new-for-1971 Javelins they built through 1974. Harmlessly, AMC affixed "AMX", to a number of different models before Chrysler bought them, ostensibly, for their Jeep division in 1987.
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