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3 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

A very similar handle was also used on many Lotus models, for which I hang my head in shame - it was I. Lotus was getting lots of warranty claims on their door handles, which were made from chromed Zamak (Zinc-Aluminium diecasting alloy) in Italy. When the leaky doors froze shut and the Zamak had become nice and brittle, if you heaved even slightly at the door handle they would snap off. I sourced from British Leyland 13,000 sets of these Wilmot Breeden door handles, where BL had massively over-estimated the sales of the Allegro, Maxi and Marina. From memory, I paid around £0.10 per set, which Fred Bushell (the Lotus CFO) thought was absolutely marvellous, as the Italian door handles cost over £1 each. That was in 1970 and I think Lotus was still using them 15 years later, to much adverse comment from the likes of Motor and Autocar. 😆 The handles were an early production use of polycarbonate and were very tough. Polycarbonate can also be chromed by vacuum deposition. 

Wilson

Wilson, I wondered if this car could be a Marina (!) but I think the lock escutcheon is in the wrong place. An old family friend with an engineering background, now sadly long since departed, used to call Zamak (or Mazak - I could never remember which way round the name was) "muck metal".

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50 minutes ago, masjah said:

Wilson, I wondered if this car could be a Marina (!) but I think the lock escutcheon is in the wrong place. An old family friend with an engineering background, now sadly long since departed, used to call Zamak (or Mazak - I could never remember which way round the name was) "muck metal".

The common name is "Pot Metal". It was used for many Weber carburettors, which has two problems. Firstly the alloy suffers from age embrittlement due to dissociation creep and secondly it is attacked by ethanol in gasoline. This is going to be a major problem for older cars as the ethanol also attacks the solder often used to join the steel panels on older fuel tanks. I buy in 25 L drums from our local agricultural suppliers, a gasoline called Aspen 4 (Aspen 2 is the same stuff pre-mixed for 2 strokes), which is both lead and ethanol free. This is to use on our 40 year old John Deere petrol tractor, a 40 year old garden go-kart used by the grandchildren and our elderly Honda rotary mower for doing the fiddly bits round our lawn. I got a bit of a shock when I went to fill up 2 x 25 litre jerry cans with red diesel for our Iseki tractor last week. I had forgotten tax was now payable on this. That is all the poor farmers, already struggling with feed and energy costs, needed. 

Wilson

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I had been thinking an early ‘70s (mk 6??) Ambassador - the late one without the vertical headlights. A Concord is probably on the money.

OT I passed an AMC Gremlin parked up in central NYC last week. A sight to behold and attracting as many glances as a modern exotic…

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AMC Eagle Wagon. Not sure about the year made. Assume first half of the production time (built from 1979 to 1987).

In 1981/1982 they made the Kammback and even a convertible called Sundancer (by Griffith).

Early SUVs with Jeeps Quadra Drive (4WD). Heavy and slow verhicles, about 190.000 made. Since 1981 in Canada.

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vor einer Stunde schrieb stuny:

It was my mother’s last car.

Thanks, was wondering who bought them. Unique cars, to me the US predecessor of the Subarus (edit: Must correct myself, the Subaru 4WD Station I was thinking of also came out in 1979). The AMC were thirsty for their size due to weight and engine.

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People who say "Oh they don't build them like they used to" should be made to go and drive an AMC Gremlin (launched appropriately on April Fools' Day in 1970. On my first business trip to the USA in 1972, there had been a rush of customers at the Avis depot I went to in New York on a Friday afternoon. I had the week-end to myself and proposed to drive up the Hudson Valley, staying overnight with friends in Albany, NY. All that was left was an AMC Gremlin - I should have run to Hertz. I was driving at the time in the UK, a delightful Lancia Fulvia Coupé 1.3HF. In comparison the Gremlin was horrible in every way. Slow, bad handling, drank fuel and everything rattled. Not a single redeeming feature. 

Wilson

 

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AMC as a small maker had not enough money for good refined developement. They bought Kaiser Jeep around 1970 if I recall right.

A Jeep manager had the idea to create a car which is a street car but with Jeep 4WD. They declared that a 4WD is also safer on road.

Except Jensen FF there was no real 4WD street car, especially with automatic gearbox.

Willys Overland also had the idea making a street car (today called CROSSOVER) and built the Jeepster from 1948 to 1951. But only with RWD. Maybe an old idea came up but with 4WD as project "EAGLE".

After Chrysler bought AMC and Jeep in 1986/87 they stopped the AMC production when the stock of parts was empty.

The craziest version was the only in 1981/82 made "Kammback". It really had a badge/logo with that. Rare, only 5.603 built.

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3 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

People who say "Oh they don't build them like they used to" should be made to go and drive an AMC Gremlin (launched appropriately on April Fools' Day in 1970. On my first business trip to the USA in 1972, there had been a rush of customers at the Avis depot I went to in New York on a Friday afternoon. I had the week-end to myself and proposed to drive up the Hudson Valley, staying overnight with friends in Albany, NY. All that was left was an AMC Gremlin - I should have run to Hertz. I was driving at the time in the UK, a delightful Lancia Fulvia Coupé 1.3HF. In comparison the Gremlin was horrible in every way. Slow, bad handling, drank fuel and everything rattled. Not a single redeeming feature. 

Wilson

 

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To be fair, the Lancia Fulvia Coupé is a wonderful jewel of a car. The Gremlin is not in the same universe.

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The problem is us Europeans are often not familiar with US makes and sub-models. My wife and I were going to Jackson Hole in April of one year for skiing. I had pre-booked a Ford Thunderbird Supercharged Super Coupé. When I went up to the counter, the lady said "oh it is snowing (about 2 flakes and the roads were completely bare) so we don't rent out the supercharged Thunderbirds in this weather. I asked then what she was going to allocate me. She said "a Pontiac Grand Am". Thinking of a friend's Pontiac Trans Am race car, where I had done the suspension sorting a few years before, which was a wonderful thunderous device with around 600HP, my face lit up and I said "that would be absolutely fine. The miserable device I got, had an emissions strangled 2 litre 4 cylinder that was so feeble that to get up the ski lift roads, we had to turn off the air conditioning, while it crawled up in low gear of its three speed slush pump. My wife thought it was very funny, with comments like "when are you going to engage the supercharger?" and "well at least we are not getting any wheelspin"

Wilson

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Let's try this one - All the usuals:

 

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