1

Newsletter of the American Motors Club of Houston

September 2014 Issue 16

From the Officers - Latest Club News You Can Use pg 2

Upcoming Events pg 2

Club Information pg 3

AMCs from Across the Pond pg 4

Member Profile: Jeff Jung’s 1965 American 440 pg 5

AMCs on Television pg 6

The Charles Nash Story – 2nd in a series of articles pg 7

Check Out This AMX-400 pg 8

‘Fabulous’ Hudson Hornet added to Historic Vehicle Registry pg 9-10

Tidbits pg 11

Club Store pg 13

2

Free National Club Membership!! In an effort to get more folks to attend our monthly meetings, a giveaway will be held a couple of times a year to

award some lucky members with a free membership to the American Motors Owners Association (our Club is an

AMO chapter). If the lucky winner is already an AMO member, he or she will have the option of a free

membership in one of the other national AMC clubs, such as AMCRC or NAMDRA. Keep an eye out for email

regarding the giveaway.

Upcoming Events October

11th – Cruisin the Coast – Ocean Springs, Mississippi

14th – Club Meeting at Hickory Hollow Bar B Q

18th – 26th Annual AMC Lone Star Regional

O Bring out your AMC vehicles. This is a non-judged event. Free T-shirts to those

bringing out their cars. Location to be announced

5th - Niftee 50’s at Spring Cypress Annual Halloween Car Cruise

November

11th – Club Meeting at Hickory Hollow Bar B Q

27th – Autorama at George R. Brown

December

9th – Club Meeting at Hickory Hollow Bar B Q

From the Officers: Cover Photo: Jeff Jung’s 1965 American 440

3

Ownership of an AMC vehicle or residence in our local area is

NOT required to join our group. Interest and enthusiasm are more

than enough. We’ll gladly help you find your own treasured AMC

if you don’t already have one!!

Dues are *$20 per year – we are a non-profit organization, and

100% of your dues go to supporting club activities. The club officers

do not receive a salary for their efforts. Dues and an enrollment form

may be submitted at our monthly meetings, or mailed to our Treasurer,

Kevin Dalley, 12207 Courtney Greens Rd, Houston, TX 77089.

AMCoH exists specifically to support you in your AMC

endeavors, and we look forward to adding your own AMC experience

to our knowledge base. If you need any additional information, feel

free to contact any of our club officers.

AMCoH Officers

President

Tom Taylor

4406 Mize Rd

Pasadena, TX 775045

713-249-2466

tom.taylor@c-a-m.com

amc.taylor1969@att.net

*******************************

Vice President

Mike Knuckey

713-253-8276

dink-1@msn.com

******************************

Co-Secretaries

Ted Davis & Scott Stubler

713-721-8960 & 713-569-8421

tedjr1@swbell.net

mstubler@hourston.rr.com

******************************

Treasurer

Kevin Dalley

281-481-6363

amxamc@aol.com

******************************

Activities Director

Tim Gould

281-435-4452

trex6622@yahoo.com

******************************

Membership Chairman

Kevin Dalley

281-481-6363

amxamc@aol.com

******************************

WebMaster

Peter Groenewold

708-431-0987

gacpete@gmail.com

******************************

Newsletter Editor

Gary Parente

713-859-7249

grparen@gmail.com

4

AMCs from Across the Pond A marriage made in heaven can only be enhanced by the presence of a beautiful 1971 Plum Crazy

Javelin.

Club President Tom Taylor has had recent email contact with a Frederic Gog, from Germany, who has worked diligently to restore this beautiful 1971 Javelin in his home town of Darmstadt, Germany. Tom has been helping him with some technical issues. Several weeks ago, Frederic’s Javelin was the bridal car for a good friend of his and his wife. The celebration took place about 200km (124 miles) from his home and it made the trip flawlessly. Although the drive in a 43 year old car was not sooo pleasant, the Javelin was a hit at the wedding.

5

A Family Affair with AMCs

Club Member Profile: Jeffery Jung

As long as I can remember, my Dad’s side of the family always drove AMCs. My Grandfather’s brother lived in Kenosha and worked for AMC as a machinist. We had a number of Ramblers that served as a second family car. They were a 1961 Ambassador, a 1964 American, a 1970 Hornet and a 1978 Concord. Of those cars, the American was always my favorite. When I was looking for my first collector car in 2003, I wanted to get an AMX. However, a good one was beyond my budget. I then narrowed my search to either a Rambler American or a Plymouth Barracuda. I looked at a number of Americans, including a very rough SC Rambler with the B paint scheme. I ended up buying a Barracuda but kept looking at Ramblers on the internet. In 2008, I was rear ended in the Barracuda. I received insurance money for the repairs but was not sure what to do with it.

and make the transaction for me. My Dad did not find any problems so he bought the car. He drove the car back to their house so the shipping company could pick it up and bring it to California. My Mom asked to delay delivery one more week so she could take it to a car show at the Chrysler dealer where she worked. She won a trophy and was very happy.

Two weeks later, I finally got the car. In the six years I have owned it, I have cleaned nearly every inch of it and replaced a few worn or incorrect replacement parts with NOS parts. One of the biggest benefits for me is to be able to drive my boys in the car. I found a set of period correct seat belts that I installed as shoulder belts for the back seat. The boys like riding in the car and it has made them another generation of AMC car enthusiasts.

At that time, I found a 1965 Rambler American near Milwaukee. It had just over 31,000 miles. I spoke to the owner in detail about the car. He had originally seen it in an ad in the paper. It was covered in blankets in the original owner’s garage. His plan was to buy the car and turn it into a hot rod. However, he ended up changing his mind because he did not want to molest an original car in such good shape. He had pictures of the car but they were old fashion prints. He was not internet savvy and mailed me a stack of pictures of the car. After looking at the pictures, I called a friend from college who lived in the Milwaukee area. I spoke to her husband about the car and her whole family went to check it out for me. While he was inspecting the car, he was describing it to me. He videotaped his inspection, including the test drive. After watching the DVD, I decided to buy the car. Since my parents live in Chicago my Mom and Dad said they would go look at the car one more time

6

AMCs on Television

In the TV Detective/Medical series ‘Bones’, one of the main characters drives this neat Gremlin

7

Larry Roberts

8

Check out this AMX-400

George Barris had an ongoing deal with AMC to produce a bolt-on customizing kit, sold by

AMC dealers, for the AMX. Using his AMC contacts he got a new 1969 AMX and used it to

create the AMX-400, which included a 4.5 inch lower top, revised pillars, an extended nose

and tail, hidden headlights, and numerous other changes. The full width tail light lit up

green during acceleration, amber when coasting, and, of course, red when braking. Each side

of the car got a race-style gas cap - and each was fake; the real gas cap was, as with the

standard AMX, under the license plate. The interior and engine were stock. The car toured

the country and was filmed in TV’s Banacek in 1972; it is now privately owned.

9

Original “Fabulous Hudson Hornet” NASCAR racer added to National

Historic Vehicle Register

Taken from a May 5th 2014 article in Hemmings Daily

To battle the latest overhead-valve V-8s in stock car racing the early 1950s, one didn’t need correlating

power. Rather, it took innovative chassis design, an unconventional engine builder and one of the most

dominant drivers in stock car history, all of which helped make Herb Thomas’s No. 92 Hudson Hornet

“fabulous” and which led representatives of the National Historic Vehicle Register to decide to include the

Hudson on their list.

Thomas, a recent addition to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, first raced in NASCAR in the inaugural Strictly

Stock race in 1949, but didn’t notch a win until a year later and didn’t start racing Hudsons until 1951,

when Marshall Teague convinced him to switch from his Plymouths and Oldsmobiles to the step-down

Hudsons, probably the most unlikely contenders in NASCAR due to their flathead six-cylinder engines.

Contend they did, however, thanks in part to their semi-unibody construction that allowed a lower floor

and thus a lower center of gravity than their competition. Credit also went to Hudson for throwing its

support behind Teague’s racing effort by providing severe-duty parts and engineering the Twin-H dual-

carburetor setup for the company’s torquey 308-cu.in. six-cylinder (not to mention the 220-hp 7-X version

of the Twin-H engine that Teague and Vince Piggins developed for Hudson) and to Teague’s engine

builder, Smokey Yunick, for figuring out how to wring the maximum possible power out of the engines at a

time when stock meant just that in NASCAR’s rules.

Thomas, who took 10 wins in a Hornet over the latter half of the 1951 season and the first half of the 1952

season, bought this particular Hornet directly from Hudson in either late July or August of 1952 after

wrecking his previous car and over the next season and a half took another 15 wins with the car,

ultimately taking the 1953 championship with it. All told, Thomas, Teague, Tim Flock, Dick Rathmann and

others would give Hudson 80 wins from 1951 through 1955, dominating the sport and forcing the Big

Three into providing factory support for stock car racers running those cars. Old race cars – particularly

old stock cars – don’t have much of a shelf life after they’re retired, but Thomas’s actually became a

street-driven car in the South after he bought a third Hornet from Hudson for the 1954 season. By the

mid-1970s, it ended up in eastern Kentucky, and its owner, looking to put the car back on the road, called

up Jack Miller in Ypsilanti, Michigan, for brake parts. “I sent him the parts, but he called back and said the

10

seals looked too small, they just fell through the holes in the drum,” Jack said. “I told him he had some

severe-usage parts on it and the car could have been a race car or a police car, which used those parts.

“He said he’d be willing to buy the car, but then didn’t hear from the customer for about 10 years, when

the customer called out of the blue and said he was willing to sell it. “It’d been primed so many times, and

most of the stainless was missing,” Jack said. “He didn’t have it running, and the parts I sold him were still

on the front seat. And there was a hole in the driveshaft hump in the back floor from where a driveshaft

broke and punched through.” Jack put it in storage in Detroit and then didn’t touch it again for another 10

years, when a friend of his started to remove the primer and found a No. 92 still painted on the car. Years

earlier, Jack had obtained some of the Hudson racing paperwork from John Conde, then the PR man for

American Motors, which included the canceled promissory note for Thomas’s Hornet. By matching up the

serial number on the promissory note to the serial number on the car, Jack confirmed that it was indeed

Herb Thomas’s old steed, so he finished the restoration in time for the 1998 Eyes on Design show.

“I had a lot of fun with that car,” Jack said, noting the times he took it to Daytona for display at the Living

Legends of Auto Racing Museum and the times he drove it in Daytona beach parades. He would later get

to meet Thomas and many other former NASCAR drivers. (Thomas retired in the early 1960s and died in

2000 at the age of 77.) He did not, however, get to meet the crew from Pixar behind the 2006 film Cars,

which featured a character, Doc Hudson, patterned after the several Fabulous Hudson Hornets.

While a number of replicas of other Fabulous Hudson Hornets have been built over the years, to date the

Herb Thomas 1952 Hornet remains the only authenticated example of a racing Hornet extant. Jack sold

the Hornet last November to Hudson collector Ed Souers, who said that the Historic Vehicle Association

contacted him a couple of months ago about including the Hornet on the National Historic Vehicle

Register. “I’m just getting familiar with it and starting my own research into it,” Ed said. “But apparently,

the people from the HVA read enough about it to think that it’s worth including in the register. When you

start to think about the importance of NASCAR and of Herb Thomas – he was really an early superstar in

NASCAR – it’s a pretty impressive car, and probably is worthy, at least as much as the other cars they’re

looking at.”

11

Tidbits

You wouldn’t want to see this price list in an Auto Repair Shop.

Twelve Funny Bumper Stickers

1. "Madness Takes Its Toll. Please Have Exact Change."

2. "Buckle Up. It Makes It Harder For Aliens to Snatch You From The Car."

3. "My Reality Check Just Bounced."

4. "Sorry, Officer. My Radar Detector Was Unplugged."

5. "Alcohol and Calculus Don't Mix: Do Not Drink and Derive."

6. "Forget World Peace. Visualize Using Your Turn Signal."

7. "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder."

8. "If You Can Read This, I've Lost My Trailer."

9. "No Radio. Already Stolen. Sorry To Disappoint You."

10. "If You Don't Like The Way I Drive, Stay Off The Sidewalk!"

11. "Honk If You Love Peace and Quiet."

12. "Keep Honking. I'm Reloading.”

Auto Repair Price List PING-PING-PING $75 PLUNK-PING-PLUNK $150 KLUNK-PING-KLUNK $250 THUD-KLUNK-THUD $350 CLANK-THUD-KLANK $500

12