Finding Over 35 *STOCK* AMC Cars to Film -- TLIA PODCAST Ep3

The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.

A transcript, cleaned up via AI and edited by a human staffer, is below.

[Image: YouTube Screenshot]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.

Transcript:

If we’re talking about the behind-the-scenes part, I’ve got some great pictures of you that I should share—photos from when I’d be driving around and see you, Alec, and Jim literally tucked away, hidden in the weeds or behind a sign so you weren’t visible, just to get those shots while driving by.

The Last Independent Automaker Podcast was sponsored in part by Visit Detroit, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, MotorCities National Heritage Area, and by the over 375 individuals and organizations who donated to this project. Thank you.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to The Last Independent Automaker Podcast. I’m Joe Liggio, the producer and director of the documentary.

It’s funny—when I go places, or even just online, people call me an AMC expert. I always kind of cringe a little bit at that, because there are so many people who know more about AMC than I do. I always say, “I’m just an enthusiast. I’m not an expert.” But if there’s somebody I would call a genuine AMC expert, it’s my friend Josh Greenplate.

You’ve been playing with AMCs probably since the day you were born, right?

Josh: Not too far off. Yeah, I think I was 10 or 11 when we started restoring my dad’s first Javelin.

Josh is one of those people that whenever I have a problem with my Ambassador, I call him. We actually drove to Kenosha this summer, and it was a mad dash the month before we left to get the A/C in my car fixed. Thanks to Josh, for the first time in eight years since I bought it, it has working air conditioning.

You did most of the work, right?

Josh: I don’t know if I did most of the work, but it was worth the effort. It made the drive so much nicer having A/C there and back.

But enough about our car problems—we could make a whole podcast out of that. Let’s talk about other people’s cars.

Josh, do you remember—I can’t remember if it was 2023—when I reached out and said, “Can you come over to my house for dinner tonight? I need your help finding people who have AMCs that we can film for the documentary.”

Josh: Yep, I do remember. I think that was actually the first time I was over at your house.

The reason I asked Josh is because you’d been involved with the clubs longer than I had, and you understood right away that the vehicles we were looking to film needed to be either restored to original condition or unrestored cars without aftermarket wheels, accessories, stripe kits, or modified suspension. We were looking for cars as close to stock as possible throughout the history of American Motors.

And those cars can be tricky to find, right?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. When you’re looking for a specific model year, a specific model, all stock, and in good enough condition for a documentary, that’s not easy to find. A lot of the cars that made AMC profitable and successful weren’t the ones people tended to keep. The Gremlins, Hornets, and basic Ramblers were AMC’s bread and butter, but they were also the cars that got driven hard, worn out, and thrown away.

A lot of the ones that did survive—particularly Gremlins—survived because they were turned into race cars early on or heavily modified. So they’re still around, but nowhere near stock, and not the right vehicles for the documentary.

It took some work to put together a list of owners, and then you had to track them down, get permission, and actually go film them. That was a big undertaking.

We made a spreadsheet of people we knew within a day’s driving distance. I wasn’t going to California or Arizona. We focused on who had a ’57 Rambler, a ’65 Marlin, Hornets, Gremlins—your family’s cars included—and tried to find examples as close to stock as possible.

One thing I wanted to ask you: from a collector perspective, which AMCs are the most common? Not necessarily the ones they built the most of, but the ones that survive the most.

Josh: You look at what you see at shows today, and AMXs are always high on that list—even though production was super low, under 20,000 total. From a very young age, those cars were recognized as something special. There was a dedicated AMX club when the cars were barely out of production, so their survival rate is unusually high.

I’d guess more than half of all AMXs built still exist in some form.

Compare that to the Gremlin. AMC built nearly 700,000 of them. If the survival rate is even 10 percent, I’d be shocked. The AMX was always a performance car, always considered special and worth preserving. A base ’70 Gremlin? Nobody thought that was something they’d want in 50 years. It was affordable transportation—get to work, get to school.

That difference really shaped which cars survived.

One of the two Gremlins we filmed was your dad’s— a ’71, right?

Josh: Yep, ’71.

What’s cool about that car is that it’s a two-seat Gremlin—totally stripped out. The goal was to get the MSRP as low as possible, almost down to Volkswagen levels. I think they advertised it at around $1,749, the lowest-priced American car.

They stripped everything they could. The rear window is sealed shut. No back seat. The spare tire is back there against the back wall, and it’s not easily accessible. You’ve got to fold the bench seat down and wiggle back there.

They didn’t intend to sell many of them, but it was an advertising hook to get people into the showroom and sell them a four-seat Gremlin or a Hornet instead.

It’s such an emblem of the ’70s. I think it’s a good-looking car—maybe not everyone agrees—but it’s unique, and that drives demand. A lot of people have personal connections to Gremlins as their first car or their parents’ car, and there just aren’t many left.

Finding one close to stock was a challenge, especially because people love to customize them.

Josh: Absolutely. There was a factory V8 option, so it’s easy to swap engines. They were light, small, and by the mid-’70s you could buy one for not much more than scrap value. A lot of them got V8 swaps, custom paint, wheels—everything.

That’s why it’s hard to find stock ones today. Fortunately, my dad’s was local and accessible, which helped.

We had the same issue with Javelins. Finding a ’68–’69 Javelin that wasn’t modified was really tough.

Josh: Muscle cars always attracted people who wanted to make them faster and flashier. Even early on, many weren’t stock anymore. Over 50 years, that pool just keeps shrinking. You’re not talking Mustang-level production numbers—Javelins topped out around 50–60,000 units in a good year. AMXs were far fewer.

So your pool to choose from was already small.

Another challenge was early Ramblers, especially ’50s models. You don’t see as many ’56–’59 cars. Why is that?

Josh: Age is part of it, but rust is a big factor. AMC improved rust protection over time. Early cars had many welded seams—each one a place for rust to start. By the early ’60s, AMC introduced the uniside construction, which greatly improved durability.

Also, highway speeds increased in the ’60s. A ’50s Rambler without overdrive isn’t comfortable at 65–70 mph, so they became less practical. Less utility meant less incentive to fix them.

There’s also less enthusiasm today for ’50s cars overall. Many survivors are in museums or private collections, and their owners aren’t always active online.

That was a big part of our challenge—social media was how we found many cars. The AMC community is very active on Facebook, but owners of older cars often aren’t.

The hardest cars to find were a Renault Alliance and an XJ Cherokee—for completely different reasons.

The Alliance had low survival rates despite strong production numbers. Parts availability, repair complexity, and dealer support were issues almost from the start.

Josh: My dad bought an Encore new in ’84. Before AMC was even out of business, the dealer didn’t have the tools to service the transmission. The car was scrapped after just a few years. That was common with Renault products.

Parts availability became a huge problem, especially before the internet. If you needed a French fuel injection part in 1995, good luck.

Most Alliances that survived were convertibles or GTAs. We wanted a sedan—something that looked like an early ’83 or ’84 Alliance—which made it even harder.

Finding an XJ was difficult for the opposite reason. Almost all of them are modified—lifted, swapped, or hacked up. Finding a stock ’80s XJ was nearly impossible.

We ended up using an ’89 and framing shots carefully to hide Chrysler logos and clearcoat damage.

That’s the challenge of this kind of documentary. We wanted to film real cars, not rely on archival footage. Stock examples are rare—not because modification is bad, but because historical accuracy matters.

Josh: I think it really shows in the final product. The extra effort mattered.

We’re thankful for all the owners who contributed vehicles. The AMC community is incredibly supportive and passionate.

Up next, we’ll talk with Doug Gerky, whose family collection helped us film multiple vehicles in one location.