1975 AMC Gremlin: The Legend Revisited! – Ignition Ep. 129 - video Dailymotion

MotorTrend

On this retro episode of Ignition presented by Tire Rack

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00:00 This is a 1975 AMC Gremlin.

00:04 Actually, this is Roadkill's 1975 AMC Gremlin, and it looks the part.

00:11 What's it doing here?

00:12 Well, the Gremlin came out on April 1st, 1970.

00:16 Yeah, really.

00:17 And this month marks the 45th anniversary of this interesting little car.

00:21 [MUSIC]

00:30 In the late 60s, US automakers saw buyers embracing smaller,

00:34 fuel-efficient cars from Europe, like the Volkswagen Beetle, and

00:38 they decided to do something about it.

00:41 Ford and GM, two of the largest car makers in the US,

00:44 began development on compact cars, and so did American Motors.

00:50 American Motors wasn't part of the big three, but

00:52 it had success with smaller cars in the 60s.

00:55 And despite lacking the scale and budget of Ford and GM,

01:00 AMC decided it would be first to market with its compact.

01:03 The Gremlin went on sale five months before the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto.

01:09 AMC marketed it as the first American-built import, and

01:14 it started at the 2015 equivalent of around $11,000.

01:18 It was slightly more expensive than the Beetle, and it sold well for

01:22 AMC before being replaced in 1978 by the Spirit.

01:26 [MUSIC]

01:30 While strapping the test gear to Roadkill's Gremlin would have been fun,

01:34 we feared breaking it.

01:36 Fortunately, we have the numbers from Motor Trend's 1970 test of a car equipped

01:40 with the same features, so we'll just pretend.

01:43 The Gremlin would do 60 miles an hour in 12.6 seconds.

01:49 And a quarter mile in a leisurely 19 seconds at 72 miles an hour.

01:53 [MUSIC]

02:00 The best stop from 60 miles an hour was a questionably good 120 feet.

02:05 Ours took a bit longer.

02:06 [MUSIC]

02:10 Motor Trend didn't perform figure eight testing in 1970, so

02:13 we tried running Gremlin through this test today.

02:16 It didn't go well.

02:18 [MUSIC]

02:27 We are now going to attempt a figure eight in the Gremlin,

02:30 because I make bad life decisions.

02:33 [MUSIC]

02:40 Well, as you can guess, there's a lot of body roll,

02:44 not much in the way of power, not much in the way of braking.

02:51 Clever, clever stuff from the Gremlin.

02:54 I don't know, how would I rate this as a handling car?

02:59 I probably wouldn't.

02:59 [MUSIC]

03:02 >> And you wanna go over and actually, yeah, just go ahead and clap, Carlos.

03:07 [MUSIC]

03:17 [SOUND]

03:27 >> So much of the Gremlin's peculiar design was a result of AMC's budget.

03:45 It paled in comparison to Ford and GM and Chrysler's at the time.

03:50 AMC couldn't afford to design a whole new platform, so

03:53 instead they took the existing Hornet, lopped about a foot off the back end of

03:57 its wheelbase, replaced it with this huge cam back.

04:00 Now up front, that left it with this enormously large nose and

04:04 the strange proportions that ultimately personified this car.

04:08 Now famously, the initial sketch of this car was done on an in-flight air

04:12 sickness bag, and maybe unsurprisingly, we should have expected the result.

04:16 [MUSIC]

04:18 Now under the hood and behind this grill, which is from a 1976 model,

04:23 we have a 232 cubic inch or a 3.8 liter straight six that when new was rated at

04:27 135 horsepower and 210 pound feet of torque,

04:31 though this is certainly making less now.

04:34 Interesting old car tech tidbit, both the intake and

04:38 exhaust manifolds hang off the same side of the engine.

04:41 But not only that, they share the same bolts.

04:43 Inside the Gremlin, you have a relatively spartan interior by today's standards, but

04:50 there are some clever features.

04:51 For one, you have this nice tray that holds pieces of the exterior that have

04:55 fallen off, like this bezel.

04:57 You have a glove compartment that you don't actually have to reach over to open.

04:59 You can just, and it does that.

05:01 You have two gauges, one for the speed, one for your fuel and temperature,

05:05 although neither of which work.

05:06 Now interestingly, cars from this era had funny names, Maddox or Commands.

05:11 The shift indicator is called Torque Command, which I guess is technically

05:15 accurate, and the HVAC controls are the Weather Eye, very funny stuff.

05:19 I've talked to a lot of people who've owned this car, new people that own this

05:25 car, and they all love them, despite the quirks and the problems and

05:29 the way it looks.

05:31 They all say it was a good car, or it was a nice thing.

05:34 I liked that machine for some reason.

05:36 And it's an interesting thing to say that about what amounts to a cheap

05:40 economy car.

05:41 The Gremlin at the time is the equivalent to what you would get today in a Hyundai

05:50 Accent or a Nissan Versa or something similar.

05:53 It's an old economy car, so of course it's going to be short in the things you'd

05:59 expect modern cars to have, or even cars of that time.

06:02 This was one of the cheaper cars you could get, and it had features, or

06:07 it didn't have features because of that.

06:09 But this car had a quirky personality because of its looks.

06:13 It had a certain quality to it that drew people in, and

06:17 that's what I find so interesting about it.

06:19 Even today, 45 years later, actually in the case of this car, 40 years later,

06:26 it has some problems with drivability.

06:30 At this altitude, this engine doesn't like running.

06:32 We haven't tuned the carb or adjusted the carb to match the lack of air up here.

06:36 But the steering remains light.

06:39 The brakes, they work, they just take some planning.

06:43 The straight six is really smooth in power delivery when it's running right.

06:49 This is a car you could genuinely one hand and

06:51 not feel fearful about what it's going to do.

06:57 But it still remains a question why people like these cars so much.

07:02 And maybe in part it's because like the Pacer and the Vega,

07:08 these were the cars that started the war against the imports, quote unquote.

07:12 It's telling that AMC wanted to sell this car as the first American built import.

07:19 [MUSIC]

07:26 And maybe it's because this car was so different, and the way it looks, and

07:31 the way it was, the way it was marketed, that like the Beetle at the time,

07:35 it was enough to create a people who liked that feeling, that liked being different.

07:40 That sort of just liked pushing everything else away and

07:43 driving something that was unique.

07:45 That's why this car was successful, and that's why this car is still successful.

07:49 You have to appreciate the automotive industry,

07:53 the giant enormous machine that is the industry.

07:56 For every once in a while, producing cars that are just so

08:01 different and so interesting because of why they're different.

08:04 Well, yeah, it's not gonna make it.

08:15 [MUSIC]

08:20 Well, Grammy may have died, but we found a solution that gets it going from one

08:24 place to the other still, and the best part, no hands required.

08:27 Just lean back and enjoy all this.

08:34 [MUSIC]

08:41 The immense machine that is the automotive industry can produce some simply

08:45 astounding cars, but for every Porsche 959 or McLaren F1,

08:50 you have cars on the opposite side of the bell curve.

08:53 They're similarly interesting, but for entirely different reasons.

08:57 Cars like the DeLorean or the Edsel or even the Pontiac Aztek went poorly in their

09:03 time, but they represent these incredible curiosities of the industry and

09:07 the people that made them.

09:08 They're rolling exhibits of a peculiar moment in time, each telling a unique story.

09:14 The Gremlin ranks right up there with them.

09:16 Happy 45th, Grammy.

09:18 [MUSIC]

09:23 >> Okay.

09:23 >> We're gonna pull it off.

09:25 >> Sure.

09:25 >> [LAUGH] >> That was so great.

09:28 Is it really that easy?

09:29 Like, what kind of vibration, like- >> You just have, you have to,

09:32 you can't latch it.

09:32 You just have to leave it hanging.

09:34 >> Okay. >> And then once you hit it here,

09:35 it's enough to knock it over.

09:36 >> I think it was latched, and I just closed the door.

09:38 >> Yeah, it'll do that too, but this is more consistent.

09:41 It'll, it'll loosen, it'll work its way loose.

09:44 Basically over, over time.

09:45 >> Oh, it says torque command there.

09:48 >> It says torque command right here.

09:50 Nothing, that was just a general comment on stuff from the 70s.

09:52 >> No, it's a comment.

09:54 >> Although, whether I.

09:56 [LAUGH]

09:58 On the HVAC controls.

1975 AMC Gremlin: The Legend Revisited! – Ignition Ep. 129

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