Honoring The Life Of AMC

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to the Christian Car Guy Radio Show.

I say this calls for action and now! Oh, we are so excited today to honor the life of AMC, which you may know. Some of you may not know. American Motors Corporation actually came from the idea of Hudson. Did you know that Nash Rambler?

You didn't know that. I did. I got into the cars thing later in life and that, you know, I was not the car enthusiast as a young man. Well, let me tell you we have an amazing show for you today as there is a new book out called The Complete Life or The Complete Book of AMC Cars at American Motors Corporation 1954 to 1988 and so for those who can remember the the car the Gremlin or maybe they can remember the Pacer or maybe, you know, you really some interesting cars, right? The Hornet. The Hornet, right?

Yeah. And that came from the Hudson and you might remember if you watch the movie Cars, right? There was the blue Hudson Hornet in that in that particular one and of course, you know, the little Nash Rambler song that we heard at the beginning of the show or, you know, there's so many neat things.

Now the reason that's neat to me especially is that my father was the AMC Jeep dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then later at the point in time that Jeep was purchased by Chrysler at that moment in time I happened to be a Chrysler dealer that got Jeep, okay? And so I've been very connected to this these franchises my whole life and to say that when I flipped through this book that I had memories like oh my goodness and we have two of the gentlemen very much responsible for this book we have Patrick Foster and Tom Glatch with us. Welcome guys. Welcome. Well thanks for having us on.

You have no idea, I mean no earthly idea what it did for my heart to flip through these pages. Oh yeah. You like it. Oh to say I like it would be an understatement of almost biblical proportion. That makes my day.

It very much does. And again for me, I worked in the parts department of my dad's dealership and if you remember, I don't know how familiar we were in those days, all the parts catalogs for AMC were a lot different than General Motors catalogs. They went back, especially the Jeep catalogs, they would go back to the 40s. Yes. And so, you know, and we had people coming in that needed a part for an old Hudson or they needed a part for a Nash Rambler or a little Metro, you know, all these cars that you guys did and, you know, for example, one of the pages, the highlight of my whole like man seeing this book was on my 16th birthday, which that would have been in 1971, my father gave to me a Pierre Cardin javelin. Pierre Cardin javelin. Wow. Oh wow.

I like that. And so you can see when I flipped that page and there sat that Pierre Cardin javelin and for those of you who may not even know what a javelin was, it was a sports car for American Motors. And Pierre Cardin was a very famous designer at that point in time and what they did was, I had a silver one with a purple stripe. Yeah. And it had this interior that was just off the hook. It had these two stripes that went across the seat and down and whatever.

But if you get this book, you can look at it. Went right up onto the headliner too. Right. Right.

Oh, it was nuts. Yeah. I don't think any car ever did that other than the Pierre Cardin.

No. Yeah. Well, interestingly, I happen to know the other one that did it. It was the Buick GSX.

The original. You're right. You're right. Oh, okay. You're right.

Those are the only two. I know. I know what you're talking about with the dealership, because back then I worked at an American Motors dealer in Derby, Connecticut, and I was a car salesman. And Derby, Connecticut is the smallest town in Connecticut, but we were the second largest dealer in the state. And the largest dealer also happened to be the largest American Motors dealer in the world. So we sold a lot of cars and, oh, javelins.

Yeah, I loved them. Yeah. And so, for me again, and just to give you, for those of you who are listening, let me tell you a little history, because you're going to find this fascinating. Everybody driving around today know what a Jeep Grand Cherokee is, right? What you don't know is it's so far from a Jeep it's not even funny. It is completely, you are climbing into a Rambler Hornet Sportabout station wagon. I can prove that, by the way.

I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. But what happened was, you know, one of the great cars American Motors made, in fact, my sister had a Rambler American, I think it was a 66 model. I have a 67 myself right now. It's my company car. It might have been a 67 because that was the new body style. It was really cool. Anyway, she had that car for nearly 25 years and she put over 700,000 miles on that car.

Oh, wow. It had a straight six and it was like a 232. That same engine that was actually bought from International Harvester, that was the 232 inline six cylinder that was in that Rambler American was the same engine. If you bought like a Jeep, like when the Jeep Wrangler first came out, same engine. The four liter. Right. What became the four liter was that, it might have been a 258. Whichever it was, it was that same engine that we had had been putting in Jeeps forever and ever and ever. Right. But by the way, it was the same engine that you would find in a Hornet or you would find it in a Gremlin. Oh, it's the same engine that's in my 67 Rambler.

Correct. My brother had a Gremlin. You know why they kept it so long? It's a great engine. It was completely bulletproof.

Like I said, my sister put over 750,000 miles on it. So the Rambler American became the Hornet. Yeah. And the Hornet, they were like, we need a station wagon. So they came out with originally a two wheel drive Hornet station wagon they called a sport about, which I thought was a really, really neat name and it was a beautiful car. Do you remember that car Bob? Well, I was wondering if that was before the Eagle.

Correct. That's exactly what it became. And the Eagle, they made it. Wasn't that four wheel drive? When they changed, they put the four wheel drive in it. They became an Eagle station wagon. The clouds are clearing.

The clouds are clearing. So now let's fast forward. I'm going to guess it must have been in the maybe 91, 92 when Lee Iacocca goes over to France because Renault has totally dropped the ball on Eagle. They've dropped the ball on Jeep.

It's just unbelievable. And so Iacocca being the car man that he was, he was a car guy, Bob, I'm telling you, he was a genius. Okay. So he goes over there and of course he wants the Jeep Wrangler. And of course, you know, he wants a Jeep Cherokee, but what they show him on there, you know, look, look, look, look what we've got these plans to make a new Eagle wagon and what the, it was the Eagle wagon that they had designed at Renault was what became the grand Cherokee. But when Iacocca looked at it, he goes, nobody wants an Eagle.

We're going to call that a Jeep grand Cherokee. I get it. You get it. I get it. Yep. And here's the absolute, I think it worked out.

Well, yeah, because here's the deal. An Eagle station wagon, Renault Eagle station wagon in that year range, they went from $19,000, $20,000. They were not terribly expensive because you know, who would buy an Eagle?

It was just that way. Or Iacocca comes out with a car. If I'm not mistaken, it was $25,000 as a Jeep. And within that's testing my memory bank and we sold every, I mean, we sold those things like, I know, cause I was a Jeep dealer and we sold those things.

There was no way you could keep one in stock. Now you could keep all the Eagle station wagons you ever wanted, but you couldn't keep a grand Cherokee in stock. And within two years we were selling grand Cherokee limiteds in the 30, $33,000 range for a very nice, you know, and it just goes to show you the man that the market drives all that stuff. And, and well, I'll give you a little story that I don't think most people have heard when, when Chrysler took over American motors, you know, their marketing people said, well, let's take a look at who these, who these American motor cheap buyers are. Oh, I hate to cut you off cause we got to go to a break, but I'm dying to hear that story. I mean, we're going to go to a break when we come back.

Yes. We're going to hear more about American motors, but you're getting, we're going to even go a little weirder for you. And I'm going to show you how that relates to why in the old Testament, the women were not allowed to come into the temple during their menstrual cycle. Like what's up with that, Robbie. You're listening to the truth network and truth network.com we know whatever your kind of car you'll see it in our mind. You'll see that there you go.

We are honoring, and I mean, we are honoring the life of AMC, especially with the authors and the people who put this book together, the complete book of AMC cars, American corporations, 1954 to 1988. And here's the biblical correlation. If you guys, you know, I mentioned this and you're going to say, Robbie, that's weird, but I think when you see whatever I'm going with this, you're going to say that it's absolutely beautiful.

And here's how it correlates. God absolutely loves life. He loves it. He thought about you before the foundation of the earth. And he's so excited you're around. You have no idea.

He loves you more than can you possibly imagine. And which by the way, he also loves every grasshopper and he loves every sparrow and all that God loves life. And so when you see these, and a lot of people say, God's mad at women because when they have their menstrual cycle in the old, in the temple back in the days, when they had the temple, they weren't allowed to come in there during their menstrual cycle. And then afterwards, they'd have to go to the priest.

Well, what's going on with that? And then they would have to come out of what they called a mikvah. The Jews called it a mikvah. We call it baptism. Here's why.

It's absolutely gorgeous. And it has to do with why God honors life and why I honor AMC, Hudson, and all those things. Is there was an egg that didn't make it. And because it didn't make it, God wants to honor that life. And so there's a period of mourning. Like you see somebody wearing black at a funeral that's completely natural because they are mourning the life that didn't happen. And God goes into mourning because everything from his standpoint, if Adam and Eve hadn't done what they were supposed to be, was supposed to be life.

Right? And by the way, there were things that would happen with a man and they weren't allowed to go either because he felt the same way about it, that there was a potential life that didn't happen. And so there's a mourning process.

But here's the cool part. You know, when you were baptized, if you're a Christian, I hope you are, they said, buried in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life, you see. And so the women, after their period, which was seven days, was the point where they couldn't go into the temple area. After that, seven days. On the eighth day, which is the miracle day, it's the day of the cleansing of the temple, the day a boy would be circumcised. It's the eighth day.

It's a big, huge deal. On the eighth day, right, they would have a mikvah. They would go into this water baptism and they'd come out.

Why? Because God's so excited that now there's a new life in place and a potential for a new you, a new person coming out. Isn't that cool, Bob? Very, very, very cool. And so we want to honor a life that actually gave birth to so much of what people celebrate. If you own a Jeep today and several of those vehicles came out of, to some extent, you know, there was a man by the name of Willys. And there was Kaiser, right? And I don't know if you knew the connection between Kaiser and Willys, but they were part of that. And then, you know, all these things, all these men, we stand on the shoulders of great men. And there was a man behind, you know, Iacocca and, you know, and all those things. And so when we left our heroes, I should be highlighting them, I apologize, but I had to get that out, guys. You're telling us a story and I don't want to miss it.

I'm so sorry. Yes. Well, when Chrysler took over American Motors Jeep, the marketing people said, well, let's see what sort of buyers that this company has. They're probably just a bunch of, you know, lower, low income people. Well, they looked through and they looked at the people who were buying the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, and they had higher incomes and higher demographics than even the most expensive Chrysler buyer. They were the highest demographics in Chrysler Corporation. And they were amazed because they had thought, like so many people, well, you know, Jeep, it's a utility vehicle. It's not something that wealthy people like.

Well, they didn't realize that wealthy people were buying them by the score, by the thousands, and which is still true today. It's a Jeep Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer or Wagoneer Limited, rather. That's a really like a halo car. You know, people look at it and say, wow, that, you know, that really is, you know, the top of the line and, you know, just shows how great the brand is. Darrell Bock You know, I love that term halo car.

I really, really do. As that there are so many great cars that were halo cars. You know, the Corvette itself is a halo car that just gives the increase to the value. You know, Chrysler was the king, from my standpoint, being a Chrysler guy and an AMC guy. You know, the AMX, if you're familiar with that car, Bobby, you're familiar with the AMX? Bobby Stevens Oh, yeah. Darrell Bock Are you familiar with the 1969 AMX?

Bobby Stevens Not specifically. Darrell Bock That car had a compression ratio like 12 point something to one. It was a rocket ship. And it only seated two people like a Corvette. Bobby Stevens Yeah. But it was a lot less expensive than a Corvette.

Darrell Bock Oh, yeah. But man, it came in a straight drive. And because of the compression ratio, when you took your foot off the gas, it almost threw you through the windshield.

You know, because that idea of compression breaking, like man, you did not want to downshift that car real fast and go into a turn or something because it would lock up the back wheel. But anyway, Bobby Stevens American Motors made a lot of terrific cars. You mentioned earlier the Pacer.

And you know, how can anybody forget a Pacer once they've seen it? You know, it was just the most unique new car design anybody ever introduced. And it was wildly successful for a short while.

And then, you know, for some reason, well, for various reasons, which we talked about in the book, its popularity faded, and the car, you know, went out of production. But Darrell Bock And you remember the book, Oh God, you know, with George Burns, and John Denver, you know, that featured a Pacer. And when you really think about it from a car business history standpoint, you know, the Chrysler came up with this whole idea.

I'm trying to think what they called it. But the Concorde had it and all these cars had wheels on each corner so they could get this wider stance. Oh, cab forward. Darrell Bock Right, cab forward design. Well, the Pacer had that going on long before the designers before. It was genius. It was genius. You can tell we're having fun here today on The Christian Car Guy Show.

And this is a live show. And we would love for you to call in with your favorite AMC moment or some life that you want to honor. We would love that you call us 866-348-7884. I know we've tickled something.

You call us 866-34-TRUTH. We'll be right back. Oh, if you don't remember that song, it was so funny. And for us Rambler Dealers, we loved it, you know. You know, nowadays, if you go to any gathering of Rambler owners, that song is always played over the loudspeakers. Of course, of course. That's like our theme song.

And so we are honoring a life here, a life of, you know, maybe there's some great memories for you. And, you know, during the break, Bob pointed out. Go ahead, Bob, point it out.

Point it out. In high school, a young lady that went to school with me had the classic car wearing blue jeans, the Levi's Gremlin. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It was just amazing to me that when I saw that, I was like, how cool is that? My sister had one. My sister had one. And, you know, my dad was a pretty creative guy. And I had a Gremlin X myself at one point with a 304 three-speed. It was a rocket ship. But what my dad would do with those cars, again, we lived in Albuquerque. And the University of Albuquerque was there. And, excuse me, the University of New Mexico was there. And their mascot was a Lobo. So he made an L-Lobo edition of the Gremlin, which those were all 304 V8s. He got the logo from the Lobo that UNM had on the side of their football helmets. And in the white stripe or the stripe that was on the side of the Gremlin, man, here was this L-Lobo. And back then, if you might remember, CB antennas were a big deal. And so he had a big whip CB antenna on it. Wow. Was that a successful marketing adventure?

Oh, my goodness. It took a regular Gremlin, you know. As I recall, Gremlins were about $1,200 to $1,800. A Gremlin X about $21,000 or something like that. But, you know, he would take it up to $3,500, $3,600 for the Lobo L-Lobo edition. That's a nice sticker. Oh, yeah. But, you know, you could get one in there also in the world.

But Bob Dilmore's Key American, you know, that way you go. You know, I had a Gremlin X too, but mine was a 6. I didn't have the V8. I wanted the V8, you know, but had to settle for the 6. And they had those white, you know, they was when white letter tires first kind of came out, you know.

We went from red walls to, for the sporty look. You begin to get those. You and I must be about the same age. Yeah. I was born in 1955. Oh, okay. I'm a couple of years older than you.

I'm 56. Yeah. So we're, you know. Oh, yeah. The same era. Great times. And so, you know, I have to tell you this other story.

I always get a kick out of Bob. Because we were the Jeep dealer, you know, and you can imagine how many Jeeps are in Albuquerque. It's in the mountains for those of you who don't know, the Sandia Mountains. And so we traded for a 1943 Willys CJ2A, right? And this thing had a hard top on it. It was, and back then you put all this stuff on it. And it was painted the sort of powder blue. It was kind of weird looking.

And so we called it the Blue Goose. And, you know, back then those vehicles had six volt systems. Oh, yeah. And generators. They didn't have alternators.

Do you ever deal with one of those problems? Very, very, very, very little. Well, of course. With a generator, when you stop at a traffic light, the lights dim because the motor slows down. So the generator slows down.

Well, the other thing is that, you know, we tried to explain to everybody that bought the Blue Goose. Do not jump this car off. Oh, gosh.

12 volt. Yeah. So. Just let it roll.

Right. And it was just, you know, you cannot leave these hubs locked. You know, there was all sorts of things about that car that were unique to its age. But everybody that would get it would tear it up.

They'd either jump it off or do whatever, because they just didn't know. And so we traded for that car about every other year. Well, you're coming back the Blue Goose. She's back.

She's back. It was, you know, just like, it didn't really have an owner's manual back then. But, you know, it was something that, it's just a funny story.

But I know you're listening and you're thinking, man, I know a story about 866-348-7884, 86634, true. So I got to know, man, the book again is, it is the complete book of AMC cars. And it's got all the pictures. It has the Pierre Cardin javelin. It has the Levi Gremlin. It has, you know, all those Hudson's and Nash's and oh my goodness, and the Metropolitan, you know. And the Pacer. Yeah.

It's in there. And even up into the, you know, they made, I think it was called a sprint that looked like a Hornet hatchback. And it had a tent that came out.

Yeah. All those pictures that brought back all sorts of crazy memories. And when we put the book together, we tried to use photographs that people have never seen before as much as possible. And, you know, my partner on the book shot a lot of the photography himself and he did just a fantastic job. So visually, it's a really beautiful book. And you read it, it's got a lot of information.

It's got a lot of good stories in it. If you are a car guy, I got to tell you, this makes them wonderful. I mean, anybody that's flipping through these pictures, you know, bring back a lot of memories of, you know, the car company that was competing at the time against General Motors, you know, Ford and Chrysler, which had them outgunned financially, unbelievably. Talk about David and Goliath. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

You don't have to be a biblical scholar to understand this. So what possessed you guys? You obviously have a love for it.

What were you thinking when you started to put this together? Well, I'm a longtime AMC guy, you know, I was an AMC salesman. And I've owned a lot of AMC cars over the years. I just love them, you know, and like I said, my current car is a 67 Rambler convertible that is just beautiful. And it's only got about 150,000 miles on it.

And it looks like new. And people say it's the prettiest car in town because I live in a very small town. And I've lived in Milwaukee my whole life. So Kenosha is 40 miles from where I live. As a kid, you would see the bodies go from the body plant in Milwaukee on semis down to Kenosha. You knew people that worked for AMC. It's really part of the southeastern Wisconsin culture. It still is. And I was walking downtown Kenosha last summer with an AMC styling shirt that I got from Pat. And people would come up and go, Oh, I got an AMC or I had an AMC or I worked at AMC. It was just incredible how much American Motors is part of the culture or the part of the fabric of this part of the country. And so when somebody says Kelvinator does that?

Tell them about that. Because it was because of Kelvinator that American Motors had, or Nash had the first real air conditioning system in a car. Yeah. Wow.

Because refrigeration. And it was the best too. By far the first, but the best. Yeah.

By far. And not that expensive compared to what a lot of other companies eventually charged. One thing I need to mention is what Pat and I did. This is, it looks like a car book. It's really a people book wrapped around cars. If you think about it, Pat has done all these interviews with these former AMC employees and, and, uh, high executives. Uh, and we tried to work their stories into the book as much as possible because that's the real fascination. The cars are interesting. People are important, much more important than cars.

So you've got a guy like George Romney wouldn't work on Sunday. He was that deep, deep in his face. Oh, absolutely.

His feet, his faith was, was so deep. Um, and on and on and on. And I'm not like a company like Studebaker or even Chrysler who had a lot of poor management. I don't think there was much really in the, in the history of American Motors of poor management. And even the guy like, like, um, Roy Ebernath who tried to take on the big three and failed, but he built a product line that carried the company through until the 1980s.

So it's, it's a fascinating people book as well as a fascinating car book. I don't think I ever told you this story, but the first chairman of American Motors, George Mason, um, I never got to meet because he died when I was five years old. But of course, George Romney, who was a very religious man and his wife became friends with them because George worked for him. And Mrs. Romney, once we were, I knew the Romney's very well. And, and we're sitting on her couch talking one day. Uh, and she said, you know, George Mason was a very, very Christian man. She said, I admired him because he treated everybody so well, the way you're supposed to treat people. And she's like, Harry, he was the chairman of a big, it was, you know, number, it was the 80th largest, uh, industrial company in America.

And he would stop in the, in the, in the hall and talk with anybody, uh, you know, be they an executive or the guy who was mopping the floor. That's so cool. I hate, we got to go to another break guys. I could definitely hear all of, and clearly those, I mean, you know, they, we all stand on the shoulders of these and a lot of people riding around in jeeps.

They don't realize that the roots that they have. We'll be right back with a whole lot more Christian. You're listening to the one. And you remember that song? I remember that song as part of a campaign. Somebody's campaign back in my early life had that song. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. It was that tune. I should say it's been hijacked a number of times, but obviously American motors did whoever came up with those words. They rhyme tremendously, but I have to reminisce again for a second and say, you know, my very first car, my dad was a hardworking man and he intended that his son would be hardworking. And so for me to get my first car, I had to buy it. And so I worked literally back then washing cars.

When I was 14 years old, you could get your driver's license when you were 14 in New Mexico at the time. And I worked all summer long for a dollar a day, like eight hours, you got a dollar. But I mean, you had to, we didn't wash a few cars.

I mean, we were covering the whole lot, you know, at least two or three times a week because it's pretty dusty in Albuquerque. Anyway, at the end of the month, I got together $100 and I bought a 1960 Rambler American, which was actually a classic. They have the picture again in the book because it was the first year they were able to get the wheelbase and the styling together so they could actually make this car that became the Rambler American, which was affectionately referred to by most of my family as an upside down bathtub. I called it Andy. I called it Andy.

And in my high school, I didn't get a lot of looks like, man, that's a nice car. And it had what they called three on the tree. Right? Yes. Oh, yeah.

It was a lot of fun. With a non synchro first gear. Yeah, right.

Double clutching back in the day. Yeah. If you don't, I had a Rambler American, my first car was a 61 Rambler American. I asked my father to buy me a car and my father said, Well, I've got seven kids, I can't buy each of your car, you're gonna have to buy one on your own. I said, Oh, okay. He said, How much money you got?

I'll help you find one. I said, Well, I got like $25. And he said, Well, that's gonna limit the field a little bit.

That brings the bar down quite a bit. He came up with a 67 Rambler American with about 100,000 miles on it. Bear Basic had rubber floor mats. The radio didn't even have push buttons.

This was the basic radio push buttons. He helped me fix the rust. It was a great car, though. I enjoyed it. I loved it. But nobody ever says, Hey, who's that kid in a hot Rambler pulling into the drive-in?

That just doesn't happen. Yeah, there were, you know, and I, again, I just, I marvel at how, you know, all this affected so many people's lives in so many different ways. You know, those plants that when American Motors sold to Renault, they couldn't, you know, for years, the US government bought their vehicles from American Motors, AMC, all those Jeeps and all that stuff. And so they made, they came up with American General so that they could continue to build the vehicles in those plants. And so the Hummer and all those things that you see around to this day came out of those American General plants, which were originally right.

And so Iraqi freedom, all that stuff, people are still riding around in Ramblers, whether they realize it or not. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the guy who designed the first Wrangler, you know, when they went from the CJ series to the Wrangler, he's the same guy who designed the Hummer and Humvee.

Right. Chuck Mashigan. And I interviewed him a long, long time ago when he was, he was living in a nursing home by then he had gotten very old, but he told me the story and it was and he showed me some of the prototypes that they built before they settled on a final design. He was a he was a very interesting guy.

And like Tom said, this is a book a lot about people because people, car people are fascinating. Well, see, my father actually helped the Hummer team too. He was just, he ended up selling dealerships, and he went into the consulting business later on in life. And he'd worked for Buick for years and years and years before he became an AMC dealer. And so he had all kinds of background.

And so he helped Hummer take the vehicles that were selling to the government and create the line that they could sell to the American public. Oh, the H1. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Right. That's interesting. And so he, he went, and I'll never forget, he went up to the test plane, told me what he was involved in. And he was like, Son, you're just not gonna believe this car, man. He said, you know, because we being Jeep dealers, we understood all this stuff that man, they got tires that like inflate themselves.

He was talking about the articulation and the suspension and he was blown away at what they had done with four wheel drive since he was last familiar with it, you know, and and he had the best time and I actually have in my closet, some of the Hummer shirts that he, you know, that he got when, when they came out with the H1 and all that stuff. Wow. That's interesting. That's very interesting.

I worked with a Marine who had intimate knowledge of what a Hummer could do under wartime conditions and they are incredible. Oh, yeah, they absolutely, it was genius. And I, I also found it absolutely fascinating that they used, you know, those diesel engines.

Yes. Because, you know, that was something they were, they were smart of the management of the company when General Motors was discontinuing that V8 diesel that they had. Right. They said, well, we'll buy the tooling. And since then, they've been able to make it reliable and they've like tripled the horsepower that comes out of it. So, and they built it themselves.

So they, you know, they save a lot of money on, you know, drivetrains. Right. And so, you know, you know, Armed Forces, you know, have been used in these vehicles and again, coming out of Wisconsin all these years, right? So, yeah. And so what, so I, my dad always used to make fun.

I don't know. But he said, you know, all those guys know how to make up their refrigerators. And so, I know they did, they were jokes that, Kelvinator refrigerators were going to come with four wheel brakes and stuff like that. Yeah.

I heard them all. When you're on the front line as a rambler or AMC salesman, you hear all that stuff. But, you know, people would come in, they'd make their jokes, but then they'd buy them because they knew that we made good cars.

Yeah. Well, see, you know, my father worked for Buick. He was actually, with Buick, he became the national used car manager for Buick. He was on the board of General Motors at one point and the director of national fleet sales for Buick. And so, and he helped bring Oakland in the country actually. And so he had all those connections.

Yeah. My dad would have been a great interview for you. Unfortunately, he went to just about 2019. So, but, and so every time, you know, he would, he may have been just a dealer, but he was always telling them what they needed to do. Well, you know, the dealers know more sometimes. Years ago, I tracked down every, uh, former Nash and AMC executive I could find. And I recorded interviews with all of them, um, at their houses or, or wherever. And, uh, I traveled all over the country to do this and people said, what are you wasting your time with them for, you know, do that 10 years from now? Well, almost every single one of those people has passed away since then, but we've got all their memories stored on, on, uh, video discs.

Uh, video discs. So I am so grateful. Yeah. I mean, that's honoring to me, you're honoring, you know, these guys spent their whole life in, in, in what, you know, trying to design things that would make things better and cheaper, more reliable, you know, all those things that, that, that our business provided jobs, provided good paying union jobs for people who ordinarily wouldn't have access to them and it changed lives. Unfortunately, we got to go.

We got to go because I love this show. So I am so honored that you guys would do this with me again, Patrick Foster, Tom Glatch with the book, the complete book of AMC cars. This thing is a treasure they sent me when I couldn't be more happy about it. You can go to my website, christiancarguy.com. You can link right there and just order it.

Um, and again, just go back on Amazon or wherever you get it and give them a great rating as it is an amazing book. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great one, gentlemen. Yes. And for all of you listening, remember what I always say, you know, Oh, this is the truth network.