Back in the early 60s, no one was hot rodding Rambler Americans. It just wasn’t done, or rarely at best, but with the benefit of many years gone by and a new appreciation for almost any car from the era, we see creations like this.
This 1962 Rambler American convertible is powered by a 350 Chevy with Edelbrock aluminum heads, a 750 Dominator carb and an HEI distributor feeding power through a Bowtie 700R overdrive trans with a 2000 stall converter. Flowmaster exhaust gets the sound right, American wheels on all new suspension get the stance right, this car pushes all the right buttons.
Looks good to me!
I like it, too. AMC got into the sporty and performance business in the later 60s with their Rebel and Javelin and AMX and a few others, but in the early 60s, cars like this were a non threatening Mom and Pop sort of vehicle. That’s why hot rodding one now is even better.
Back in the late 70’s I was hot rodding a ’65 Rambler American. First with a Ford 289 that really didn’t fit well, then a 360 from a Matador. Then a Chevy small block, 4-speed automatic, and Pontiac frame, suspension and brakes.
It’s always a lot more interesting when someone hot rods the less common choices. Ramblers are a great example and when I was in high school, I remember a guy with a Studebaker Lark that was really built. I never knew what he had in there, but it was the only hot rod Studebaker I knew of at the time, though Studebaker made some strong cars at the factory, several models with superchargers no less. I think their advertising must have been less effective because not many guys I knew thought much of them, actually, they didn’t think of them at all, maybe that’s why they went out of business. Nowadays, guys will resto-mod almost anything and the most mundane cars turn up with huge power and great looks which is really cool.
Reg; “Back in the early 60s, no one was hot rodding Rambler Americans” _ You couldn’t be more wrong.
Arguably, American Motors built the first Muscle Car with their 1957 ‘Rebel’ V8, with either a 4-barrel or Fuel Injection.
The 327″ V8’s were hot engines with after market support. I personally installed a Rebel 327″ V8 in a 1963 Rambler American convertible like the featured car. That car met its demise on Halloween night in1967. I had just got back in the car after the drunk owner/drive promised he would drive sensible. Not long after he passed out at the wheel and I pushed the wheel to the left and tried to reach the brakes and then I ended up on the hood after going through the windshield when the car hit the end of a guard rail. Everybody but the driver and I were thrown out of the car, I went through the windshield. And we were lucky, had it not caught the end of the guard rail we would have rolled down a steep hill into a river. Nobody died or was seriously injured. I was the only sober person in the car, Hard to believe it was nearly fifty years ago.
I also installed the smaller 250″ 1956 Hornet ‘Special’ V8 in a 49′ Ford coupe. It handily bested the stock Chevy and Ford V8’s of the day, and when a 4-barrel manifold and carb, with a 3/4 cam and dual exhaust with Cherry Bombs were installed, it handily matched and beat a lot of cars with much bigger engines. Hudson, Nash, and Packard guys were some of the first to recognize the new American V8 as hot rodding material
It sounds like my observation was off the mark, probably because my own involvement in cars was just getting up to speed in the early to mid 60s, easy to miss things like that.
It would make for an interesting conversation to try identifying the first muscle car. It’s popular to say it was the 64 GTO, but I think that was just the first heavily advertised car that took off in the marketplace specifically aiming to be thought of as a performance machine based on a standard model. Like my comment above says, Studebakers were actually factory muscle cars, though certainly less well known as such.
Guys were hot rodding cars for decades before then, but which car straight from the factory was the first to hold that title? Inquiring hot rodders want to know though I doubt there would be universal agreement if you had more than three or four guys in that discussion.
The 1940 Buick Century may have been the first factory muscle car. It was the light, Special body with a Roadmaster engine with a dual carb manifold using progressive linkage. They were very successful in the Pre-War Stock class at the drags in the late 40s and early 50s.
Way before my time, so I can’t say, but if we’re going to go that far back, we’re going to have to redefine the term “muscle car era.”