Without the bumper it looks downright shocked and alarmed, doesn’t it! I recall exactly two instances of happening upon a Gremlin parked curbside. When I was four, my parents—who had just decided to get a second car—and I, on a walk round our suburban-Denver subbdivision, came upon a parked orange Gremlin; I asked them please not to get that kind of car because it hurt my eyes.
Last Spring, over four decades later, I parked behind this Trans-Am Red over Snow White 1974 Gremlin X in Lillooet, BC.
It’s a Gremlin X:
A Gremlin X, y’hear?
Its taillights are very much of their time, Fresnel optics and all:
They remind me of certain other taillights I’m more closely familiar with; those of the 1970 Dodge Dart:
Here on the fuel cap appeared a gremlin. Still does, too; s/he’s not an ex-gremlin on this Gremlin X:
This particular Gremlin X appears to have been first sold in North Vancouver (that address is now/still a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership):
But take another look at the rear:
I suspect that “4.2 litre” callout was maybe not there when the car was new, and might be telling a fib. That’ll be the AMC 258 six-pot motor, and those great big rear tires and sizeable twin pipes hint at V8 power. I’m not certain, though; I didn’t hear it run, and there’s a healthy enough aftermarket for the 258 and its begats (including the later Jeep 4.0) that it’s surely possible to hot one way up.
There’s a big tachometer and some kind of hi-zoot shifter, too:
The ’74-up big rear bumper is counterbalanced by…er, wait a minute; no, it’s not anymore. Usually cars look somewhere between incomplete and not better to me with a missing bumper, but this hints to me at the massive loop bumpers of the time, and has me wondering what it might look like if this header panel assembly (grille, lamps and reflectors, etc) were built as the front bumper:
Hey, watch this. First, here’s roughly the view that prompted 4-year-old me to comment unfavourably on the Gremlin’s design:
I think it was mostly the shape of the quarter glass that put me off. But look what happens when I just raise the camera overhead:
To my eye, that’s a remarkably big improvement. It looks less dumpy and more scooty. The proportions; lines; curves, and angles make a lot more sense; they all seem a great deal more coherent and coördinated from this angle, and even the noise from the chrome roof rack and air deflector seems more harmonious.
Safety first, kids! (Also: Herculite as a safety glass brand):
This car really does look better without its front bumper. I wonder if it were possible in those days to clear the front-impact standard without one of those railroad-tie bumpers.
Also: I always thought this car’s stylistic weak spot was the rear quarter glass. The mild restyle they did when this car became the Spirit finally solved that problem.
All I can figure is AMC’s stylists wanted something truly distinctive. The Spirit’s appearance, while definitely better, was also much more traditional and just too conventional for the Gremlin, maybe too much like an abbrieviated, 2-door station wagon (i.e, Hornet Sportabout) than a sporty coupe.
It’s worth noting that the early Hornet 2-door had a very stodgy roofline. It wasn’t until the 1973 refresh when the Hornet 2-door sprouted a sloping, hatchback roof version that actually looked good.
Exactly, the design choices were very much deliberate, the Gremlin wasn’t “accidentally ugly” like the Aztek or Edsel. Detroit had been trying to head off the import invasion with better styling(like the Pinanfarina cribbing Vega) more gimmicks, bigger bodies, bigger engines, more doors, more options etc. to lure wayward import buyers back to the mothership, Detroit was certain these things are what all American buyers want. The Beetle was always seen by them as nothing more than being small and cheap, that it can’t be anything else, and anything they can come up with will surely be superior. The Gremlin was arguably the only domestic car that hit a big intangible mark that made the Beetle appealing to many buyers – it was as counterculture of a car as an American car had truly been up to that point.
The Spirit however came out when the Beetle was gone, counterculture was waning and imports like the Beetle were supplanted by the Rabbit(Golf) and Japanese imports, the FWD Accord came out a year before the Spirit! These are what the Spirit was now competing with, not a car designed in the 30s with an air cooled engine mounted in the back, but state of the art FWD in modern nimble chassis with wholly practical conventional styling. The Gremlin was half Hornet, it was a pretty conventional looking car to begin with, so it was an easy effort to make it cosmetically fit in with the new players, but the Spirit lost what made the Gremlin appealing in the process, it just became a mediocre subcompact car with no definable qualities, and it probably would have been received that way had it looked that way from the start, rather than being the dark horse hit for AMC the Gremlin had been in its first 5 or so years.
Imagine the discussions in Detroit in, say, 1968, on how to combat the Beetle’s growing subcompact market. GM had already tried the ‘similar, but different’ approach with the Corvair with less-than-stellar-results. So, they tried the Italian-styled but mostly conventional and poorly-engineered Vega.
Although completely American designed and built, the Pinto seemed somewhat more akin to an English car (and it did start with Cortina-sourced engines). Chrysler decided to go with rebadged Mitsubishi and Hillman models. The Japanese connection worked. The English Mopar? Not so much.
That left AMC the lone domestic to give another straight shot at the Beetle, which definitely explains the Gremlin’s ‘out-there’ quarter panel/rear styling. Still old Nash Rambler at the front and underneath, but the goofy name and rear styling was appropriate for the time, and AMC did okay with it, at least relative to how the competition approached small car design.
I agree with you. The Gremlin (right down to its name) was in the spirit of the times. It was a middle finger to the Big Three, showing them how a seemingly absurd chop of the cleaver to a rather mundane sedan could create something utterly fresh.
There’s no way the Big Three would have ever done this. They took their design prowess very seriously, especially GM and Ford.
I loved the Gremlin for that reason, but I do think they should have shortened the front end from the get-go, like they eventually did. It really improves its visual balance, to the extent that word even applies.
Agreed about the Spirit too; by the time it came out it looked like what it was: a desperate attempt to dress up an old design to make it look “competitive” with the other hatchbacks. It didn’t, and it totally lacked the Gremlin’s impact. But by the 1980’s, the world had moved on, and buyers took things more seriously.
It wouldn’t have cost much more to turn the Hornet into the ’79 Spirit rather than the Gremlin way back in 1970, and then they’d have a normal-looking car to sell, albeit one with even less rear seat space but a more useful cargo hold. It would have looked better than its GM or Ford competition and given a better ownership experience than either of them.
V8 implants were quite common on these.
Paul is correct. Aftermarket and private garage transplants were easy to be found.
The factory AMC 304 V8 engine made this a fun little car.
Knew a guy in high school that had one of these with a 401 from a ’71 police Matador. A spare pair of shorts was highly advised 🙂
As humans we tend to anthropomorphize the cars front end into a face. That Gremlin minus the bumper is giving me the vibes of this face. It truly was an out of this world design. 😉
Wherever it is, looks glorious in the back ground .
Is that possibly original paint ? .
We had these in the C.O.L.A. fleet, I had to stock the gas caps as they kept vanishing off the cars when parked .
-Nate
I’m quite sure it’s original paint and decals.
As with the 1974 AMC Matador; removing the federally mandated 5 mph crash bumper from this Gremlin reveals a much more attractive car.
From the higher angle it starts to look like a Bond Bug.
I guess I will go against the consensus (when does that ever happen?) and say that I always loved the looks of the Gremlin. For what it was, I think they did an admirable job of chopping off the tail and somehow making it look cute. I will rejoin the pack when I say that I prefer the pre-73 cars with the small bumper to the later ones.
Though I have never been much of an AMC guy, I will confess that one of my guilty pleasures would be a Gremlin X with the 304 and a stick shift.
The earliest and the last Gremlins(by name) were the best, the 77 restyle chopped out a substantial amount of front overhang which I think was the most awkward part of the Gremlin to begin with, but got way worse in 1973 with the big bumpers.
I like Gremlins too, one thing that is undeniable whether one likes them or not is it’s one of the most identifiable cars ever made, of all the beetle wannabes the Gremlin is at least successful in that aspect.
Starsky and Hutch’s cute little Canadian cousin.
The down angle definitely works, the Gremlin looks too tall and stubby in broad profile to really pull off the look it was going for – the chopped AMX GT concept. That’s so low you’d naturally be looking down on it
Oh, interesting! That certainly explains it.
There’s a heat exchanger of some kind in front of the radiator. Can’t tell if it’s an A/C condenser—looks a little small, but so was the one on my Volvo 164—but aircon seems unlikely on this car. Transmission fluid cooler? Seems too big for that (plus, why?).
It was in the same catalog as the shifter & the tach, and they needed another item to get the free shipping? 😉
“People who bought this item also bought…”!
Great find and pics Daniel. It might have helped if AMC had offered painted bumpers on the ‘X’, and styled them more, to better integrate the larger bumpers with the body. Even the earlier bumpers would have looked good painted. My quick example remains too rectangular, but it gives a hint.
I remember being impressed the biggest AMC dealer in Ottawa (Kaydee Motors) still spent some money on their metal dealer badges. A number of the local Big Three dealers had already started using cheap press-on decals.
This ‘hockey stick’ graphic was probably the most flattering of the various decals AMC used to highlight the unusual ‘C’ pillar design.
AMCs of this era were notoriously nose heavy. Removing the Federal bumper would have balanced the car out a tad.
The Gremlin C-pillar has been borrowed by virtually every SUV/crossover on the market today.
Nice find Daniel, as usual the original slim bumpers looked much better, and the 1974 and up units just screamed “see, we TOLD you they’d look ugly!
Well, or they screamed “Fine, we’ll comply with the bumper (…seat belt, head restraint, emission control…) regs in the nastiest possible way, then once the complaints roll in we’ll see what Congress has to say about all this”.
That AMC store was originally built as Dave Buck Ford. I grew up quite close to there. Us car crazy kids were not driving age yet but we regularly made the trip down to Marine Drive to ogle the new cars especially in late summer to see all the latest designs parked out back before selling days! Dick Irwin Chev Olds, Ridgemont Chrysler Plymouth, Ritchie Lincoln Mercury, Conroy Pontiac Buick all interspersed with import car dealers. Sadly they are all gone now except the dealer mentioned and Capilano VW.
As an AMC aficionado, I can only say the Gremlin looks perfect to me, but so does pretty
much everything else especially from the seventies to the end of the line. Sort of like the
Punk rock girls I associated with back in the day, wearing grandmas dress but anti hip hip.
While I’m a big fan of alternatives to “just stick a V8 in there,” I think an AMC V8 might actually be less nose-heavy than the 4.2L I6. But if you want to keep the six, I feel like I’ve heard that you can mix-and-match parts from the 4.2L and the later Jeep fuel-injected 4.0L to get some good power out of this. I think I’d just be tempted to do a 401 V8 though.
I’m torn on the subject: full EFI 4.0 swap? Mexican VAM 282 swap? Mix of both?
Yeah I haven’t read about this in years (I don’t own a vehicle with the AMC I6) but mix of both sounds right to me. I’d think it’d be something like a 4.0L head, 282 bottom end, and probably some custom pistons to work with both.
Well, yeah, something to raise the compression to levels appropriate to first-world gasoline (the 282 had low compression to cope with the lousy Pemex swill of the day)
It’s got that Hot Wheels vibe to it, but since I’ve always traditionally been far more of a Matchbox guy I have to confess I really strongly prefer the Spirit to the Gremlin. Not that what I think matters a whit of course. The owner has done a superb job of either maintaining it or restoring it or modifying it or a little of all of the above, I’ll of course hasten to add, it’s impressive to see one this presentable.
The front though gives me Lancia Fulvia or Renault Gordini vibes, it’s maybe one set of round lights short of the full effect though…but I am fully on board with that look!
I was always interested by the shape/styling of the Gremlin. Given the lo buck$ budget AMC/Dick Teague had to work with, I found their solution to a sub-compact very innovative; altho its driving dynamics left much to be desired as did its interior room if one needed to carry 4 people.
The Hornet Sportabout wagon was probably the best of this vehicles’ versions, with the 258 ci 6. Attractive and practical.
Despite my visual interest in the Gremlin, I bought a Nova coupe; too bad it was a GM PO$ build….. 🙁 DFO
Little “G” needs his bumper back.
I spent many hours riding in the passenger seat of my best friend’s mom’s orange Gremlin. Like all their cars, it was bare bones, six and a 3 speed manual. No carpets, just rubber floor mats. They didn’t have much money back then, and they really went cheap and in many ways, bizarre in their vehicle choices. The Gremlin replaced an old Chevy Impala that was rust on wheels at the end, finished off by a rough railroad crossing hit at 35 MPH. It cracked the frame and the left side front suspension collapsed. The Gremlin was their first new car, and would stick around about 15 years until the last kid finished it off by falling asleep going back to college. Once my friend’s parents got some money, they moved away from bare bones strippers to Olds and then Buicks, all bought new and kept only until they were paid for. His dad just died suddenly at 92, and had just bought what would be his last car, one of the mid size Buick SUV’s.
What I remember most about Grmnils was their horrible steering ~ it was *very* slow and driving the car quickly wasn’t much fun considering the amount of wheel winding one had to do .
Then after making a 90 degree corner the steering wheel had to be cranked back, it didn’t unwind quickly like most other cars do .
This was a common problem with Ramblers and other AMC products in the 1960’s .
In general I like the Gremlin and think it’d be a handy car to own, leave the back seat rest folded down and carry crap in it, short so should be easy to parallel park
-Nate
A friend in my Navy helo squadron had a new Gremlin X V-8 in about 1973 or 1974. Between deployments, he allowed me to drive it a couple of times. It was fairly quick but not what anyone would consider a muscle car. I recall thinking that the handling and steering was not that great. It did attract some attention for him.
I’ve not personally seen a 401 transplant into a Gremlin but have heard of it being done. I did meet someone who had done that with a newer Pacer in the late 70’s when they offered up the 304 V-8 option.