Vintage Car Life Review: 1969 AMC-Hurst SC/Rambler – “By George, It Is A Fast Little Car”

 

As automotive conversation pieces go, few speak louder than the 1969 AMC SC/Rambler, a preposterous limited-edition Rambler, concocted by American Motors and Hurst-Campbell, that offered giant-killing performance in a gaudy Captain America costume for a bargain price. Car Life tested the SC/Rambler in May 1969 and dubbed it “an anti-sleeper”: a highly conspicuous budget Supercar that needed very little to be “right up with the wildest street-driven cars around.”

Was this the single most focused, least subtle automobile of the 1960s? There was no question about who manufactured it — the red, white, and blue paint job made that plain enough, even if you were too far away to spot the AMC badge on the nose. As for its mission, nearly every question, criticism, or complaint could be answered with just two numbers: 100.8 mph and $2,998, which were, respectively, its trap speed through the standing quarter mile and its list price, FOB Kenosha.

 

Towards the end of the 1960s, there was a minor war going on to see which automaker could offer the strongest quarter-mile performance at the lowest price. The most commercially successful was the Plymouth Road Runner, a stripped-down intermediate with a big engine, a four-speed transmission, and a cartoon mascot, for a price starting under $3,000.

 

Although American Motors hadn’t offered anything like a Supercar since the limited-edition 1957 Rambler Rebel (the pony car Javelin notwithstanding), this seemed like a reproducible formula. Instead of the intermediate Rebel, however, AMC decided to base their entry on the compact Rambler American — and instead of creating or licensing a cartoon mascot, they made the car itself a cartoon.

The caption of the photo at the bottom of the page reads, “HURST PUT its emphasis where the interest is—in the power package. Result is a surprise entry in the Super Stock crowd, fully capable of low 14 E.T.s. The best part—an everything-included price of less than $3000.”

 

George Hurst, as most muscle car fans well know, was the co-founder of Hurst-Campbell, the premier manufacturer of shifters and shift linkages in this era. (Hurst also invented the Jaws of Life hydraulic rescue tool.) He had recently applied his name to the Hurst/Olds, a special version of the Oldsmobile Cutlass with a 455 engine that violated GM corporate policy on big engines in midsize cars.

 

As for the SC/Rambler, Car Life explained:

Last fall, CAR LIFE, Hurst-Campbell’s George Hurst, and AMC were all thinking along the same lines. We wanted to find out how good a sleeper the American would be with a good set of dealer options. The light weight and short wheelbase would respond well to some intelligent engine modifications and suspension changes. We arranged for a 290-cid Rogue with four-speed to get an idea of the starting point. We had our work cut out for us, even though the dealer-installed options are readily available.

About the same time, Hurst approached AMC with a proposal to manufacture a limited number of specialty AMXs with Hurst modifications, and under his name. AMC had been thinking along the same lines, only in the Road Runner vein.

Why not do the same thing to a Rambler, AMC countered, and get a high-performance car for much less money. It sounded no better—at first—to Hurst than it did to us. The very idea of a 390-cid engine over the front wheels of the little Rambler (our original thinking had been along lines of using the smaller 290-cid V-8).

But after careful analysis of what the 290 had done for our baseline test car (very little, in fact; it was slightly faster and a whole bunch noisier) it was obvious that the 390 wasn’t such a bad idea. Hurst, independently, was coming to the same conclusion. Thus the Rambler Supercar was born, with George Hurst tooling up to modify 500 initially. AMC’s ad agency was to dub the car “American Motors/Hurst SC/Rambler.”

It may be useful to clarify at this point that the AMC 390 engine — which was no relation whatsoever to the Ford 390 engine — used the same block as the smaller 290 and 343 cu. in. V-8s; it was not a “big block” engine like the Chevrolet Turbo-Jet family. This was a modern thinwall iron engine, and relatively lightweight. In the 1969 AMX, where the 290 and four-speed were standard, the official AMA specifications indicate a total weight penalty of 57 lb with the 390, only part of which was the difference in bare engine weight.

 

AMC conceived the SC/Rambler as “a special, limited-edition custom,” and it was a mid-year introduction, first announced on Feb. 13, 1969. Its public introduction was at the Chicago Auto Show in March, a few weeks before this issue of Car Life hit the stands.

 

The editors explained:

Basically, the Scrambler [sic] is standard Rambler with Javelin options like the 390-cid/315-bhp engine, power front disc brakes, AMX rear torque bars, 3.54:1 limited-slip rear axle, and 6-in.-wide wheels with E70-14 Polyglas tires. It also gets standard Rogue handling package (springs, shocks and stiffer antiroll bar). The close-ratio Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed (with Hurst shifter, naturally) bolts to the engine, and various heavy-duty items such as flex-fan, larger radiator, and big clutch are added to balance out the performance package. That’s inside. To proclaim the fact, the outside gets the full treatment—red, white and blue paint (only), hood pins and the world’s most outrageous production cold-air scoop.

Incidentally, despite what Car Life suggested above, AMC made no pretense that the SC/Rambler was built by Hurst. The AMC press release stated that the cars would be built in Kenosha “with on-site modifications directed by Hurst, an industry leader in automotive performance customizing.”

Of the outrageous hood scoop, Car Life said:

It’s fully functional though, and probably has a lot more ram effect than most others. Its height above the hood may put it above the boundary layer. Just in case the air still doesn’t know where to go, the scoop is labeled in large, easy-to-read letters AIR. (A simple vacuum cylinder holds a trap door shut during closed or part throttle operation, then allows it to flap open at full throttle when manifold vacuum is nil.)

 

Like the conceptually similar Road Runner, the SC/Rambler offered no frills. AMC was already selling a stripped-down Rambler American intended to compete with imported compacts on price, starting at $1,998 in base two-door sedan form. The SC/Rambler wasn’t much fancier:

 

Car Life remarked:

Inside, it’s all Rambler: stark seats (no buckets), plain dash, and econo-car trim. Three items set it apart, though: color-keyed head rests (keyed to the outside, not the gray interior); a large-shank, T-handle Hurst shifter; and a tachometer strapped to the steering column by a common hose clamp.

The vivid tri-color head restraints were startling in the otherwise-gray cabin:

 

The Rambler American, originally launched in 1964, had been an attractively shaped car, particularly in hardtop form, but it had never gotten much respect in the States, burdened by AMC’s uncool image and its general lack of verve. (In Argentina, IKA eventually made the Pininfarina-facelifted, Rambler-based IKA Torino into a reasonably credible sport sedan, but few people in the U.S. at this time had ever even heard of it.) By 1969, its last year, the Rambler was so anonymous — and such a non-entity to the street-racer crowd — that it would have made a truly deadly sleeper, but the giant hood scoop and loud paint job left no chance of that.

 

I should mention that there were two different SC/Rambler paint schemes: the more common “A” scheme seen above and the rarer “B” scheme, pictured below, which had narrower red stripes with blue along the lower body rather than on the hood and rear deck.

 

I didn’t find any consensus about how many “B” scheme cars were built, with various estimates ranging from 297 to 328 of a total 1969 SC/Rambler production run of 1,512 cars. (Some “B” scheme survivors were eventually repainted with the “A” scheme, which hasn’t helped to establish a definitive count.)

 

There were also some variations in interior trim, with some cars having black rather than charcoal gray upholstery:

 

With its loud paint and even louder “Special-Tone” low-restriction mufflers, Car Life found their test car incapable of stealth:

We’ve had the sleepers, such as Road Runner. The Rambler Scrambler is an anti-sleeper. It would jeer at jacked up Chevys and wide-tire Road Runners at every corner. You couldn’t avoid a fight if you wanted to. A set of dual glass packs give no respite in the noise department either. The throaty V-8 rap is nice (but keep the clutch foot handy for sliding past patrol cars).

If the SC/Rambler didn’t walk softly, it nonetheless carried a big stick:

And, by George (sorry), it is a fast little car. We could turn quarter-miles in the mid-14s all day, with a full gas tank and two people. At the press showing, with driver only and half a gallon in the tank, the car turned a best E. T, of 14.14. Even the ads only claim a 14.3 E. T.

This was from a completely stock car with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $2,998. (The spec panel says $2,995, but that was a typographical error, corrected in subsequent Car Life road test summaries.) In 1969, a comparably equipped Dodge Coronet Super Bee 383 would set you back $3,439.70 (with four-speed, A36 Performance Axle Package, Ramcharger cold-air hood, and power front disc brakes) and wouldn’t be any faster in stock form.

 

One of the main reasons for such strong performance was that the Rambler American was, by late ’60s American standards, a little car, only 181 inches long on a 106-inch wheelbase and just 71 inches wide. It was also relatively light, although the spec panel’s 3,150 lb curb weight is incorrect: The factory shipping weight for the 1969 SC/Rambler was 3,160 lb, which was also the official shipping weight used for state licensing and racing classification purposes. The difference was small, since AMC in this era calculated shipping weights with all lubricants, coolant, and 8 gallons of fuel, but the actual factory curb weight was 3,208 lb, which I think would make the test weight about 3,530 lb, not the 3,480 lb quoted.

(By the way, I’m aware that some of the colored text on these pages isn’t easy to read — I didn’t scan this article, and it took a lot of aggressive editing work to make the scans even this legible.)

The photo captions on the above page read, “MODULATING TORQUE at start line at Orange County (Calif.) Raceway required little talent and clean getaways were the rule for quarter-mile runs. COLD-AIR package gives standard AMC 390 engine significant power boost.”

 

Here’s the performance Car Life recorded for the SC/Rambler, with two crewmen and test equipment aboard:

• 0 to 30 mph: 2.4 sec.
• 0 to 60 mph: 6.3 sec.
• 0 to 100 mph: 14.1 sec.
• Standing ¼-mile: 14.20 sec. at 100.8 mph
• Test average fuel consumption: 10.2 mpg

A quarter-mile elapsed time in the low 14s was suitably impressive, but a trap speed of 100+ mph put the SC/Rambler in an elite class in terms of power-to-weight ratio. As AMC helpfully pointed out, the SC/Rambler was also at the favorable end of the NHRA F/Stock class, with 10.03 lb of shipping weight per rated horsepower.

 

The AMC was not a match for a big-engine Mopar or a Cobra Jet Mustang, but the SC/Rambler engine was not in a particularly advanced state of tune, and it was clear that 13-second E.T.s were readily obtainable with a little under-hood help. Car Life observed:

The 390-cid/315-bhp engine is dead stock and has nothing past 4800 rpm except valve float. Consequently the shift points came pretty fast. … The Carter AFB carburetor installed stock on this engine wasn’t particularly suited for this sort of thing. First, it was set lean, as per the emission regulations, and the large amount of acceleration squat of the Scrambler would slosh the fuel away from the pickup tubes in the carb, aggravating the lean condition even further. Making lightning-quick speed shifts—not allowing the car to rise off full squat—would starve the engine just about the time the clutch was reengaged. Result: A pinging and stumbling engine until the car tipped back to normal attitude and the fuel got to the jets. A serious competitor could easily cure this by juggling jets and float levels; or better, go to one of the competition series Carter or Holley carburetors.

By this time, there was now a variety of speed equipment available for the AMC V-8, some of it over the dealer parts counter. One of the cars pictured in the color photos has an Edelbrock cross-ram intake manifold with dual Holley four-barrels:

 

With such modifications, a good set of headers, and drag slicks, the SC/Rambler was capable of quarter-mile elapsed times in the high 12s.

The photo captions on this page read: “FUNCTIONAL, but huge, cold-air grabber dominates driver’s view of road from Rambler Scrambler. Note tach on steering column. CAR LIFE’S test, with two aboard, produced times consistently in the lower half of the 14s. Handling, though, wasn’t special. STOP AND GO was what the Rambler Scrambler did best. Braking sent decelerameter [sic] gauge up into area of 1 G. Mighty good.”

 

One of the most pleasant surprises of the SC/Rambler was that unlike so many automakers of this time, AMC hadn’t skimped on brakes to keep the price down: Power disc/drum brakes were standard SC/Rambler equipment. This was a minor point for pure dragstrip use (where discs were ill-favored because of their greater weight and the slight drag of the pad on the rotor), but was of obvious value for the street.

 

Car Life found the test car’s braking performance excellent:

We had the distinct pleasure of watching our decelerometer dip to 32 ft./sec./sec.—a full G—on several stops, and fade was nil on the CAR LIFE eight-stop test from 80. For those with NASA G-suits, a dealer installed option of four-wheel Kelsey-Hayes discs is available. That, along with even larger section tires—an experiment we’re sure some people will want to try—should put the rate smack into the race-car field. Proportioning was good, by disc/drum standards, meaning it got better as the rear drums got hot and allowed more of the effort to be assumed by the front discs. Dive, however, was excessive, with very little built-in anti-dive in the suspension.

The lack of anti-dive was a sign that AMC had not done enough to address the suspension geometry issues that Car and Driver had complained about five years earlier, which the SC/Rambler heavy-duty suspension (with wheel rates of 136 lb/inch front, 145 lb/inch rear) didn’t really mitigate.

 

Part of the problem was weight distribution: With only the driver aboard, the SC/Rambler had 61.5 percent of its static weight on the front wheels — which might have it the most nose-heavy RWD domestic car of this era, with handling to match:

They tried—the standard Rambler handling kit is a part of the package. But all it did was make everything stiffer. Heavier springs and an antiroll bar at the front keeps front wheel camber change from getting completely out of hand, but with the preponderance of weight and the majority of the roll stiffness up there, the front tires approach the limit of adhesion long before the rear. The result is sickening initial understeer that even the impressive engine torque cannot overcome. The quick ratio 20:1 manual steering doesn’t help either. The ratio is neither fast nor light and it usually took more than one bite of the wheel to crank in enough lock to overcome the plowing. Since the effort was so high, all finesse of quick correction was lost and the driver wound up looking very squirrelly (if not downright dangerous) near the limit. A rear antiroll bar would help, but we doubt it would be enough. What it really needs is a lot more front-suspension work, something that could hardly be accommodated at the price.

Unfortunately, AMC had no reason to invest in a revamp of the Rambler American suspension, since this was the American’s final year — it would shortly be replaced by the AMC Hornet, which also meant the SC/Rambler would have a short career.

 

As I said earlier, nearly everything about the SC/Rambler came down to price and performance: whatever the latter didn’t justify, the former did. Car Life suggested:

For a few dollars more, one could install the factory cam, a high-performance carburetor, headers, maybe. Then include some homegrown handling tricks, like a rear antiroll bar and some careful lowering and front-end re-alignment. The engine is willing, the rear axle is ready, and bigger tires and gears are available. The Scrambler would be right up with the wildest street-driven cars around.

Then paint it Mercedes grey. Heh heh.

I’m skeptical about the latter suggestion — without replacing the hood scoop with something like the Oldsmobile Force-Air Induction system, with its under-bumper scoops, the SC/Rambler was unlikely to go unnoticed even if it were painted some more innocuous color, with no decals, stripes, or call-outs. However, that was never the point. AMC wasn’t trying to fool anyone with this car, nor were they expecting the SC/Rambler to sell in large numbers. The launch press release frankly described the SC/Rambler as “a limited quantity offering,” and I have to assume that the mere sight of this car would inspire auto insurance companies to come up with creative new surcharges to impose on buyers under 30.

 

The ultimate object of this model, like the Javelin and the AMC racing program, was to banish the lingering vestiges of Romneyism and challenge the perception of AMC as only making cars for cheapstakes, dorks, and dotards. It was really too late to revitalize the Rambler name or the American — which, fairly or unfairly, had become one of the terminally unhip cars in America at this time, next to the Checker Marathon — but the American was on its way out anyway. By giving the old girl a last flush of “Little Old Lady From Pasadena” drag-racing glory, AMC hoped to make it more socially acceptable for young people to buy the new Hornet and Gremlin that fall.

 

Whether the SC/Rambler actually helped that cause is debatable, but it did deliver exactly what the brochure promised: “$2998 worth of real muscle,” the performance bargain of the year.

(You can read Car and Driver‘s take on this car here.)

Related Reading

Vintage Review: 1969 AMC-Hurst SC/Rambler (by Paul N)
Vintage Road Test: Car & Driver Tests The New 1964 Rambler American, Rather Unhappily (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1964 Rambler American 330 – This Or Nothing (by Joseph Dennis)
Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1965 Rambler American 440-H – Hot Six! (by Paul N)
A 1967 Rambler American Goes Rogue At The Indiana State Fair (by Jim Grey)