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| Author: | NebrHogger [ Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
"Party on, Garth!!" SW1a1.jpg [ 37.28 KiB | Viewed 6514 times ] |
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| Author: | Herr Mario [ Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:11 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
...thats a Pacer you dipstick... 
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| Author: | A square 10 [ Fri Mar 14, 2014 9:42 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
those had to be the all time ugliest car ever made , the edsel was a classic in comparison |
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| Author: | gschwertley [ Fri Mar 14, 2014 10:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
The Pacer was a different car with the same obsolete mechanicals under the skin. The Gremlin had that truncated rear end that didn't do much for its styling, but not terribly worse than one of the competition, the Ford Pinto. Years ago I worked on an AMC Hornet, of indeterminate vintage, 70-something, another last-gasp AMC product before they went under. Very similar under the skin to the Gremlin. Re-did an engine job that someone else botched. By that time, AMC was sourcing many mechanical components from other major companies. IIRC, the smallest engine available in the Gremlin was a four made by Audi (also not a very good product at that time). You could get a wide variety of engines in the Gremlin, up to their 401 cu. in. hot rod version. Most of them were AMC's own. Their 304 V-8 was a very good engine. 3 and 4 speed manuals were Borg-Warner; in the automatics, also Borg-Warner (T-35) and later Chrysler Torque-Flite. Carburetors were Motorcraft (Ford), also some ignition parts. AMC also made Jeep and same deal. I drove a bro. in law's Commando across a couple of states; it had a Buick V-6 and a Chrysler Torque-Flite transmission. Rough-ridin' son-of-gun. It would shake the urine right out of you, have to stop every 50 miles, guaranteed. You know how the auto makers, even now, have emblematic devices to represent their brands and models? Like Ford has the blue oval, Cadillac has the crest (as many used some kind of over the years), Chevy has used the Bow Tie for decades, etc. Similarly, many specific models have a definitive emblem, like Mercury Marquis used to have a bogus crest that we swore was a direct take-off from a Seagram's 7 Christmas gift box. Well, the Gremlin had this strictly goofy little image of a Gremlin. I guess if you are gonna pick a goofy name for a car, you might as well pick a goofy emblem. Ditto the AMC (not Hudson) Hornet, which had a stupid little bug for a plastic emblem. At that, they could've called the car an Amber and given customers an ancient, real bug embedded it Baltic amber. Oh, under the hood those poor Gremlins, Hornets, Spirits, Concords, Eagles, etc, with the AMC inline sixes were a deja vu of what the company had made 20 years earlier. The Borg-Warner 35 transmission was a design that had been in use since the late 1940's. Leaf springs in the rear, another old design. The list could go on. Basically, AMC was trying to beat the competition to the market with a compact car of this sort, so they simply chopped the back off of a Hornet. The shortening of the car while retaining (in most of them) the same old heavy six cylinder engine out front resulted in a choppy ride. Richard A. Teague was the chief designer of the Gremlin, along with the Hornet, the Pacer, the Matador coupe (remember that bug-eyed creature?), the Javelin, and the AMX. He had kind of a history of jumping aboard sinking corporate ships. His brief at AMC was to design things that stood out from the pack and to do it within severe budgetary restraints. Gremlins are kind of hot merchandise with certain hot rod enthusiasts now; they like to convert them into dragsters. Real "Funny Cars," I'd think. |
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| Author: | HerrMesser [ Sat Mar 15, 2014 10:08 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
IIRC my Gremlin had a 200" ford six and 3 speed tranny. Got 22 mph with that thing while I had it. Ended up trading it in on a 74 Blazer. Rad |
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| Author: | gschwertley [ Sat Mar 15, 2014 11:34 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
Rad, you might've had the AMC 199 cu. in. engine. I don't think they used the Ford 200 in them. Easy to tell the diff., the AMC engine has the manifolds and carb on the driver's (left) side; the Ford has them on the passenger's (right) side. The 199 was used in 1970; after that the 232 cu. in. took its place, so you could've had one of those. They look a lot alike. |
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| Author: | Herr Mario [ Sat Mar 15, 2014 8:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
....well my 'poor' Gremlin had the straight 6 in it...and I STILL liked it...  ...for a lowly E3 it was my only mode of transportation-it served me well thru the years(it cost me $2000 brand new in '73)....and gas was paid for 'cause I was the only fella with a car that did the "I FLY-U BUY" for fast food etc off base... it was nice especially for all those rides home I'd made on weekends sometimes from Virginia Beach back to Cleveland Ohio...(600 miles 1 way)...the thought of doin that today would be insane for me...must be gettin old ...oh-is this the fella you refer to...??? BnW negs-2_0006sm.jpg [ 277.84 KiB | Viewed 6497 times ] |
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| Author: | HerrMesser [ Sun Mar 16, 2014 11:09 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
You might be right Gary about the engine, but that was in reference to what I thought I knew back then. Rad |
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| Author: | Herr Mario [ Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
that pic above-for what its worth-was the gas cap... 
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| Author: | A square 10 [ Mon Mar 17, 2014 6:51 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
i rest my case , they were all ugly 
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| Author: | gschwertley [ Wed Mar 26, 2014 2:52 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
Somehow, that little Gremlin emblem just doesn't belong in the Automotive Heraldry Hall of Fame. Nor the bug on the Hornet. |
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| Author: | gschwertley [ Wed Mar 26, 2014 3:24 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
I'd forgotten about some of the AMC's we had when I worked as a technician for the California Army National Guard. One of my jobs was to ride herd on a fleet of "administrative use" vehicles. We had a bunch of sedans and pickups that were hand receipted out to subordinate elements of the 40th Inf. Div. where I worked for a time. We kept about 6 or 8 vehicles at the Div. HQ. For a while, we had some 1969 or '70 AMC Ambassadors ("Ambastardors") that were perfectly horrible. They were about as low as a company product could sink in a minimum bid contract. Heavy body with an inline six engine, very sluggish. Sheet metal panels had no sound deadening on them anywhere, lots of noise from vibrating steel. Factory seats were upholstered in plain, flat panels of plastic fabric. Utterly devoid of any character or quality. But apparently good enough for the US Army. The '71 Ford sedans that we had at least had a V-8, a 302 which didn't over-power the weight of the car. These units had a delete option of leaving off the power steering and saving the government some paltry amount but it made the cars almost undriveable in parking maneuvers. The '72 Ford sedans were very nice cars, even as base models. Some had AC, all had 351C V-8 engines which was more than adequate. The '73 Chevrolet Chevelles were good cars. Partly because they weren't old enough to get rusted out yet when we had them. They had the 350 V-8, also more than adquate. Nice riding car, too. We only got two of them and an idiot major totalled one in an accident outside of Fresno in 1975. In 1974, we got a supply of Chev. short-bed pickups, which also had the 350 V-8, nice little trucks. I had one kept at the Div. HQ that I guarded like a hawk. The recruiters were constantly pining away to get their hands on it for their joy-riding purposes. However, I usually gave them a doggy '71 Ford sedan instead. There were many other '74 Chev. pickups spread out at various maintenance shops in the division, piling up the miles but "mine" was very low mileage. When I left the Div. in 1977, that truck had 20K less miles than most of the others. By 1975, the US Army (who supplied all of these to the Guard) was looking for ways to save expensive fuel, so they bought Ford Pintos. We never got any of these and I cannot imagine a general officer being driven around in one. In 1975 or '76, the army bought some Plymouth Valiant sedans and these were pretty horrible. The US Army advisors in our building had one but it wasn't part of my inventory. As I said, our cars at the Div. HQ were all federal property. How the Guard works is that nearly all the equipment is federally-owned; the payroll is mostly paid by the feds; but the armory properties and facilities are usually furnished by the state involved. There are exceptions, of course. We did have one car that was State of California Military Dept. property. It was a 1972 AMC Matador (before the bug-eyed models) and it was a very decent car. It was basically an off-the-shelf type car that had a special order OD green paint job. No markings on the side as the US government cars had. It had the very good 304 V-8. It came to us from the state office building in Los Angeles; I looked at the cover of the log book and some idiot at the state garage had spelled the model as "Madiator." |
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| Author: | DeanMk [ Mon Mar 09, 2020 10:25 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
I seem to be posting in old threads (hmmm), but whenever I think of Vietnamese cars, all I can think of is something called an Iron Buffalo... |
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| Author: | NebrHogger [ Mon Mar 09, 2020 10:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
Never saw one of those in two tours - it was all live water buffs. Every part of farming in northern I Corps (northernmost part of that country) was done by hand. Planting - irrigating - harvesting - processing the rice. No motorized stuff at all. Second tour I did see a few "dragon tails" (boat motors) closer to the coast. I would think that's all changed now. SW |
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| Author: | A square 10 [ Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Old cars seen in Vietnam |
im enjoying the revived threads , thank you DeanMK if not for you i would have forgotten a lot of these great discussions of that time and some of those folks have faded as well , i miss it all , was a very active site back then with a plentiful selection of topics to respond to and great folks to exchange ideas with i know things change but im sad to see this venue go less active , i know there are lurkers - wish they would post - no one bites here |
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