![]() That was despite Car Craft magazine finding this car to be faster than a Chevelle with a 454 V8 and close to a Dodge Demon 340 (Mitchell, 2000). Or consider what happened when AMC offered the Hornet SC/360 in 1971 - only 784 were built. But by 1972, when the Gremlin was first available with the 304 V8, even the mighty Pontiac GTO had fallen to such a degree that it was downgraded to an options package. Foster suggests vainly chasing a collapsing marketĪ souped-up Gremlin might have made some sense back around 1967, when the muscle-car market was in full swing. Pictured is a 1972 model ( Old Car Brochures). But then output nosedived to under 6,000 in 1972. ![]() The Gremlin was merely a shortened Hornet, so Foster ( 2023) was correct that such a car “wouldn’t have needed much effort to get it into production.” Pontiac’s mid-sized “muscle car,” the GTO, was popular in the late-60s, with production in 1966 almost reaching 97,000 units. Why not a 360? In 1971 AMC offered that engine in the Hornet SC/360. muscle cars than shoehorning the biggest engine into the lightest car? For example, one AMC dealer put the automaker’s 401-cubic-inch V8 into a handful of Gremlins (Iger, 2018). If one is playing to the gearhead crowd I suppose this is an inevitable idea. This was a proposed design that did not reach production (Foster, 2023). However, the downside of some of Foster’s magazine writing is that it can have a trite, pop-culture sensibility.Īs a case in point, in a recent column he argued that AMC could have had a “minor hit” if it had plopped a 360-cubic-inch V8 into the Gremlin and called it a GT. ![]() So too are his efforts to advance automotive history by providing a factual counterpoint to what I consider to be overly fawning treatments of Packard head James Nance (go here for further discussion). ![]() auto history book authors - and is among the few who also write in a mass-circulation magazine. He has become one of the most prominent U.S. Since last summer’s departure of Daniel Strohl from Hemmings, I have mainly been drawn to its website because of a Pat Foster column. ![]()
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