AMC Grembin and Pacer New and Now Value

One of the things I enjoy checking out is increase in the value of some of our US classic cars.

I recently ran across this  breakdown in Hagerty Insurance magazine…it normally has some good articles.  This one was about American Motors and it had a section on original cost of the cars and the current collector’s value.  So check this out:

1967 Marlin – a cool looking car if you ask me – had a base prices of $2,963.  Today that car will cost you about  $23,100.

A good looking car in Two Tone paint.

1969 Javelin SST – love these cars  – I once dated this girl who drove one and..oh…um..nevermind – back in the day they cost  $3,144 and today average cost is $33,900.

69 Javelin SST

1970 AMX 390/325 – I know I’m suppose to love these cars – they being, perhaps the sporty-est of the AMC brand, but I don’t – they would run you $3,798 back then and now you can pick one up for a mere $55K!

1970 AMX

1972 Javelin SST – see my comment for the ’69 – base price in 1972 was $3,807 and today $22,400.

1973 Gremlin X Coupe – ok  I really don’t care at all about these, except when I see them at the drag strip with a huge GM block stuffed between the fenders – they would set you back $2,098 back in ’72 and today you can get one have it mounted on a pole in the front yard for $11,700 (pole not included and labor extra and you’ll have to sign a waiver).

1973 Grebmlin X Coupe (Seen here without the pole)

 

1976 Pacer DL Coupe – well.. if wasn’t a DL coupe….ok even though it is…insert comment for Gremlin above – except for $15,000 you can pick one up today, remove the body from the frame, bury it upside down in backyard and with a little tweaking you can have a really cool hot tub.

1976 Pacer DL Coupe…just before it was turned into a hot tub!

OK..that was mean..here ya go:

’76 Pacer DL Sport Coupe

1978 Matador Hardtop Coupe would have tapped your wallet for nearly $5K (4,799) – I sort of liked these cars – but not a lot and today you can sort of like them for about $12,500 big ones.

78 Matador Coupe

Unless it look like this one!!!

This is the Matador X

 

Want to see some more brands laid out like this? Drop me a comment and I’ll dig  some up.

Thanks for reading

Tim

 

 

1967 Olds F-85 Club Coupe Restoration

I bumped in to Bill Holtzclaw from Cartersville, Georgia, virtually (Facebook) and he shared a few pics and some detail on his restoration of a 1967 Olds F-85.

Bill's F85

“I am doing a full, frame-off restoration on this 1967 F-85 Club Coupe. It has a convertible frame, 442 suspension, steel crank 330, .030 over with W-31 cam and 2” intake valves, close ratio Muncie 4 speed and heavy duty 3.91 posi rear. It is a radio delete, heater delete, carpet delete car with the factory cloth and vinyl interior. The drive train is built and the chassis is being assembled. The interior is done, the chrome and bright work is done. Next, we’ll pull the body and put it on a rotisserie. It will be two-tone Crystal and Midnight Blue.”

“I’ve had a lot of interest in this project from some of the leading Oldsmobile collectors in the country. It is my version of what would have been a 1967 W-31, which was introduced in 1968. All of the parts to build this car back in the day were available as either RPO options or over-the-counter upgrades. The W-30 package was available as an over-the-counter package in 1967. The W-30 cam and the W-31 cam are one in the same, and the OIA kit will work for both small block and big block cars. So, it was a possibility! ”

The upholstery turned out awesome! He used NOS fabric for the seat inserts. The car was a factory carpet delete car with a near-perfect vinyl floor covering. “I cleaned it and had it dyed the color blue (same as dash pad) that I wanted. It looks absolutely brand new! I had seat belts custom made to stock appearance, and the standard steering wheel came out nice, too.”

Check out the vinyl floor covering

“I had the gauges restored by R&M restorations in Greenville, SC. The odometer was re-set to zero.”  The dash bezel was restored by Chrome Tech USA. They repaired the 44 year-old plastic, re-chromed it and then detail painted it. The radio and heater delete plates were purchased from Red Venom Enterprises. “They only make the radio plate, so I purchased two and trimmed one to fit the heater control panel and the PRNDL panel. ”

Bill did the polishing himself

He installed a Sunpro Mini Tach in place of the factory clock. Looks like it came from the factory that way!

Great Job - Bill!!

 

Final Product

 

 

Bill is also the owner of a 1967 Oldsmobile F-85 Town Sedan with “Police Apprehender” package.  It has the HiPo 330/320 hp, Heavy Duty Jetaway and 442 suspension upgrades.

Nice!!!

Might be why he’s known as OldsMoBill.  “I am also known as the “Oldsmobile Police”!” Bill states.

Bill, I hope you check back with your status from time to time and thank you for sharing.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Cars You Never Heard Of! Part 3

I want to cover two more cars in this part.  The first will be the TVR S3..?? ..yeah…me too!  The second will the Caterham Seven.

TVR S3 was put up against the Triumph TR4 and frankly there is nothing I know about a TVR S3..so here we go.

TVR S3 C

TVR engineering started back in England in 1947 with the first TVR being produced in 1949.  Here’s the 2nd TVR built:

#2 TVR

Through out its history it used all types of engines include the Ford Kent engines and even a Buick engine  (3.5 litre Rover V8).

The S series was produced between 1986 – 1994.  The  TVR in this article had steel spaceframe chassis and a fiberglass body.  The engine was an iron, overhead valve, 2936cc 12v V6 with electronic fuel injection.  This power plant cranked out 168 hp and 170 lbft of torque.  The suspension was an independent double wishbone with rack and pinion steering.  This all combined to let the car reach its top speed of 135 mph.

In the comparison, the TVR S3 beat out the Triumph TR4 in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability 42 to 32.  The price of the TVR S3 is about 4000 Euros with the Triumph at 13,000 Euros.

The company was sold to a Russian buyer in 2004 and after a not so great start the company halted production.

For a full history on the TVR – check out  http://www.tvrsseries.com/

Next up is the Caterham 7:

Caterham Seven

The Caterham Seven is a kit car – you can still buy and build them today. Interesting enough it started out as the Lotus Six.  The next version was the Lotus Seven, however Lotus dropped the production and Catherham purchased the rights to build the kits.  The components are flexible with such pieces as Ford axles and de Dion-axles being used.  The engines used is very expansive  from the  Lotus Twin Cam engine to  Ford’s cross flow engines.  Even Cosworth BDRs appeared around 1983, in 1600 cc 140 bhp (104 kW) form, followed by 1700 cc 150 bhp (112 kW) versions three years later.  In the ’90’s the  common  engine had become the 2 litre Vauxhall HPC, as fitted to the Vauxhall Calibra, putting out 165—175 bhp.  Motor cycle engines have been also used with the likes of the GSXR1300 engine used in the Suzuki and the Honda CBR1100 engine.

These are favorites for the SCCA and other grass-roots racing.

Thanks for reading.

Tim.

Cars You Never Heard Of! Part 2

Thanks for all the comments and emails on the Part 1 of the Cars You Never Heard Of.

Thought I’d follow it up with the Panther Kallista.   This stems from the same article  in  “Classic and Sport Car” a UK publication.  The article pitted  pricey European cars against less expensive cars and rated them.  It’s over all theme was “See you can get this close to the expensive cars, for less.”

 

1985 Panther Kallista

Kallista was the product of the Panther Car Company and they were built between 1980 and 1990, actually coming on the market in about 1982.  The were a box chassis with an aluminum body.  The engine that was first used was Fords 2.8 V6 which cranked out 2792 cc from its 12v configuration.  The electronic fuel injection helped it deliver 150 hp and 159 lb ft of torque. Top speed was about 120 mph with the help of the 5 speed manual transmission.

It had an independent wishbone suspension, rigid axle, rack and pinion steering with disc brakes in the front and drums in the rear.

In the article Kallista was compared against the Morgan Plus 8 which you can purchase now days for about 35,000 British Pounds (about $70k US) compared to the collectors price of 7,000 BP ($14k US).  In that contest comparing Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability the Morgan was judged with a total of 37 points and the Panther Kallista end up with 35.

I did find one on Ebay with a few days still to go with a current bid of just over $4k.  It’s an 1986, 4 cylinder – not a V6.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Cars You Never Heard Of! Part 1

Of course I spend a lot of time reading and again a lot of that is two or three-dimensional, although my wife says it’s a single dimension.  She sees just “CARS”  I see muscle cars, sedans (that I want to turn in to muscle cars), exotic cars and even some European cars.  That’s multi-dimensional, don’t you think?  I gained a little interest in them when I was a kid and my Dad surprised my Mother with a 60’ish MGB – mainly I learned that unless you wanted to fix ’em a lot…stay a way!!!

I gained a little more familiarization with another brand when I was in college.   I had my license suspended….you can figure out why…so don’t make me say ‘too many speeding tickets”, ok?  Thanks.  So it was only about a mile or so walk to the campus from where I stayed, but if you are from one of the colder States, like northern New York, then you’d know that a morning jaunt on  a Dec. morning is ‘nippy” to say the least.  So I would catch a ride with a friend.  He drove the one of the coolest cars I had ridden.  It was a Citroen. Similar to this one:

It had the coolest suspension that would raise when you started it and lower when you turned it off.

My point being that there is another dimension to my reading – European cars.  But I am in no way any kind of expert with any of them – although when I lived in Germany, I drove a very old European Ford Escort.  That car was horrible!!!! However, it got me round, even when the upper part of the seat frame broke and the only way to drive it was by holding yourself forward using the steering wheel else the seat back, because it leaned so much, should dump you in the back seat.  Last  year I signed up for..please kneel…”HEMMINGS”… thank you….you may relax now… SPORTS & EXOTIC CAR magazine – some great articles and I enjoy Mike’s and Richard’s writings. Geezze, this is a long way around to the point that I picked up a copy of Classic & Sports Car magazine – UK produced – the other day.

In this was a series of articles that pitted 4 pair of cars against each other.  One car in each pair was an expensive classic brand/model and the other was relatively inexpensive newer brand/model.  Two things dawned on me, one was,”Hey, I’ve never heard of a Reliant Scimitar SS1 or a Panther Kallista.”   The  second thing was, “Hey, have never heard of any of these cars!”   Normally if  I have just one of these realizations – I won’t read the article… nope not interested…. but this time I did.

And now I need to know a little about these cars and I know you do to….all three of my readers!!!  So we’ll take a look at  the Panther Kallista and the  Caterham Seven and the TVR S3 and the Reliant Scimitar SS1.

First up is the Reliant Scimitar SS1.

This car (at about 3000 British Pounds  – $6000 USD) was being compared to the Lotus Elan (at 16000 British Pounds or about $32,000 USD).  Here is what it looks like:

Reliant Scimitar SS1

Not bad-looking!!!!

These cars were made from 1986 to 1990, however the Scimitar  actually arrived on the scene in 1964 with a Ford straight 6 cylinder as the power plant.  These more recent models  had a spaceframe chassis and fiberglass body, an iron block, alloy heads, SOHC 1809 cc, 8 valve 4.  It also sported a Garrett T2 Turbo with electronic multi-port fuel injection system.  This allowed it to  lay out 140 HP and 141 lb ft of torque and reach a top speed of 128 mph and it only weighted 1969 lbs.

They sported a 5 speed manual transmission, rack and pinion steering, double wishbone independent suspension and disks breaks.

Just to give you some closure, it was compared to the Lotus Elan where it scored 2 points less than the Lotus (38 to 40) in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability.

Any one out there have one of these?  Know anyone that has one?  If so drop a comment and pic.

Thanks for reading.

Tim