Ride Of The Week 08/1/2022: Jerry Beck's 1978 AMC AMX

ACID RAIN

After a month-long hiatus to move, again, Car Show Life's Ride of the Week returns for August 2022 with a very unusual ride spotted this past March at the Cavalcade of Cars in Hamburg, NY. Owner Jerry Beck of Kittanning, PA has a unique car collection. And in that unique collection is one of the most unique cars I’ve ever seen, a 1978 AMX called Acid Rain.

The original AMX (American Motors eXperimental) was devised as an answer to the Corvette. AMC took a four seat Javelin and chopped the wheelbase down to create a two-seat sports car. In the late ‘70s, however, horsepower and styling were out the window, but some of the automakers still tried to cash in on nostalgia for the recent past by reviving names from the muscle car era of the mid-60s and early 70s. As Ford, GM and Chrysler were trotting out impotent versions of the Cobra Mustang, The Z28 Camaro and the Roadrunner, AMC brought back the AMX on a hatchback Concord body style.

Jerry’s car is one of 2500 made and he’s had it for about 6 or 7 years. “A guy was fixing it up to drag race it and ran out of money, so I bought it and turned it into something from my childhood in the 70s,” and Jerry says his painter did a great job capturing all the styles of those wild customs of the day. “Mark Swartzlander of Karns City, PA gave me a little bit of everything: lace, endless stripes, even the AMC Scrambler arrow on the hood.”

To match the asymmetrical psychedelic candy finish is the interior trimmed in shag and velvet with a chain-link steering wheel and fuzzy dice on the mirror. The AMX has its original AMC 360 V8 mated to a 727 Torqueflite automatic with a B&M Shift Kit.

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