1968 AMC Playmate of the Year AMX - Jay Leno's Garage

episode of Jay Leno's Garage today's cars a 1968 AMX fascinating car kind of American Motors version of a Corvette if you will pretty powerful why is it pink well this car has a fascinating story I remember this car when I was 18 years old mark Melvin well come on in mark here the owner of this car you got your a make sure those are in the AMX Club I imagine yes sir now before we get into the history of AMX tell us why it's pink well the story of this car starts five years earlier than 68 in 1964 when playboy started giving their Playmate of the Year a car which they all happened to be pink right so the fifth year 1968 playboy went to the factory American Motors and ordered this car and they wanted a painted playmate pink that's the official name of the color of the car okay and they Ward it to Angela Dorian the 1968 Playboy Playmate of the Year this is her grand prize car think I remember her as her picture cause I remember I was 18 yeah now as Playmate of the Year she kept this car for a long time didn't she yes I mean is she have it she had the car from 1968 all the way up till 2010 when I bought it Wow and was it still pink actually all the playmates changed the color of the car they drew too much attention to him yeah cops for example would pull him over to get an autograph right guys would follow them home sure sure so every playmate including this one change the color of the car this playmate first changed it to a chocolate brown and then a silver and then finally twenty years later to black it was black when I bought it and then you put a back pain because you hopefully want to be Playmate of the Year one year I don't know yeah no but then what then I think isn't she currently in jail now there's not the story yes she shot her husband yes there was a problem in the purchase of the car where there was no title to it right and so I kept hounding the car lot where I bought it hey I need the title the car and I there wasn't there so I had her name phone number and address as ready to contact her directly and then I got an email one day saying that she just shot her husband that's great now how am I going to talk to her right right yeah yeah yeah that's typical car guy forget shot the husband listen I need the title yeah see that's a true car guy forget the dead husband what we need it so she's in prison now yes okay so and you got the car and you returned it back to its stock configuration was it hard to do with the original wheels still with it well all of this there were original wheels like this they were very poor condition as the rest of the car was okay and were you in the AMX Club before this is your first AMX tell us about it no I actually have this is my second AMX I have another one that I bought when I was 18 years old I still have the car today I've had a 38 years Wow okay okay well don't shoot your wife you got two more years so be careful you know that's terrible as you as an automatic also a four-speed my car support speed Oh fourth week a 390 actually 401 Oh 401 okay was that was it available with the form no okay okay you put that in okay now did you do the restoration on this car can't have it done no I had some friends in the club help me oh okay okay now you have a friend Allen what is what is his job uh Ellen was the the main chief mechanic builder of this car Allen come on in how you doing hi Allen how are you great how you doing over here tell us tell us a little bit about what it took to start this car how far gone was it very poor condition yet there was not a straight panel on it the only part that was straight on the car where the windshield pillars from appear down to the bottom of the windshield other than that the quarter panels were damaged the doors were damaged the fenders were damaged we had to replace the hood the left fender the right fender we had such a tough time finding that we actually rebuilt the original fender so the quarter panel on the right side was all rusted out at the bottom which is typical of AMC cars right this site had to rip in the quarter panel that I had to hammer weld and put back together Wow the rear panel of the car it had been rear-ended and the rear body panel was pushed into the gas tank and it actually collapsed the gas Oh Keith so those panels were all removed and straightened as well as the crossmember and the radiator support on the lower front side was damaged it was totally separated from both frame rails now you and AMC guy is that your main place of interest American Motors cars you just do everything well as Mark said when he was a teenager he had an AMX and I had an AMX when I was a teenager okay I had a 390 four-speed car right and then when I moved out to California my dream was always to get another AMX three four years before mark got this car I had just completed mine okay and I did a full rotisserie restoration just like this one okay tell us I am not real familiar I mean I remember when they come out and I thought they were pretty cool I thought it was really neat that the American moves built essentially a two-seater sports car they really a sports car I mean do they handle it pretty well is there more more just like a traditional car with a sporty body well this car was designed as a sports car from AMC to compete with the Corvette and in 1968 when they took this up against a 1968 Corvette the Corvette was just a few seconds faster than the AMF right but it was a very competitive car and AMC has a lot of drag racing history they had built 53 SS drag race AMX cars that are 10-second drag race cars and I remember the rebel remember that car that was soda like their Chevy Nova with the big motor in it basically yes thank Todd a setup so let's open the hood can we see what looks like under the sure is it all stock under the hood it's all stock without the idea to put it back to exactly as it was we tried to put the car back as closely as possible to the original state of when this car was sold on an AMC lot Wow so you really get a ground-up restoration didn't you yes everything how long it take you to do the car I work a full-time job so I did this two years on the side weekends and week and I so it says typhoon 290 is that 290 horsepower without the horse Parliament it's a 290 cubic inch engine Oh to 900k to now oh I thought its AMC this is the same engine they they have in the 68 AMX's they have a 290 343 and a 390 engine which is okie engine blocks are very similar on the outside but it's just the internal workings the stroke and the bores just a little bit well I just assumed this is a 390 s oh okay so it's a 290 okay and what's the horsepower on this about 230 and three-speed automatic transmission right yes and AMC used a lot of different parts this car is got it's got AB organ Warner transmission and okay it's got a Ford starter in it and it's got a Ford AC compressor on it it's got a Delco REME distributor and it's also got a Ford power steering pump and a sagging loss steering box so AMC used a lot of different things yeah because that was kind of kind of getting near the end there for AMC wasn't it yeah well think they went to other manufacturers - yeah to build the car maker and obviously that is that dual master that stopped that's a dual master it's got power disc brakes on right okay and it came with power disc brakes on the front our discs yes yeah well beautiful restoration nicely done thank you do you have to have this paint makes special the paint is a really interesting story because we didn't have any of the pink paint on the car to really take a spot of right to match the color one day when I was stripping the paint off of the car I happen to take the underside of the deck lid and put some paint remover on it yeah and I found a spot on the deck lid where the paint was not adhering to the pink paint right and when I put the paint remover on it just lifted the paint right off of the pink and and then we just polished the pink and I ended up taking the deck lid down to a paint store and having it color match cool cool well I always thought these are nice-looking cars and this is just decorative here there's enough here right yeah this is just the emblem and American Motors experimental is what the X stand for as an experimental car and your gas fill is where under the well the gas filler is actually right underneath the license plate okay it goes right in here and then the car did have dual exhaust right the taillights are from here over this is just a parent panel and there's no lights in that at all all right okay now did that did that fold down or no that doesn't fall down no that doesn't fold down that's just a divider panel between the trunk and the passenger compartment of the vehicle but it's a pretty good sized chunk and yeah yes it's a nice sized car what does the wheelbase compared to Corvette is about two I believe it's a hundred and nine inches okay okay there we go let's take a look at the inside of the car come on check out the interior and these are still pretty reasonable aren't they these haven't become real collector collector cars yet so you can get pretty good deals on them it's a nice looking car on the inside you got your 8-track tape track Cat Stevens oh that 8-track 8-track a.m. automatic tachometer here air conditioning air conditioning tilt wheel tilt wheel look at that I'm in twenty mile our speedometer well you did a nice job on the restoration have you taken this to any AMC shows not yet not yet okay how long and how long is restoration been finished just a short time very short time okay just like just before you maybe just it's still still tacky the paint is still wet here good so you just finish your leg enough thanks finishes an hour ago I mean it's a it's an impressive job and then you know AMC always had numbers on their cars yeah they would always number and because this is the playmate car right they actually took the Playmate plaque for the numbering and put her measurements on it and her measurements are over on the dashboard all right I think those are measurements back in 1968 probably the right measurements now you might have to imagine change the serial number little bow yeah that's pretty good well very nice come on come on in here how many miles since the restoration well there's about two miles that I've driven it up the street for a little comp to private photo shoot oh okay cool cool well let's uh can we take a ride today sure let's give it a shot all right so in 1968 the Playmate she is a celebrity arrow in her own right now she is Playmate of the Year and she met Roman Polanski okay Roman Polanski gave her a part in his movie Rosemary's Baby Wow and while filming that movie she met Roman Polanski's wife who was Sharon Tate right okay so he fast forward one year to 1969 to the mansur murders I've heard this from one of the playmates friends I've also read it online I haven't heard it from her directly but the story goes that while filming Rosemary's Baby the Playmate and Sharon Tate became best friends the night of the Manson murders Sharon Tate invited to play me to come up to the house for a party that night but the playmate stayed home she wasn't feeling well and that's why she still loved Wow the plenty would have been one of the ones yeah yeah so Roman Polanski was in London directing a movie at the time he came home for his wife's funeral he met up with a playmate who was his wife's best friend and he gave Roman Polanski gave the play made his personal heme gun for protection because the the Manson murders were unsolved for nine months approximately I understand right so she put that gun in her purse for 42 years three months after I bought her car she pulled it out and shot her husband Wow you know you want to buy a car with a story but that's a real story I mean that's wow that's pretty crazy and then she got what 9-year but he didn't die the husband he survived okay and now so she went to jail for nine years and when she gets out he got to take her for a ride in the car well I was thinking might be fun to be waiting at the prison gates when she gets out and give her a ride home oh yeah that'd be fine you're not married I know no seen it see no married guy's wife honey I gotta me in the next Playboy Playmate in prison and give her a ride home so you have to be single I just single guys story when we were cleaning the car out taking the seats out we actually found a bullet under the seat which is the same caliber of the gun reportedly that she used to shoot her husband which was a James Bond gun Walther PPK yeah 380 yeah you know drives very similar to a 60s Mustang late sixties Mustang very nice restoration very well very solid no rattles and bangs everything kind of drives nicely but you haven't even driven the car you only drive it at two miles right about two miles yeah so this is the most miles anybody's put on this thing this more or less is the cars first public occurrence well that's pretty cool yeah I can't imagine when you take this to an AMC show it's just got to be the hit of the show it's pretty inmate it's probably the most one of the most famous AMX's isn't it it has reputation and it's been in books yeah yeah see the kick downs not working so we can't get down by hand there we go there you go egg chef after this car was awarded to her it was her daily driver it was mostly hidden from the public for 42 years until I bought it yeah so now that it's restored I want to share the car with the world with the AMC community I don't want it to be hidden for another 42 years yeah yeah no I think I want to see it I think that's great now what ties are on this if you got radials on here are these these kind of buys flies these are bias ply tires okay and the old Magnum 500 chrome rims were really beat-up so I bought a new pair of wheels and found a set of polyglots tires oh yeah that those put on so these are the correct tires for this aerial fire in these polygons as well these Potter when you get on the nam rant if it says 35 miles an hour and you've gone 36 these pilot grants ago this is way off but this is exactly what a 1968 car would drive like in 1968 that's kind of fun and you know it's actually quite nice it's comfortable got plenty of headroom nice-looking car when you think of American sports cars like Mustang a Camaro and Viper Corvette nobody ever thinks AMX but it really is it really was a pretty cool car and if you look up the Pitts arena AMX the one he did that one's really wild you've seen it it's really a wild looking car so this is actually your first long-distance riding the car how does it feel what do you think I love it I'm actually enjoying this ride yeah yeah there was the 8-track player still in it when you got it no I had to track one of those down yeah and I had it on a box for two years then when it came time to put it in of course it did work yeah so then I had to send it to a radio repair shop and that doubled the cost of that yeah and I'm surprised 8-track tapes have got to be pretty old I think they just disintegrated soon as you put them in actually this morning I tried this date player for the first time with this tape and it worked oh they go yeah how successful was it do you know do you remember were they they sell a lot of them was it a considered a successful card you know American Motors sold approximately nineteen a little over nineteen thousand AMX's Wow in a three year period from 68 to 70 well that's not bad this particular car was one of a little over 4,000 made in 1968 and one of about 400 with the 290 automatic transmission combination okay well when cars like these were built technology with expensive labor was cheap now it's completely flipped around alright moving this car was built I remember a buddy of mine was making 250 an hour and I went whoa it's pretty good 250 an hour yeah I was at McDonald's for about 25 an hour well the car now has about 6 miles on the restoration obviously we're not gonna do burnouts with this thing because it's a brand new restoration well take it up on the freeway see our cruises then we'll go down a windy road see how she handles actually nice driving car you know this is not obviously the full-on high-performance model it's the base model but it's about similan performance to maybe a 68 Mustang 289 automatic you know base motor nice car nice restoration come on let's take it up on the freeway guys got a nice job on the restoration it tracks nice and true got my hands off the real doesn't wander you hit the brakes it stops nice and straight as we said couple of little things got to fix the horn one or two other things but that's all part of the fun real fun is going to literature swap meets and try to finding the brochures for the car have you got a bunch of those yes yeah that's always kind of cool all that stuff your mom threw away now worth a fortune it takes a dick your man to drive a pink car got a dove but we had this car we took every nut bolt off of this car yeah we had on a rotisserie for a year then finally the day came to take it off the rotisserie I would have been happy that day just to get that much done so this time we had to front and rear suspension on the car we got the part down off the rotisserie I would have been happy just getting that much done that day then Alan the Builder says oh let's go get the engine put in so we did that and he said well there's still 2 hours of light left let's go get the transmission and put that in as well that just illustrates the pacing of his work well they did a good job it has the great thing about having cars like this or the clubs involved no matter what car you have there's a club for that car and you always want to go to those folks for your information into your parts and the technical knowledge wise you make a lot of friends too you should bring us over the mansion and show heaven well I'd like to well what a fun car this is you know we spend a lot of times on Camaros and Mustangs and stuff like that but this is the real rare piece of Americana built in Wisconsin and Mark you did a beautiful job congratulations thank Alan for me too and all the guys in the AMEX from the AMC Club you know that just shows you when you were storing a car no matter what car you have there's a club for it so contact those people and those guys I'll help you out they love to help out people have the same vehicles as they do I know I certainly do and they've always been very helpful to me so again that this is probably one of the most famous AMX's out there and thanks for debuting it in our show mark thank you very much thank you sir see you guys next week

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 831,840

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay lenos garage, nbc jay lenos garage, jay leno, jay leno 1968 amc amx, 1968 playmate of the year amx, mark melvin jay leno garage, allen tyler jay leno garage, sports car amc, angela dorian 1968 amx, victoria vetri 1968 amx

Id: YsQvxZbiiac

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/jberd45]

If I remember correctly, Gary Trudeau the guy who created Doonesbury owned a Mustang that a playmate once owned.

Also, the guy who owns this car is about the creepiest cat I've ever seen!