1978 AMC Pacer Wagon - Jay Leno’s Garage

[Applause] [Music] terrific the episode of Jay Leno's Garage the cover featuring today a 1978 pacer wagon okay before you change it so this is a car website we do all kinds of cars and this car has some surprises so don't cuz they get some face or wax just stay with me on this okay as you can see it's in beautiful shape and it's been restomod and it's an interesting story and I'm sure to see how fast it actually is it just looks like an ordinary stock car which is what I love I love stock looking cars bodies in nightshade let's meet Phil Carey he and his wife Susan they own this car how are you good Jay how are you today I've been how long you had this thing we've had this one since 2004 all right you have a your own webpage about it yeah on Facebook we have the pacer LS project page okay so you're living the pacer lifestyle absolutely good all right now why again why a page I mean this is one of those cars we know we love all cars here mm-hmm cars are loved more than others let's be honest and the pacer was it takes a special breed to love the pay so would you say it would it took 41 years but now this car is cool oh it's cool so you've deemed it cool yeah I've named it cool absolutely I mean that doesn't come from Steve McQueen writing like that who's the king of comes from me didn't get it from Steve and I Steve told me that's how you of deem did I and my wife said it was cool too okay what I think this is what cool looks like leave all right what you've done with it I think is cool certainly think the original motor was what was it a v8 original it was a v8 it was a 304 okay 128 horsepower but this is a 78 model which means it still fell under California emissions here in California you have to be pre 76 to be emissions exempt so this was not exempt were you going to rebuild the original engine I was and we we bought it in 2004 and within a couple years it was dead and tired so pulled the motor was going to rebuild it had trouble finding parts it was or I knew about all the Facebook page and all the groups and stuff and it sat in the garage for ten years without a motor and it was in really horrible shape so this is a repaint as well it is color original color so what was the motor you chose to put in we put in a 6.2 litre ls3 oh now see that that is very cool yeah so you're getting about what 400 430 Wow okay so obviously quicker than the original pace a little bit now is it fun to blow off Mustangs and Camaros with this actually I haven't had that opportunity yet but near my home there's a canyon road that there's a freeway off-ramp right and about the first hundred yards or so it's two lanes and it goes down to single lane the rest of the Canyon Porsche Carerra got off behind me and he thought he was going to pass me and mind you this was before it was painted before all the trim was on at night and I was not having any of it right and I left on him and he had a very surprised look on his face I west of the write down don't took those foreigners for ride you did yes siree Bob oh boy I guess Porsche owners no not to me Messer's at the face of Ragan okay now why the way because the wagon is it as odd-looking as the original terrarium sort of looking pacer did you deliberately seek out a wagon for that reason or was this more cool than well the story is that my wife and I were married in 1980 and when we first got married I had a 63 Chrysler 300 onazi that's that's a very cool it wasn't very cool and it died shortly after we got married we both worked the same place we rode to work for two weeks on the back on my motorcycle with my wife on the 554 Oh it rained almost every day for two weeks friend of ours and I was poor right I was 20 years old and friend of ours had a friend whose dad had a used-car lot on Olympic Boulevard and he had this 77 pacer wagon sitting in the back and he sold it to us for cheap and took payments Wow so we had that 77 wagon for oh we my wife drove it for eight years right and what happened to that one it started getting extremely unreliable I didn't lot like the phone calls saying come get me I'm at the store car won't start so we had to sell it sadly and I think it was on the way home but that experience made you want to get another well 2004 she saw this advertised I think it was in the Pennysaver lady up in Santa Rosa had it she leased him out to movie companies and this was in a public service announcement called don't trash California right and my wife saw it and she said you will go get that car and my son and I drove up to Santa Rosa on Friday after work and we drove it home on Saturday okay but did it pass emissions then barely oh it was known as a gross polluter we had to go through the the program there was some small components missing right okay but several years ago my my son found the motor it's a ear odd connecting cruise that GM sells it's legal for pre 1995 vehicles I was going to wait for the the California rolling 30 right to you know get past 1978 but it's not there was no rule they changed the law heavy change change the law and here we are what are we gonna do I was gonna put a 360 in it because 360 parts were easy to come by but I didn't want to take the chance so went to my wife and said this is what we can do to the car it's gonna cost a lot of money right but if you love the car let's do it otherwise we need to get rid of it and she said do it well it turned out beautiful I mean it looks great I love it when things look reasonably stock I hate you know big tubs and fancy wheels I mean I love that it still looks like a pacer but it's actually more reliable and quite a bit faster with you absolutely and and it is stocked and that was part of the goal was to make it look stock these are the stock wheels right it's the factory color right all the trim is where it was that one difference is this car originally had a vinyl roof no oh a vinyl roof on a wagon and and that that'd be too cool yeah yeah it's such a thing as being too cool and you don't want that right now both door is the same as when longer no this is this is this has many unique things like you were saying the passenger side door is four inches longer to make it easier for the passengers get in the backseat because American Motors when they tried stuff it either was a huge hit or it bombed terribly I remember they had the four-wheel drive wagon what was that the eagle eagle in like 1980 yeah and that was great because people in snowy areas in Vermont they loved that thing was a huge hit so oh okay and when they designed this the idea was you had a lot more glass area let me look at size this window compared to an ordinary station wagon and there and the you know the Pacer model the passenger model was built like a trim trouble is it was so hot the air conditioning works really well though yeah but I mean yeah it iLike people are trying new stuff and that's what made it kind of interesting and of course Wayne's World made the hugely famous course yeah yeah very very cool yeah so the car was designed by dick Teague and this was actually one of the first cab forward design cars before Chrysler even coined that term it has factory rack and pinion steering yeah it was very advanced you know from the beginning and just breaks it drums all around its disc in the front and drumming the back you ready to take on those Porsches it's the stoplights yeah well and it's the stock break so that's it's kind of scary when you yeah that's the power breaker it is power break okay alright so one other interesting thing about this car Jay you notice that the hood is very very not very deep right the car was originally designed to have a Wankel rotary engine transverse-mounted and AMC was going to buy that from GM right and at the last minute GM cancelled the program because they were having reliability and emissions issues right right so AMC is stuck with this car right and they decided to put their trusty 258 inline six in it right and to do that they had to push the firewall back and create a tunnel because it was supposed to be front-wheel drive car gotcha oh that's interesting that's it that's an interesting fact I think the wheels are kind of cool those are the factory ones yeah and it is sort of unusual did they all when they first came out did they have the hooded lights on the front or was that later style no that Center hump was added in well the ones with the lights were the original but in 78 they added that Center hump well to accommodate the v8 that's when the v8 started okay they made these from 75 to 80 right the wagons were started in 77 to 80 and these hood lock this is you that's me yeah the the original hood latch was in the center yeah and there's something there now so okay that that sort of a giveaway that might be something special under here maybe okay so how many miles have you put on it I mean it looks brand-new yeah it actually just came out of the body shop it's like February okay I think we've got I don't know three four thousand miles on it now is there a pacer meet where everybody goes and there's some sort of picnic with cookies and milk and things like that well they have AMC meets but they're usually like in Ohio or Kenosha Wisconsin right yeah so we haven't been there we've been to a few car shows barely any other AMC cars but I do know there's a gentleman in Pasadena that has a yeah a red woody wagon okay and we went to San Clemente cars and coffee last weekend and everybody was coming up to me there was a green one here last weekend do people go nuts when they see a car it's just something you don't see I mean that's what's kind of fun I mean I actually liked it I mean I'm teasing you a little bit but I mean it is great fun let's open the hood can we say sure yeah you know Jay the the funny thing is that when people walk up to the car they get this smile on their face and that's what makes it worthwhile I had it at the smog shop right and the guy rolled up in the tool truck you know they to sell the shop their tools and he walked up and he said my family had one of those and we lived in it when I was a kid really yeah so we get those stories all the time why like hey did the American World Motors color on the valve that's my son he we had to do that well that's very clever yeah and it's got air conditioning and fantastic big aluminum radiator look at that doesn't overheat it's a very nice installation yeah and most everything works even the analog speedometer works yeah I just like that most everything works there's a handle over here to adjust the mirror that's not connected to anything but now what does it cost to do a job like this about twenty-five thousand that's about right I mean what is your wife it was our friend Alan Alan Draper he has his own metal fab business he took this on as a project in in his off hours and it took two years but he did a family it's a fantastic job and who drives a boy you you want it I don't think that Susan has driven it very much okay she did take it to a car show by herself okay a few weeks ago okay hit yeah she got first place wow that's great cool well no it looks terrific it's a real professional installation it looks factory it's very nice that was the goal I told Alan I want it to look like it might have come from the fan I mean because there are so many horror stories people take things to somebody and they start the project and it isn't quite finished and they cost you more to get it back to where it was broken originally yeah you know so it's really nicely to come let's just drop it just bring it down all the way like that because it tends to that you know walk and it'll chip the paint okay gotcha okay and of course the name the strikes fear into Porsche owners everywhere pacer they see that on the home boy they know they just back off just back off but it's a great it's a great looking car and it's all kinds of room inside it isn't there it is it's very roomy it's a massive goal so the car is wider than normal also write in their marketing AMC had to two slogans one of them is you don't drive like a pacer unless you're why like a pacer and me yes no no I was just saying it's it's a funny slogan yeah and the other was the first wide small car the first wide small car I mean it's amazing how big it looks I mean because it's this way plus the doors are even rounded so it gives you even more elbow room right these seats are the original factory seats from 1978 all the vinyls the same but did you redo these or with it we did not I was going to have them redone at upholstery shop local right where I live and the guy looked at it and said you can't do that yeah they're they're too good don't touch I'm ok ok and these and this opens this way they pop out yeah ok very nice ok and this open it now does the window just call the whole hatch comes up the whole hat just push the button and lift it up all right well that's yeah that's pretty big yeah you get one little small swimming pools in here those inflatable deals right in there I love the little pace you have in the window right here my little model yeah there you go but there's no ls3 [Music] where did you get a MTS and it is an AMT I just actually finished building it last night oh wow ok there you go so you're really living the pace of life again yeah absolutely and this heat falls down obviously it does and you have little locking compartments here right right that's a locking one there yeah just on that side yeah and two speakers in the back yeah good I'm not sure what music you'd play in a pacer what Queen may be Queen might be a little too new I'm thinking more like the Archies okay yes very cool I don't think it was a huge hit but it wasn't a bomb when it came out well no they get okay they were extremely popular for the first couple years yeah the issue was that the car was heavier than the engine could really handle you and you know in the mid seventies the fuel crisis hit right and these did not get very good gas mileage so their sales plummeted towards the and later years yeah and of course all the Japanese stuff was coming in with a high revving engines and all that kind of stuff this is just an American workhorse really had the big dependable six-cylinder with a carburetor and all that yeah yeah yeah very cool very cool well we should take it for a ride we take with spin see with that sure let's go and maybe woven into a couple of Porsche owners okay that's great yeah we bad it could find some portions eleven mr. three-speed automatic or four-speed so of course the right and we still have the AMC 20 perhaps oh yeah but we're appeared it from 273 open to 373 posi right and we replaced the two-piece axle shafts with single piece axle shafts so that was the weak spot was the action yeah yeah well 373 the nice ratio yeah it goes and of course the fuel tank had holes in it so that all got repaired and recoated that your barrel you just put a new fuel bank in we were bared it there are no fuel to fuel tanks really is nothing generic little thinner no because it's really weird cuz the the fuel tank wraps around the spare tire but the other good thing is that a lot of the parts like the brakes they source them from gyah it's just knowing what or use the slide heart so brake pads rotors things like that are still available but there's also a couple of companies like galvans up in Klamath Falls yeah and Kennedy American to name a couple that they sell vintage AMC parts that's all they do well that's my favorite thing you know that's like remember that books Fahrenheit 451 yeah wait everybody memorized the book and they walked around I know car guys that's all they do they have I have a friend of mine only knows his Hemi he can tell you the date that Hemi was made Larry was sick that day Bob filled in if bob was on the lane and they know everything he came to my garage what kind of cars out it goes Duesenberg was that German no it's American no no no these thing you never heard no didn't know holy knows isn't happy that's a Japan we got so I imagine that you visited the nether cut Museum how many times I love that place right it just amazes me everything in that place works and that was part of the inspiration here yeah was that I wanted everything to war right has it yet with the very nice insulation for back afraid you like the red white and valve so the story behind that is because of the heater box passenger side for the so we relocated the frame rail and then decided to do the same thing on the driver side the bug sticking up on them so I have my bought a pair of [Applause] and he brought them with them and then we painted about you must be in all the AMC magazine yeah I am seed you like like from the 50 like [Applause] too small for me little tiny I like my she's a goof yeah converted we can get in I've got a cool thanks for my scoring it will blow now when you're a kid would your family into cars is that a big deal my family for the most part before cops yeah my sister had a Datsun 510 when I was in high school I bought a 60 cent for 75 bucks it was always little [Applause] right here roadmap D remember I want to say 56 oh it's good yeah I got a quickie fine Roadmaster I'm like the first guy but when they came to California three and 50 bucks have the Pennysaver yeah things I like about this is the cars that I have to the modern cars right the hair is just going by yeah before they put all the interior that works great you know it's fun having all different kinds of car I mean I tease about the painter but I love it because it's just something you don't see everybody does the Lamborghinis and an upcoming episode on my the NBC show Jay Leno's Garage we have a race which we need a pacer and a gremlin and I think we settle that age-old grudge match once we'll be a stick dizzy have you thought about getting a leave my addition of a yeah yeah you know they made it with a v8 the stick there's actually pretty quick was a dealer and Kenosha response and I believe is where they were right but you could buy I think it was called a XR 401 yeah and that will gremlin with a 401 from the factory Wow I just love it because you know everything about the car was off even the logo the gremlin it looked like that character from that's bad I eat me Lucky Charms member that movie there was a bad but the bad movie you know with a bad leprechaun remember that movie terrible where's the lucky chance and he kill everybody in a little and it just such an evil looking a little low you know they were easy to fix they were reliable they weren't particularly sophisticated or well engineered they were just solid dependable well Phil thanks for bringing us along I mean I've been teasing you and having a good time doing it I really do like it I think it's great this you've restored this and put this motor in it but kept it looking completely stock I mean that's the fun thing about the old car hopping only so many Mustangs and Camaros you can look at and it's just fun to see what else was out there and and what else kind of went to a different drum this was kind of a revolutionary car with the different size doors and the terrarium look and all that I mean it didn't quite wasn't they hit they thought it would be but it's fun to look back in history and just see what else is out there thanks for being a good sport thank you Mike yeah yeah gotta get a shot of his family this is the family car your son is here and your wife was there I'm gonna get the three of them and we'll end with their picture there you go a family and a pacer there you go see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 598,495

Keywords: AMC, Pacer, LS3, American Motors Company, station wagon, restomod, cult classic, motonerd, 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 leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: NJ4M829GTz0

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2019