BY THE MID-’60S, the muscle car wars raged ever onward. Every year brought hotter powertrains, better traction, wilder style — all at a price that even the local grocery-store bag boy could afford. Winners and losers were determined between the lights. Everyone seemed to want to get in on the action.
Everyone, that is, except for poor AMC. Formed by merging Nash and Hudson in 1954, AMC was small and prudent, chasing reliability and economy over trends. But Detroit overwhelmed Rambler’s compact-car raison d’etre, and by 1966 sales were in freefall. Cautious old management was replaced by Roy Chapin, Jr., a CEO who sought to capitalize on America’s performance awakening; Chapin’s family founded Hudson Motors, whose Twin-H-Power Hornet dominated early NASCAR tracks. He understood that racing would attract a newer, younger clientele.
A variety of crucial pieces to the company’s high-performance puzzle were either online or coming soon. A new 290-cube V-8 engine launched mid-1966; a bored-and-stroked 315-horse, 390-cube version would arrive in ’68; the upcoming two-seat 1968 AMX and its Javelin pony car counterpart looked promising. Chapin’s team worked
