AMC Machine

The Machine is an automobile (2,326 built in 1970) produced by American Motors Corporation (AMC). It is a muscle car version of the AMC Rebel. The Machine featured factory performance enhancements with serious power at a budget price.

The Machine was announced to dealers by then Vice-President William Pickett on August 5, 1969. The letter stated the company's intention to finish all of the first one thousand Machine with the "Red Streak" graphics kit, making it one of the most distinctive cars ever built by any company at any time. Each dealer could commit to one Rebel Machine and advised to display in their showrooms, not on their lots. One known exception to this was Empire Motors in Sudbury, Ontario.

They delivered more Machines than any other dealer with a total of 60 units. Their technique was to have the son and the nephew of the owner take the cars from the trailer to the local dragstrip, disconnect the exhaust pipes and race them. They made the sales deals on location. Sudbury is a mining town and in those days a Rebel Machine was attractive for young miners with money and nowhere to spend it. A number of the cars in the area are still owned by their original owners.

First proposed in June 1968, the car was to have been a 1969 Rebel coupe finished in black with authoritative black wheels and fat tires, without any stripes, scoops, or spoilers, but with a cartoon "Machine" logo being run through a couple of graphic gears, (International Rebel Machine Newsletter, John Newell, 1995), aggressive street-fighting stance.

American Motors' high performance "halo" vehicle was announced to the press on October 16, 1969  and made its official debut October 25, 1969, in Dallas, Texas; the site of the National Hot Rod Association's World Championship Drag Race Finals. The Machine was conceived by American Motors, and the idea evolved from a collaboration between Hurst Performance and AMC, but unlike the compact SC/Rambler, there was no public recognition by AMC of Hurst's contribution once production commenced.

Hurst was involved in every aspect of developing the performance image of the car. The February issue of Super Stock magazine states that "since we introduced you to the car, we have made a couple of trips and a lot of phone calls to the Hurst Performance Research Lab in Detroit where the Rebel Machine was born and raised..." The Super Stock article titled "The Machine Part II" went on to state that "the Hurst organization and AMC have been collaborating on a couple of very interesting publications that are issued with each Machine sold. The booklets describe to the new Machine owner just what he has bought, and offers explicit instructions on what do to make it better (i.e. quicker) in four stages of modifications."

The marketing was backed up by multiple sessions of drag strip testing at Florida's Gainsville Dragway. The aforementioned Super Stock article and the article by the late Roger Huntington titled 'Are You Geared to Go' became the benchmark performance article for The Machine and in the case of the Huntington article, a template for how to write an informative, useful article about muscle cars.

The standard engine in The Machine was AMC's 390 cu in (6.4 L) V8 engine with 340 horsepower (253.5 kW). More importantly, from a racing point of view, the engine developed 430 lb·ft (583 N·m) of torque at 3600 rpm. The horsepower rating only qualified the Machine as a muscle car - and thus higher insurance premiums by one single horsepower; the torque is what made the difference at the starting line. This was the most powerful engine in any AMC vehicle while retaining features required for normal street operations, as well as components to assure outstanding performance characteristics without incurring high-unit and warranty costs (John Newell) penalties. The engine is fed by a miserly 600-cfm Autolite four-barrel carb. Compression was advertised at 10.0:1 and required high-octane gasoline.