IEDEI

the AMC AMX 3 concept was in a series of AMC concept cars for their next generation sports car.  Bodied and shelled in Italy by Bizzarrini, however only 5 cars made it through production (with #6 produced afterwards from spare parts) due to high costs and lack of demand for a premium sports car built by AMC.  I can’t help but think that this could have been MUCH cooler than the Corvette had it been produced.  This could have been THE definitive american supercar——-well, assuming AMC wouldn’t have folded several years later under the buckling pressure of a poor company.

Comments from Richard Teague, designer of the AMX during his time at AMC: read the rest of this interview here

“That’s what killed the program. The bumper standards were just happening… and soft bumpers were being tested on taxicabs in New York by GM at about this time. The technology really wasn’t there to put soft bumpers on the AMX/3 though Pantera made an effort to meet the standards and it did. But it kind of spoiled the front of that car. We just decided the effort involved in all these forthcoming standards… was just too much [on top of] the hassle of trying to get a bodybuilder that could make it at a price that we could sell it for that would be realistic. So all of those things… added up to the program being shelved. But it was a very serious program for a very long time. We tried very hard to make it happen. And we built six prototypes, really. We had a lot of money in the program, not a lot by today’s standards, but for a little company that was trying to make a mark it was, I think, a pretty good effort. At least all six of the cars survive.”