Shortly after Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson joined forces against the postwar industrial might of General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford in 1954, the freshly minted concern popped out the Rambler Rebel. While Rambler traces its lineage back to a bicycle built during the latter quarter of the 19th century, ?Rebel? was a fresh, new nameplate from a firm attempting to fend off a trio of daunting foes. After a four-model-year run, AMC retired the Rebel badge after 1960, only to wake it from its slumber in the heady days of the late ?60s and goose it with a performance-oriented SST trim level.

The ?66 Rambler Rebel was a transitional model, a halfhearted cop of the muscle car template laid out by John Z. DeLorean two years before with the GTO. In ?67, however, while GM, Ford, and Chrysler intermediates were still clinging to the curves and creases of their mid-?60s designs, AMC launched the squared-off Ramblers, though the historic marque itself wasn’t long for our shores. The Rebel stuck it out a year longer in the U.S. market than hoary old Rambler managed to, surviving the end of the ?60s. For 1970, the AMC Rebel stood as its own machine before giving way to the Matador badge for ?71, a nameplate which came to exemplify chest hair and impotence in equal measure during the doldrums of the Malaise Era.
So what do we have here, then" The last year of the Rambler Rebel models, the dorky cool of the stoic, blocky, late-?60s AMC design language, and the desirable SST tri...