Joining the expected highbrow selections at Gooding & Company’s Scottsdale auction in January 2017?vintage offerings by Ferrari, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Packard, Bentley, and Mercedes-Benz?is one from an American automaker whose wares aren’t usually found in such rarefied environs: American Motors. Although it came from the people who brought you the Gremlin and the Pacer, the AMX/3 was a bona fide exotic, one that has every right to share the podium with the better known vintage-car royalty at the Gooding sale.
A mid-engine two-seater, the AMX/3 was the ultimate product of the push to reverse AMC’s staid image, an effort that also saw the introduction of the Javelin and the AMX. Interestingly, it brought together several heavyweights of late-1960s sports-car construction: BMW did engineering and testing; Italy’s Giotto Bizzarrini (who also did work for Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Iso) developed the chassis and suspension; and Italdesign engineered the body, from a design by AMC’s Dick Teague. Power came from an AMC 390-cubic-inch V-8 mated to a four-speed transaxle. Assembly was to take place in Italy?we say “was to” because, although initial plans called for a production run of 1000 cars, only five were built before the project was halted.
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