The Rebel Machine

In 1969 AMC introduced a little quarter-mile rocket called the Hurst S/C Rambler. It was the best they could do in the horsepower wars of the time. They plopped their 390 cube 340 horse big-block into the Rambler American, and with drag slicks and open headers you suddenly had a high 11 Rambler.

They painted it up red white and blue, and forty years later you still have a bona fide collectors item.

The next year the Hurst Rambler went to the dustbin of history, and the Rebel Machine took it's place. I was never a AMC fan but I have to admit I owned one of those.

The Rebel Machine was the result of putting the same power train into their mid-size Rebel body. So you made the same power in a car that weighed in at about 800 pounds more. With slicks and headers you'd be lucky to get the Machine to a mid-thirteen.

I bought my Machine when it was four or five years old off a lot in Toronto. It wasn't running. Me and cousin John towed it home behind my 340 Dart.

John's Dad was one of those old-school mechanical genius types who could hardly speak English, but he had this puppy purring in about ten minutes.

Whereupon we set about a campaign of delivering the greatest smoke-shows the local muscle-car crowd had ever seen.

That 390 was pretty much out of breath by fifty-two hundred, but if you dumped the clutch in second gear and then held it wide open you'd put up a most impressive mushroom cloud. I used to do this out on the '86 Dragway, and passing cars would put on their headlights to navigate the smoke field.

Alas, these massive smoke shows eventually caused the demise of this motor, and that's where I made a critical mistake. I towed the Machine into a local dealership and had them rebuild the motor.

The rebuild cost twice as much as what I'd paid for the car. And the shitheads at the dealership were quite obnoxious about it. Even though I'd bought a brand new car there (a factory-order 340 Duster) they came up with all kinds of reasons why the rebuild cost two times the estimate and why I had to pay the bill in full before driving the car off the lot.

The dealership was Guelph Chrysler Plymouth, and they were on the cusp of bankruptcy.

Not long after, some drug-crazed hooligan went wild in their back lot and wrecked half a dozen new cars they'd aready paid Crysler Corporation for. Served them right. Guess I got that Machine out of their shop in the nick of time.

They went tits-up weeks later.