A handful of our regular readers with really thorough memories might just happen to recall me mentioning that it was an AMC Gremlin my father used to teach me how to drive in. We had a ’77 Gremlin and a ’76 Malibu and he insisted on using the Gremlin, telling me I’d thank him for the rest of my life for learning on a manual. He was correct, and may my dear old dad RIP. However, our mythical creature was an ordinary bottom-of-the-line model, with an inline six and a 3-Speed. The good news here is this 1973 AMC Gremlin is the X model with a V8 and a 4-Speed! It’s located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and can be seen here on eBay, with bidding currently at $17,800, still short of the reserve.
Barn Finds would like to send out a big thanks to reader Larry D. for sending us the tip on this one! Three factory engine choices were available for the Gremlin in ’73, including a pair of inline 6-cylinder offerings plus a 304 cubic-inch V8. So why does this one have a 401 under the hood? Well, it could be one of two reasons. The more likely scenario is the 304 has been swapped out, a relatively easy change as the blocks for both motors are the same size. Less probable is it may have been one of the 20 or so examples known as the Gremlin XR produced by the Randall Brothers AMC dealership in Arizona, who, as the story goes, made a very small number of 401-equipped cars.
I’m really not sure how to identify an original XR model Gremlin, so maybe some of our AMC aficionados may have some insight they can share with us. But in any event, a 401 is now in place, and we get to see it from both the top and bottom sides. The engine area looks sweet in both views, and the motor includes an Edelbrock manifold and valve covers, plus MSD ignition and plug wires. There’s also a 4-Speed manual transmission, making this quite the rockin’ drivetrain.
More good news is that the car’s not all go either, as it shows nicely on the outside as well. The Mellow Yellow is the correct color, with the seller claiming the paint is even and showing a good gloss. The only noted exception is the orange stripe between the taillights, which is exhibiting a bit of fading in a few spots. The exterior also features a chrome roof rack and spoiler, both nice touches if you ask me.
This Gremlin looks a lot sportier inside than my dad’s did, as it’s got bucket seats and a sport steering wheel. Everything in there seems to be in decent shape, with a new covering on the seats and an aftermarket Hurst shifter to give it an even better presentation. I’m not finding much not to like here, inside, outside, or under the hood. How about you?
I bet that 401 makes this a burnout king. I thought the 401 was the best of AMC performance with forged internals and good flowing heads. I think a 401 would be nice in a Hornet with a longer wheelbase but still relatively light chassis. Nice car though.
Stick a Holley TBI in place of their wheezy carburetor and it’ll wake that 401 up even more!
Again,why is it the dealers always seem to get these
kind of finds,rather than the average guy that can’t afford
to pay the dealer price?
Trade-in, anglia. The builder passes on, and the family got their eye on that Toyota HighRunner, or 4Lander.[sic] Point is, this is worth nothing to them, and since dad isn’t around to chew them out, mom, in her 80s herself, never liked it to begin with, and away it goes. The dealer knows full well, this is an easier, and much more profitable sell than any SUV,,for now. In these troubled times, it’s a buyers market, if you get it before the vultures, that is. I doubt pops ever imagined it would go for $20 grand, and the family makes out. I suppose nothing wrong with that.
Excellent wisdom Howard. I bet you that’s how it played out to a T. Granny was happy, the dealer will make some cash, and the buyer will ultimately sell it for a lot less, recharging the lower end of the market.
Perhaps dealers get consignments because many do not want to deal with a bunch of zombies coming to ones residence….think Gullwing Motors & Beverly Hills car club.
Alot less paperwork hassle for a buyer buying the car through a dealer, assuming they are honest. Must be the least amount of weight over the rear wheels for a V8 at that time. Must understeer like crazy!
Nicest Gremlin I have seen on BF.
Can you say Brian Ambrosini? Nice shift lever, looks like out of a cabover Freightshaker I drove once. Aside from the dual exhausts, that your unsuspecting opponent will see, no mention of anything special, will surprise many. Reason I say Ambrosini, is this car would have no trouble pulling the front wheels, if it hooked up, that is. I can only imagine, this car is a handful. NOT for beginners. Coolest Gremlin I’ve seen in a while. I wonder what a Gremlin handles like at 130 mph, previously unheard of in Gremlin country.
And Mike, it’s clear why the old man insisted on using the Gremlin. Didn’t want to ruin the Malibu!!
Howard, you’re correct on how this gem likely left the family. My co-worker’s mom has his dad’s 65 Chevy Shortbed, straight six, 3 on the tree that he drove 1 mile to work in his days before retirement. It is red with white top and bumpers and only has 5,500 miles on the odometer! But him and his brother know what they have and the mom is in her 80’s. I don’t know of another with that low of mileage. It would bring good money here or if rolled through Mecum.
I went to Northern Arizona University and knew a girl whose dad worked at Randall Bros. And got her a gremlin XR same color as this one but with black stripes and the shifter was different
My room mate and I were driving from Flagstaff to phoenix on I-17 in his Buick gs going around 90 when she appeared out of nowhere and blew past us and was out of site in minutes she had to be going well over 100 in that thing
That was the only Gremlin with a 401 I ever saw until this one
Beautiful car and a rocket
Worth every penny it goes for!!
I’m sure the shifter was different…it should have been an automatic, as all Randall 401XRs were delivered this way.
Good authority has informed me that Randall Gremlins did have 4 speeds & there is one locally. It is the Randall Pacer that always had the Torque-flite.
When I was in my early teens we had a Dodge Aspen slant 6 ,3 sp over drive manual so actually 4 forward gears,it had simular shifter with Hurst stamped on it.
Nice Amc.
They do mention that they have the original window sticker.
That would help in the originality trail re; a Randall Gremlin.
It does have pop-out 1/4 glass windows, a rare option.
There were 2 styles, and these appear to be earlier ones.
I’ve got one of the Randall 401’s, and unless you have a paper trail your kind of in the weeds as there are no records of which ones were converted.
Great video, nice lumpy sound at idle
I was looking at a built one that needed to have the body finished a few years ago. I joked with the owner that I’d finally have the car to put the gas cap I have under.
I’m sure the Randall 401s had Steward Warner gauges
When I was 16, and looking for my first car. I found a Gremlin X in this exact color scheme. Of course, it had the 258 six, and a slush-o-matic. But it was three years old, and the Ford dealer wanted $700 for me to take it off their lot. I drove it. It was bog slow, and rather wheezy, but I had car fever and was ready to plunk down the cash. Cooler(Dad’s)heads prevailed though, and we left the Gremmy there. Also, on the same lot, was a ’69 Mustang Shelby GT500. For the grand price of $4000. Needless to say, I didn’t get that car, either. But 30 years later, I chided Dad for not buying the Mustang!
You just turned down a car that had a bullet proof engine. AMC had two of the best inline 6’s ever made.
I agree that the AMC L6 engines were hard to beat! The 199, 232, 258 and near-current 4.0 will last forever with minimal levels of maintenance…
We raced a Hornet with a 232 six in 2 24 hour of Lemons races. Had a 3 speed and later a 4 speed (a little bit of cheating). The second race found us not opening the hood a pit stops. Never burned a drop of oil or overheated. Believe me we drove the s##t out of that car. Bullet proof is an understatement.
When the Gremlin was first introduced they were the butt of everybody’s jokes. Now they are a coveted collectible and nobody is laughing.
Needs a Tach
Fit the 3 pod cluster that the hornet had.
Install tach where clock was, [rare option, but they are out there]
Or fit a sun 635.
just surprised no ones done it already
Nah. Just an RPM light wired to the Fasten Seat Belts idiot light.
When I was a young man, a lot of these wound up with small block Chevy’s in them. Vega’s too.
I found an orange Gremlin with a 3 speed on the floor and a six in a junkyard in the early 90’s . It had the ” hockey stick ” stripe on the sides . The odometer read 7,300 miles and the interior lead me to believe it was actual . The date of birth on the registration put the previous owner in his 80’s . I popped the hood and took the oil cap off , shiny rocker arms appeared . I bought the car for $300 . When I put a new battery in it with the clutch in the car lurched in gear . I stuck it in 3rd with the clutch in and it broke free . I drove the car home on it’s original tires . I wish I had it now . Back then it was practically worthless even with 7,300 miles .
Every car has a buyer. Pushing $25K I’m thinking Gm, Mopar, Ford etc…
Gremlins were a sub-compact car made out of compact and mid-size car parts, cast iron 6’s, big Chrysler auto trans, big rear ends, engine bay that fits all small-block V-8s, bigger front-end/ suspension parts etc. I believe that is why so many have survived, disproportionally high compared to the production numbers of Gremlins, Pintos and Vegas.
Sub-compact car/compact and mid-size parts – that’s a good observation that I hadn’t thought of, but you’re right. I had a ’73, and it was really kind of a short version of a larger vehicle; even had a “5 liter V8” per the decal on the back.
I remember when the Randall Brothers first advertised the Gremlin. The price also included one way airfare to pick up the car in Arizona.
I drove a 304, manual 3 speed back in the mid 70’s, it was quite a rocket. Can only imagine what it would be like with the 401.
In ’77 I had a purple ’73 Gremlin X with the 304, but automatic….and it was pretty quick too. No trouble at all breaking the tires loose, lol. It was actually pretty nice, but it seemed like everything rattled. Sold it after a year and bought something with half the cylinders and twice the fun – a ’74 Celica.
I worked with a guy who had a 401 4 speed AMX about the same vintage. He never drove it because on a good day it would only get 9MPG. He loved the car and hated the gas mileage. Oh well!
It was most likely a 71. They were the ones with the power.
I think some raced in IMSA.
Probably would handle like an AMX 390. Not that much different, is it?
Probably a big difference in HP. The high hp days ended in 72. Now the 401 made in 71 had the big hp. A friend of mine had the 71 AMX with the 401. The rear end could not handle that motor.
Several of these raced in the early IMSA series with the most notable being Indy car driver Howdy Holmes with EZ wider rolling papers as a key sponsor
A Randall XR401 was capable of high 13’s off the dealership lot
$24,498k now and reserve still not met. The seller has some other great listings.
Hideous color scheme but car is very well done.
The small V8 was really too much for the car. The 258-6 was more than enough. There was an article in one of the car nags titled “Big six quick fix” where they got a whole bunch more power out of the 258. With that engine the car did not have enough tires/brakes/suspension. Putting the bigger V8 in that chassis? Wow..the car presents nearly perfectly. If I wanted one, this would be it.
On the rear, it appears to have the original 5 Liter decal, denoting to 304ci.
I wrote the seller about the window sticker.
He/Her/They…confirmed it was a 304 car, but no info on selling dealer.
I have a Hot Rod magazine annual with an article about
the Gremlins and the dealership.Makes me miss the ’70’s!
I want one, fantastic car! 😁
The “H” in the VIN denotes a(an) 304 factory car. Wondering if Randall had a procedure to mark the cars to confirm that they did the mods.
I have the 74 version, same color, but obviously with the 304.
This is NOT a Randall 401XR car, as all Randalls came from Randall AMC in Mesa, AZ with automatic transmissions. This SIGNIFICANTLY impacts its value.
Again. Randall Gremlins could have the 4 speed. There is currently one locally and another person tried to buy one here way back in the 1980s. He did not have sufficient funds at the time. A bit later, he had the money and went back to find the car was gone. He then found that it had been wrecked by a teenager…….
JLHudson,
“Wrecked by a teenager . . .”
Ah yessss, Back about 1980 my partner and I bought a red with silver lower sides,1968 Mercury Cougar RX7 GTE with the 428 Cobra Jet engine and 4-speed. One afternoon after seeing my ad in a local newspaper for the Cougar, a young man of 16 brought his parents out from the wealthy Virginia town of Potomac to see the Cougar.
I could see the kid was very excited about racing the Cougar, and I took his parents aside while he was looking at the engine. I told them I didn’t think the car was going to make a good “first car” purchase for a 16 year old. This spoiled and indulgent kid talked his parents into buying the car anyway,
As Virginia required a signed and notarized Bill of Sale stating the price paid [for personal property tax purposes], I added a section to the Bill of Sale that both parents signed, where I stated the car was sold as-is, and designed and built as a high performance automobile for racing, and not intended for inexperienced drivers.
A few weeks later I found a letter in my mail from an attorney indicating he was representing the parents, and was investigating my sale of the car to their son. [I actually sold it to the parents, as the kid was a minor.] Seems the boy was racing it late one night, and hit an overpass column at about 90mph, and damn near killed himself.
I wrote back to the attorney and suggested he read the Bill of Sale carefully, with special care in reading what I wrote about it being a race car for experienced drivers only. I never heard from the attorney or the parents again.
For such a nice car/engine bay and engine doesn’t the hose coming out of the top of the water pump have an awful kink in it or am just seeing things.?
Again… lol
As Ed confirmed with the seller, this is just a 304 Gremlin X. Mike Stephens might have done a little homework before just posting links to errant listings.
As JT pointed out, the VIN shows it to be a factory 304 car, but as AMC never made a Gremlin with a Kenosha installed 401, none of the Randall cars would display the 401 engine code in the VIN either. All 401XRs had the engines installed at Randall AMC in Mesa, AZ; in the same manner as engines were swapped out at Yenko Chevrolet in Canonsburg, PA or Joel Rosen’s Motion Performance in Baldwin, NY in Chevy Chevelles, Camaros, Novas, etc.
This does not make them any less valuable, as that’s the way things were done back in the day, to get around factory imposed DOT and EPA regulations. There are even pictures online showing all of the crated 401s sitting in the parts department at Randall AMC back in the early 1970s.
I’d give real body parts ( my body) to own this car. (I’m a 64 year old disabled veteran, I can afford a price or two. 😁, Ya I know, you’re not the first person to think I’m a bit nuts.
I’d give real body parts ( my body) to own this car. (I’m a 64 year old disabled veteran, I can afford a piece or two. 😁, Ya I know, you’re not the first person to think I’m a bit nuts.
I knew a guy that worked in a tire shop in the mid ’70’s that swapped a 401 into his 304 automatic Gremlin. He used to tell me how it was
so much faster than my 455 inch 442. We never had a chance to run them together as he wrecked the car and ended up in the hospital.
I worked at an AMC dealership for a short time in 1975, and the Mechanic who operated the front end alignment rack had a Gremlin X 304 that the original engine was grenaded after the car had been stolen. He took a 401 out of a wrecked Javelin/AMX and installed it in the Gremlin.
I drove the car just once, and it was scary-fast! While I like going fast, this example was hard to control at speed.
I drove a 1971 AMC Ambassador as one of my driver’s Ed cars and was totally unimpressed by the power steering. Lots of play and no feedback like a throwback to the 1950s. Vowed never to buy an American Motors product after that. The Plymouth Fury III driver training cars steered better despite their bulk. I do love the 401 V8 and the yellow color. The Gremlin was a chopped off Hornet and reviews said that affected high end stability. The styling is cute and pioneered American subcompact ahead of the Pinto and Vega. Another great Barn Find.
In the early 1970’s a friend, whose father owned the AMC dealership in Santa Barbara, California, built a Gremlin with the engine and 4 speed transmission from an AMC “Rebel Machine”. This thing was an absolute screamer!! With 4 people in the car, at cruising speed and flooring it, it would fry the tires. A true sleeper, completely stock looking, you could only hear a slight tinging sound from the headers he installed on it.
My 401 gremlin is really squirrely…
Goes everywhere except where you point it.
So in a moment of sanity I decided to fit a crossram manifold….
Might have been a mistake…
Oddball oddities and this receives a top ten on my list of the
ugliest cars.
25K and still reserve not met. I actually like it
more comments than for an AMX….one thing that has not been mentioned are the manual front disc brakes. They look like the Kelsey-Hayes type which is correct for this car. Years ago i removed an AMC vacuum gauge from a Gremlin. Not as nice a unit as the gauge that came with the “Rally-Pac” in first generation AMXs or Javelins, but i have yet to see another one.
I do remember the Randall 401 XR magazine articles back in the day betting this is a 304 which is still pretty quick and squirrely but I feel this one is misrepresented saying it is a 401 6.6 liter when the back deck plainly says 5 liter V8
The decal means nothing. ANYONE can change the engines. Heck, back in college one fella had a Nova with the “I-6 230” logos on the front fenders and a 400 small block, 0.060 over, with twin turbos under the hood. Had the dog dish hub caps on the steel wheels too!
This thing left the factory with the 304 and got treated to a 401. No point in scraping off the sticker!
Steve,
Plenty of people did similar things for decades. I had a friend who was into Studebakers, and he took his mom’s 1962 Studebaker Lark 2 door sedan, sold new with a 6 cylinder & 3 on the column, pulled the drive train and replaced it with a 1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk’s McCulloch supercharged 289 V8, a GT Hawk’s 4-speed on the floor, and the rear axle had been replaced with the “Twin-Traction” posi diff.
He even cut off the back end of the additional dual exhaust system, so it still looked like a 6 cylinder exhaust. And of course he left the “Lark VI” emblem on the taillight panel. Just looking at the car, the only clue something was different was the much wider rear tires.
I wanted a Gremmie bad when I was 18 just out of high school with a Datsun pick up and a blown motor, couldn’t find a X model in a decent color and a 304 but in Glendale one day I found a blue SC 360 Hornet that was I believe inventory the dealer didn’t really want so that’s what I ended up with.
Easy to check the engine cid. The 304 or 401 is cast in/ on the block .
The vinyl trim accents are cheaper and easier to get now than say 8 to 10 years ago- think all of the wrapping going on in the hobby now. Computers are your friend.
Bill McCoskey: As you probably know, those Cougars are now worth north of $75K. I have seen only one in person, long ago. A few years back i was enlisted to sell my friends 390 AMX. A fellow called up and wanted to buy it for his 16 year old son. I said no. Even if the kid was a responsible driver, i figured that one night an obnoxious buddy would demand to drive the car and proceed to wreck it. A period quote from an AMC salesman went like this: I never let an inexperienced driver take the 390 AMX for a test drive. I let them test a car with the 343.
JL…try upwards of $200k for a 428 GT-E Cougar.
I’ll add my story…from a teenager’s point of view:
After my sophomore year of high school, I went looking for a new car. Originally, I was looking for an El Camino or Caballero (GMC) and the dealer had a leftover 2nd gen Turbo TransAm, actually faster than any new C3 Corvette at the time, sitting on the showroom floor. Long story short, I ended up taking home the new TransAm.
Forward two weeks. I was only 2 blocks from my house when I come upon a 1970 442 W30 with a for sale sign in the window. How had I never seen this car before??? Story goes, the car had been hidden away in the garage by a “soon to be” ex-husband and the wife wanted it GONE. I asked her, “How much?” and she said, “$1,500”.
And asked if I wanted to take it out for a test drive…
What do you think I said?
I fired up the 455 and started out slowly, as it was a slight drizzle out that morning. I could tell the major difference in torque from my new Firebird. Got about a mile until I got to a stop sign and no other cars were in view. I dropped the dual gate shifter into the right gate and punched it…quickly ending up in the opposite direction. I put the shifter back into “D” and slowly returned to the woman’s house and placed the keys in her hand…
sdhow said . . .
JL…try upwards of $200k for a 428 GT-E Cougar.
When we bought the GTE and the Imperial, I know we didn’t spend more than $5,000 for the pair!
JLHudson,
There is more to the GTE’s story . . .
We bought the XR7-GTE at one of the Atlantic City, NJ vintage car auctions, and we also bought a 1967 Imperial Crown Coupe with the rare Mobile Director’s interior. We had driven up from Silver Spring, MD for the auction, using my 1966 Chrysler New Yorker, planning on driving one car back on a dealer tag, and towing the other car behind the Chrysler.
On the last day of the auction, someone tried to steal the New Yorker from the parking lot at the AC Convention Center, and burned the wiring harness up ’cause they didn’t know how to hotwire it! So I transferred the bumper hitch [remember those?] to the Imperial, and started towing the New Yorker with the imperial. I had also switched tags from the New Yorker to the Imperial, as who is gonna know the difference between a 1966 Chrysler and a 1967 Chrysler?
So we headed home from Atlantic City, I was driving the Imperial in the lead, towing the New Yorker, and my partner was driving the Cougar following behind. Heading out on the old Rt 40 thru the New Jersey pine barrens, about an hour from AC, I slowed to go over a set of railroad tracks, and the Cougar slowed as well. It was at that point the Cougar died, coming to a stop sitting on the tracks! My partner put the shifter into park, and that little thumb button to shift the car out of park, popped out of the shifter handle and disappeared somewhere under the seat!
I saw the Cougar wasn’t moving so I pulled off the road and ran back. My partner was sitting in the driver’s seat, a look of sheer panic on his face, and I thought he was going to bend the steering wheel he was pulling on it so hard! He was very upset and began babbling at me, something about being on the railroad tracks and the car is stuck in park!
I looked at the shifter and realized the button was gone. I then looked at the tops of the railroad rails as they disappeared into the distance. The rails were dark brown with rust. That told me there hadn’t been a train go thru for years. Sliding under the car, while my partner attempted to shift it out of park, I pulled on the rod that would have connected to the shifter park button, and the shifter came right out of park.
We rolled the car back off to the side of the road, and once everything was off the main road, we walked a few steps to a small rural country store right next to the tracks, and grabbed something to drink & calm our nerves. I explained our problem to the older gent behind the counter, and he asked again what kind of car it was. I told him it was a Cougar XR7 GTE, and his eyes got big! He had to come outside and look at it. After pouring over the car, he explained he was a Ford big block guy. I asked about finding a safe place to put the car overnight, and he motioned for us to follow him.
We went behind the store to an old wooden 2 car garage, and he opened up the left garage door, then began lifting off a car cover, exposing a Mustang fastback with a Cobra Jet engine from the factory [don’t remember what year]. It was his favorite car. He offered to move his modern car out of the other space in the garage, and we 3 pushed the Cougar around to the back and into the garage. After exchanging contact info, we headed out in the Imperial, still towing the New Yorker.
As we crossed into Maryland on I-95, we were soon pulled over by a State Police officer who had been running random license plates. He was a car guy who happened to like older MoPaR cars and knew the difference between a 66 and a 67 Chrysler product!
I showed him the fire evidence under the hood of the New Yorker, as well as the AC police report about the attempted car theft. I also showed him my former Military Police ID. He indicated because the tags were not correct for the car, he had to impound both cars, but if we came back with our used car dealer tag, he would release both cars. He did agree to let me drive the cars over to the police barracks in Rising Sun, MD, where the cars were locked in the impound lot.
The officer was very nice, and it was clear he was a car guy, suggesting we go to court with all our paperwork, and proof that as a used car dealer, our insurance covered liability for every car we bought. If we did this he said he would back our request for the charges to be dismissed. He even dropped us off at the local Greyhound bus station over on US Rt 1. That’s right, we started out that afternoon with 3 cars, and ended up taking the bus the rest of the way home!
I had noted the Cougar’s battery no longer had a charge, and nothing electrical worked. So we brought up 2 extra batteries and jumper cables, and it soon became clear the alternator wasn’t charging. We drove the Cougar home by trading off batteries, using battery cables to re-charge the depleted batteries as needed, with each extra battery needing the re-charge, nestling under the hood of my Dodge truck as it charged.
My partner and I made arrangements to go to court, we brought all the paperwork showing that our crazy story was very real. The police officer backed us up, and as he promised, suggested the citations be dismissed. The judge smiled, and said something to the effect “we had made his day with the story”, and he dismissed everything.
The Cougar needed a new alternator, the former owner had installed the wrong one, and it wasn’t charging. One of the reasons we bought the Cougar was because it had Factory A/C, and I’ve never seen another one with A/C. It also had the tan leather interior.
While I only had that GTE for a few months, I have always wished I could have kept it.
just a few years back, a GTE was in Hemmings for about $75K. IIRC, it was a 427 GTE!
a 427 Gremlin?…. I was hanging around the hanger one time and my colleague and I were eyeing a fresh jet engine sitting on its wheeled cradle. He ponders for a moment and said “If we had a gallon of kerosene and a battery it would be quite a ride…..”
That car has the same kind of a vibe…
Randall Gremlins probably started out as H code cars with a three speed manual. This would be the least expensive car that has the V8 crossmember.
I never thought the name ‘Gremlin’ translated to ‘Cougar’ in all these replies.
You guys need to buy a car, or write a memoir about your car life.
Well, you’re right, but the discussion morphed from a Gremlin with a 401 over to a Cougar with a 428 and how impractical both were. A short wheelbase economy car has no reason to have a 400+ hp engine installed in it. That’s why a 427 Corvette, back in the late 60s, was called a “Widowmaker”. Too many GIs were returning from Vietnam with a pocket full of cash and taking that shiny new Vette or Hemi Mopar and wrapping it around a stationary object.
Gremlins & Cougars do have one thing in common: neither gets enough “lub”.
Finnegan on roadkill put a hemi in a Gremlin LOL
Luv those guys!!!