Once referred to as “The Flying Fish Bowl,” the AMC Pacer is a car that may well have been in danger of fading off into obscurity like many of its contemporaries had it not been for the starring role of a 1976 Pacer in the movie “Wayne’s World.” That movie brought the virtually forgotten Pacer back into the public’s mind, and the car has experienced a surge in popularity, and it is now considered a collectible from the 1970s. Barn Finder Miguel spotted this 1977 D/L for us to look at, so thank you for that Miguel. The Pacer is located in Woodinville, Washington, and is listed for sale here on Craigslist.
As best as I can establish from the ad, this Pacer was bought by two young guys to restore for their father. They’ve done a fair amount of work on it, but it is now being sold. The car looks quite straight and free of rust. The young guys prepared and painted the car themselves. I’m assuming that they aren’t professional spray-painters, and while I’ve seen better paint jobs, I can safely say that I’ve seen plenty that were a whole lot worse. I think that they’ve done a pretty good job. The car isn’t wearing its chrome trims around the wheel wells. The owners have three of these, so a fourth would need to be sourced to complete the exterior. They also have the decals for the car, but they chose not to apply them. The only real issue to report is a water leak from somewhere around the windshield. They haven’t been able to locate it, so the car is kept under cover.
It isn’t clear which engine is fitted to the Pacer, but I think that it is the 258ci straight-six. This is hooked to an automatic transmission. The owners say that the car runs and drives really well. They have also purchased and installed a new rack and pinion for the steering, and the power steering is said to work perfectly.
Being the Pacer D/L, the seat fabric is “Navajo-design” cloth. The interior looks to be in pretty good condition. The seats themselves look quite good, the owners have fitted new carpet, while the dash and pad also look like they’re pretty good. The owners do say that there is a crack in the plastic on the driver’s door and that the door pulls are pretty worn. With the growth in popularity of the Pacer in recent years, fairly decent support and parts network have now developed, and sourcing replacement trim items should not be a problem.
Since the day that the first Pacer rolled off the line the car has had a loyal band of owners and supporters, and while its looks were revolutionary by the standards of the mid-1970s, the car soon fell out of favor with the general public. This wasn’t because it was a particularly bad car, but because AMC simply didn’t have the budget to continue ongoing development of the car after its release. Today, the Pacer has developed a cult following, and values have reflected this change in perception. Like the Corvair and the Edsel before it, it wasn’t too many years ago that owners were at a point where they were virtually giving their Pacers away, so low were the values. With the rise in the cult following for the car, it is really hard to find a reasonable example for under $6,000. The young guys who own this Pacer have set a price of $4,200 for the car…and I really hope that they get it.
These cars have really grown on me over the years, and this looks like a fine example of one. It’s unfortunate Pacers didn’t stick around longer so improvements in power, handling, and performance could have been made. Kudos to the restoration, and I think the paint job looks really good. Good luck to the new owner.
My buddy drove one of these back in the 80’s, he couldn’t kill it and never got it stuck, and that was in the mud in a park close to where we grew up ! He literally tried to kill, but couldn’t ! I had nothing but respect for that car after seeing what he did to it !
The stuff we do in our youth………
Like it. Here’s the perfect boat to tow behind your vintage Pacer.
We called them Peopleariums..
The Pacer was designed for A Radial engine, like the Wankel, but AMC couldn’t come up with a decent one, so they shoehorned the 258 in there, Had a customer that had one, couldn’t keep the front end in line, and there was a leak between the exhaust and the head that was difficult to fix, tried everything. Also this c was overall difficult to work on. Kudos to the 2 gentlemen who fixed it up for Dad!!
Cheers
GPC
Specifically, the Pacer was designed around the GM Wankel rotary engine, which had not yet been released when the Pacer was being developed.
When GM cancelled their rotary project due to problems with emissions and gas mileage, AMC was stuck, all they could do was go with their much larger and heavier six-cylinder (and later, V8) engines. The rear cylinders of the six are under the cowl! (Heaven help you if you need to replace the head gasket, or even the valve cover gasket!)
The Pacer was popular at first due to its novelty but even in the pre-internet era the word got out pretty quickly about their lack of power and poor gas mileage.
The Pacer was actually intended to be a lightweight, fleet coupe but Company lawyers were afraid of possible upcoming crash standards, and it would not have been possible for AMC to make major changes to the car’s structure later. This resulted in the Pacer being much pudgier and heavier than originally envisioned. On the plus side it is one of the safer cars from that time period.
The ad for the Amc pacer was that you could make a big submarine sandwich in the back side because it was so wide. We always called the submarine sandwich car .
If you find a good AMC Pacer, and it are not expensive cars, the top ever paid was $10’000 for a virtually new Station Wagon, you can do the development yourself, e.g, adding the head, camshaft, injection, manifolds and ECU of a Jeep Cherokee Limited 4.0 HO, this engine is the last development of indestructible AMC 6-in-line, you’ll gain 48 HP, and improve fuel economy in 3 lit/ 100 km, a possibility exists of installing the Audi engine of 1978 Gremlin Custom 2 lit, you may improve weight, economy,.. also, if you succeed in finding one, any of the 1.8 or 2 lit 4 cylinder engines installed by Chrysler in Europe, Chrysler 180, 2 lit, with the same Pacer Chrysler Torqueflite automatic transmission, could change the Pacer mood.
If you want harder experiments, you may consider a Mazda Rotary, a Corvair flat-six air cooled, changing drive to front wheels with a transmission from another car, putting an independent rear suspension and disc brakes,…
No limit if you have the know-how, the money, and friends to help in obtaining the OK from inspection.
Good year 2019!
There is no doubt that this car has great potential to be a collectible! I don’t know how young these young men are, but I think that they did a pretty darn good job with the paint! Great car for entry level in the classic car world! I really hope that get the price they are asking! I think that it’s probably worth every penny of their reasonable asking price myself!
These cars are kind of like the people on TV that you just can’t stand the sight of but never seem to go away, they always seem to be around in some fashion?
I own a 1975 Pacer X and a 1976 Pacer Sedan base, both Auto trans, 4.2 lit engine, and I like it, I like it, yes I do…
Drop in a small block chevy problem solved ! That car looks good just add sidepipes ! (With v8)
As the saying goes AMC used to raid the big three’s dumpsters for parts and build their cars ! Lol
From what I. See, price is right, ir even a bit low for this one. I am going to be checking out a similar one but with 3 on the tree in a couple of weeks it its still available. What’s an AMC collection without a Pacer?