Santa Barbara, California gets just over 18″ of rain a year, which isn’t much, but it also isn’t a desert. It’s a bummer that the seller chose a rare rainy day to take photos of this 1965 AMC Ambassador 990 rather than waiting to take photos with the sun shining. They have it listed here on eBay, and the current bid price is $1,259.56 (weird), but the reserve hasn’t been met.
I’m all about rainy, reflection photos; I’ve made a fairly good living out of such things as that. But “they” always say never to buy a car that was photographed in the rain. The passenger door is a shade darker, or maybe the right quarter panel is a shade lighter? I can’t tell if that spot above the bottom door trim is rust, but if you click on the eBay link and check out the photos, you’ll see a fair amount of surface rust here and there. They do mention that it has some surface rust and a few rust spots, “but nothing major.”
The seller didn’t include an overall photo showing the back, so we don’t know what the center of the rear trunk lid or bumper looks like. You can see that you’ll be scouring the internet and junkyards for at least one taillight, and probably many other bits and pieces of this car that the seller refers to as a “barn find,” but they don’t mention any more about that, such as how long it was stored, etc.
While you’re pondering and/or pontificating whether to add this car to your project list, here’s a 1965 AMC Ambassador brochure to check out. It’s hard to argue with a two-door hardtop body style, although in a 1965 or 1966 (’66s are my personal favorites) Ambassador, there is no bad body style in my world. I really like these cars, and it’s easy to spot the difference between the two model years for the fifth-generation Ambassador: the 1965 models, have a wraparound rear window, and the ’66s don’t. It’s that easy, although there were other subtle changes.
It’s hard to tell what the interior looks like, but from what we can see in the two (dang) photos the seller has provided, it looks pretty decent. A weekend of cleaning and detailing would make a world of difference, and I guarantee the seller could have gotten more money for this car if they had spent the money to have it detailed. They do say that it needs carpet and other interior work. Here’s a really nice ’65 990-H (a slightly higher trim) for $17,500 that we saw here on Barn Finds about five months ago.
There were three engines available: a 232 inline-six and a 327 V8, both were painted red, and a middle option, a 287-cu.in. OHV V8 that was painted blue. This 287 has just under 200 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque. Power is sent through a BorgWarner three-speed (Flash-O-Matic) automatic transmission providing motivation to the rear wheels. The seller says it does run and drive, but it has some lifter noise. How much would you pay for this 1965 Ambassador 990 hardtop?
I hate it when they can’t post decent pictures of the whole car,
& nobody’s yet explained why so many ads hide,or don’t show
the rear license plate.Since you can post a lot of pictures,I don’t
know why they won’t put as many as they can,& don’t always list
what engine/transmission the vehicle has.
That said,looks like it might be a good deal if the price stays
low,but if I were really interested,I’d either want to inspect & drive it
myself,or have a knowledgeable person do so.
Perhaps I can shed some light on that, angliagt. Typically, if you read the cars description, the seller generally doesn’t know much about the car, and certainly aren’t professional photographers. They come across these cars in many situations, but just want to get rid of it. No love here.
I have to admit, this one definitely needs a little more love than the white one Scotty wrote up a while back. These are good looking cars in my opinion, although I’m with Scotty on liking the ’66 rear window design a bit more. I agree with Angliagt, more pictures please. Showing everything if at all possible, including the engine trunk and a whole interior image or three couldn’t hurt. How hard would it be to source that broken/missing tailight lens? I enjoyed that brochure too Scotty, thank you for posting that link. This would look nice fixed up.
That translucent taillight lens is really classy.
I liked the soft yellows of this era.
Once again, a heartfelt thank you to the site, and author, this was similar to my grandfathers, only his was a 4 door. See the radio in the dash picture? Many ball games were listened to, in the back yard smoking cigarettes. In fact, this car took the place of the his ’61 Classic with bad trunnions, but I never remember him actually driving that car. My dad said, never buy a car at night, he never said anything about rain. While most anyone with any connection to AMC are gone, I hope it stirs some interest, they may not know, or care, but this was the best Milwaukenosha put out. Someone in ’65 forked out almost $2900 for this car new, 2nd most expensive behind the Marlin($3100). An American was just under $2grand, but an entirely different market. They were great cars. At just over $1200, it’s safe to say, sadly there is no interest. The up side to all this is, happy days are here again, with classic car prices falling faster than the want for diesel pickups, they could be affordable again. Too bad most interested folks today aren’t looking for one. Regardless, it’s a great find.
If whoever has the car up for auction can’t be bothered to show better pictures than this, they better not expect the bids to get much higher than $1,295.