A Tale from the land of Anthracite and Beer

“The REBEL utilized the now familiar large engine in a small body to achieve remarkable performance: 0-60 mph in 7.2 seconds and quarter-mile times below 16 seconds. At Daytona Beach in Florida a REBEL not only produced these impressive performance results, but also outperformed al production sedans and was only beaten by a fuel injected Corvette by 0.2 seconds. Only 1500 REBELs were produced and today, less than two dozen survive. This particular REBEL is serial 1657, and is owned by Dr. W.H.Lenharth, director of the Research Computing Center, University of New Hampshire.”   – Literature associated with the REBEL

The line between a hobby and madness is very fine indeed- Dave Berry

My son and I rolled into Pottsville, PA, in the middle afternoon of a summer day in the car-show season of 2000, before everything lurched into crazy. We made a rapid, top-down trip from the nation’s Capital. We stopped in a gas station to tank up- bit remote out there, you know, in the anthracite hills. The gas jockey that materialized next to my car began to open the fuel door.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said. I looked around for the “Full Service” and “Self” signs to see if I had got it wrong.

“Sorry, Sir. We only have full service” said the kid. He looked at my Pentagon parking pass in the windshield. “You must be some kind of Washington big-shot.”

“Yeah” I agreed. “I get to make the coffee because I’m the first one in the office in the morning.”

The kid laughed nervously, and I assumed they didn’t get a lot of pointy-headed bureaucrats in this neck of the woods. But my son and I were on a mission. We were in Pottsville to attend the big Nash Rambler Convention, and listen to my Dad talk about the halcyon days at American Motors to the faithful. I walked around back of the station to smoke a cigarette outside the sight on my son. The place was clean and well kept up, but strictly out of the 1960s. I wandered back out front as he was topping up the tank and checking the oil. He actually knew where to put the metal support rod to keep the hood up- something that I had been delightfully oblivious to until that moment. I thanked him for saving my noggin some dark night hunched over the engine with hood crashing down. Then, the metropolis being somewhat larger than I had expected, I asked him where the big Rambler rally was. He looked at me blankly. Do you mean Pottsville, or Pottstown, Sir?”

My son and I looked at each other in some panic. I swore Dad had said Pottsville, but were we on the wrong end of a very hilly state?

Nick looked at me with the perfect gaze of a 17-year-old confronted by the obvious stupidity of the family alpha male. “I’m almost sure he said Pottsville……shit!”

“Way to go, Dad.”

Gassed and able to restrike Washington on one tank., e piled back into the Sebring and I opined that we might as well head on into town and see what we might find.

Pottsville is a town that you wouldn’t stumble across unless you were going there for a reason. But it was a pleasant surprise. The row houses were well-kept, the park was nice, the cemetery old and dignifies, and as we reached the downtown- and there was a distinct downtown area of classic old brick buildings, and even a few towers stretching to six or seven stories. It looked clean, but down at the heels. Signs advertised the place as being founded in 1808, and home to the oldest operating brewery in America (“Attention, Central Pennsylvania Beer Drinkers! Juengling’s Lager is on sale!”) as well as the best grade of anthracite coal in the region.

The downturn in coal prices probably accounted for the slightly frayed look of the city, but it obviously had been someplace of authority once.. We turned right on one of the main streets, looking for some sort of sign. The buildings were getting shorter and that wasn’t a good sign. My son suddenly shouted that he had a tally on a family all attired in identical “Nash Rambler- Fine American Autos since 1902:” tee-shirts. A wave of relief passed over me with the probability that we would not be driving around coal-seamed valleys long after the light failed.

The hotel where we booked also slid past on the left, and I began to get the sense that we might actually be close. We got to the end of the block and turned left toward Highway 61 (didn’t Bob Dylan revisit this place?). Down in back of the Quality Hotel was the field of dreams. There were about seventy classic old cars all lined up in what had probably once been a warehouse district knocked down in urban renewal frenzy years ago. We slid into the adjacent parking lot and strolled up to find by Dad surrounded by a small crowd of folks listening to his discourse in rapt attention.

“……AMC designer William Reddig was Ed Anderson’s assistant. Reddig designed the trademark “dip” in the roofline of the Rambler station wagon and worked on advanced designs for the Metropolitan as well as the landmark 1956 Rambler. Of his assistant, Anderson said: “He was the best- the very best.”  – Pat Foster, American Motors, the Last Independent

Dad was in his element. Camera around his neck, he expounded on how things were when George Romney took the company over from George Mason, and built the first real compact cars to combat the swarms of little beetles from overseas. Dad is literally the last man standing from those days, with only his pal Jim Alexander from the interior styling group still active. But Dad has a certain cachet that makes him an icon. He is the man who made the dip, the distinctive downturn in the roofline of the 1956 Ambassador Station wagon that enabled thrifty George Romney to use the same tooling for the sedan and the wagon- saving significant dollars for the strapped company. It also marked the start of the ultimate drive-in vehicle, since the Rambler wagons had in common with their sedan brethren front seats that reclined to make beds!

Generations of teen-agers forced to endure the ignominy of driving their Father’s Ramblers always had one feature they could be proud of in their cars!

Romney ended 1956 on a hopeful note. He made a moving and dramatic speech to his dealers. His voice rose in emotion. If only 30,000 more units could be sold, the company would turn a profit. If everyone did their best, worked hard, keep an eye on costs, and keep the company afloat, it would all work out…….
It was not to be. 1957 was another losing year, but it showed a trend in the industry that American Motors was ready to exploit. Losses were in the old Hudson and Nash models were fading in their dotage. The Rambler envisioned by Ed Anderson and his young design teams were poised to be the first legitimate compact cars. The market was there. The glory years of 1958-63 were coming. The years in which the stock actually went up, and the benefits for the executives were sublime.
At the beginning of 1958, designer William Reddig was manager of exterior styling for                           AMC…..

We were only moments into the greeting when Pat Foster, the noted AMC cult author, rolled by in a bizarre 1953 Ambassador, turquoise and deep blue, with enough chrome on the grill and bumpers to plate a zeppelin.

“Hey, Bill,” he yelled through the window “Let’s go for a drive!”

We couldn’t resist. Raven, my son and I  piled into the venerable car and were nearly lost in the three-across back seat. The upholstery was in good shape, two-tone, tucked and rolled just like it used to be. No pansy seat belts, either. We slide some ancient Rambler sales brochures onto the painted back deck and Pat lurched off in first gear. “I almost bought this one last year” said Pat to the general audience. Dave, the bespeckled guy in the front right, was apparently the owner. We wheeled across Pottsville, on a mission of some sort.

“This car sort of has a hard shift into second” commented Pat as the transmission curthunked forward. Several minutes of detailed discussion of the peculiarities of the ’53 and ’54 hydro smooth-blaster transmissions followed, including the admonition that the two living Americans who can work on them are suspected of price gouging. I made a mental note that the suspension on this venerable boat also left something to be desired as we took at least a fifteen degree list on each lane change.

It was magnificent to roll through a city where the old people on their porches didn’t even seem to think that we were unusual. That made a lot more sense when we showed up at the destination. There was a garage in the back of a modest home about ten blocks away from the downtown. Over the door was a sign that proclaimed “Rambler Service Center” complete with cobwebs.

We entered the cinderblock structure with a caution from Dave not to kill ourselves by falling down an oil pit. In the dimness were hulks of Nash Country Clubs, a Hudson Hornet, a miraculously preserved Ambassador. Hoods leaned precariously against disemboweled sedans. A riot of parts and chrome strips lay strewn about, covered with a layer of dust. In a side bay, though, a car was positioned under a tight-fitting cover. A classic-car dealer banner over the Bay proclaimed: “Welcome the 1959 Ramblers!”

Dad and Pat walked up to the car, and identified it under the cover by stroking the outline of the fins. “I’d say 1958” said Pat.

“Nope. 1959,” said Dad.

We peeled back the cover and oohed and ahh-ed for a while before taking the drive back to the show. It was getting on to late afternoon, and some cars were already pulling out to Route 61, rambling home. I ached to see a 1968 Javelin chirp the tires going out of the lot- that was the first car I ever drove over 100 miles an hour. We had them all, since executives were entitled to a new car each year, and Dad was with the firm in one capacity or another for nearly 35-odd years. We walked the line, my son and I, and talked about the peculiarities of all the cars I knew, loved and loathed down through the years.

The crowd continued to thin. We helped strike a tent next to an extraordinary example of 1957’s performance Rambler, the Rebel. Dr. Bill Lenharth was the proud owner, and he was eager to show Dad the fruit of his labors. We examined the car from every angle, We were informed about the trade-mark crack that happened to all Ramblers at the shoulder of the top, due to a “soft Joint” that always resulted in distortion. We looked at the engine, and we got the postcard featured at the beginning of this note. That wasn’t all we got, though. The good Doctor- or maybe the Mad Doctor- wanted Dad to drive the product of his automotive legacy. Dad adamantly opposed the idea. But in the end we found ourselves gliding out of the lot and swerving onto Route 61.

The boulevard there is four lane, crowded and whizzing with the modern descendents of these magnificent machines. I was observing the unique chrome fitting of the Vee-vents on the REAR windows when I detected someemotion in the Doctor’s voice…..and lurched backward in my seat as he stomped on the accelerator and the Rebel shot forward. Now, classic sheet metal, particularly that which is coated in ten layers of opalescent lacquer, is supposed to be venerated, not abused. But not so with this enthusiast!

The Doc surged through a yellow light, throwing us around like ninepins, and tromped the gas again. He wove decisively through uncooperative traffic to detail the finer points of the class of 1957. We caught three yellow lights and nearly sideswiped a Subaru before he decided to hit the brakes, swerve across traffic lanes and do an urgent U-turn across an access road. Calmly looked over his shoulder, he glanced serenely at oncoming traffic, sneered in the face of doom, and floored it.

The tires burned rubber as we merged, and minutes later, we were deposited back in the parking lot.

I smashed my forehead on the doorframe as I exited, feeling grateful to be in a generation that knew these fine automobiles, but no longer had to drive them. What a thrill it was, though, to acknowledge that there beats in some bosoms in the Hills of Pennsylvania, a love for these machines, and from the Live Free or Die State, the willingness to sacrifice all for their passion.

Later, there was a banquet, and a speech delivered by Raven as the keynote speaker. There was a line to have Dad autograph Pat Foster’s book. There was a trophy for virtually everything. They were very nice people indeed. But as Dave Berry noted…..the line between hobby and madness is fine indeed. I saw across it in the backseat of a 1957 Rebel.

Oddly, when I let my son drive the Sebring convertible the few hundred miles back to Washington, he would shout spontaneously, at fifteen minute intervals into the roaring slipstream; “God! Is this cool!”

Car folks are just car folks, n’est pas? But I no longer have to drive Ramblers, even if the seats did fold down. I remember sending away Raven’s last Rambler- but maybe we will have to deal with that tomorrow.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Teitter: @jayare303