American Motors never had a really decent budget to work with. Parts were shared, engines were limited, and if the company didn’t make it they sourced it from other manufacturers. But AMC did have one thing going for them: Richard Teague. To say that Teague was a talented designer is an understatement. He was a car guy first and foremost, and a lot of his work shows it. Okay, maybe not the glass-assed Pacer, but quite a bit of his work is worth mentioning: the Gremlin was originally supposed to be a hatchback AMX, the Rebel Machine, the Javelin and AMX…all the brainchild of AMC’s designer. For years the shoestring budget haunted all of the car designs. But towards 1970 it looked like AMC was going to go all-in on a sports car.

In 1966 Teague somehow won approval to begin the concept phase for a two-seat mid-engine sports coupe. In 1969 this came to fruition as the non-functional AMX/2 concept car. Purely a styling exercise, the AMX/2 caused a shockwave when it debuted at the Chicago Auto Show. With people promising payment the second the car went into production, AMC decided that a running, driving car needed to be made. AMC contacted Giorgetto Guigairo and asked them to create a model of the proposed AMX/3 to compare with a Teague concept. The Guigairo concept has never appeared in public, however it was reportedly “chunky” when compared with Teague’s design. With Teague winning the comparison, the AMX/3 was pushed on and debuted in March 1970, in front of the Coliseum in Rome, Italy.

Looking at the AMX/3 immediately conjures up images of similar Italians: Lamborghini Miura, Maserati Merak and Bora, and even our favorite Italian-American, the DeTomaso Pantera. The car’s roofline is low and it’s relatively compact. All AMX/3’s were powered by AMC’s 390ci V8 mounted midship to an OTO Melara four-speed transaxle in the back. With 340hp, a healthy bit of torque and a 3.54 rear gear, the car could hit 160mph, though it wasn’t recommended. A story goes that Giotto Bizzarrini, who helped with the development of the AMX/3, took one to the Nurburgring Nordschliefe and learned that the car could nearly catch flight at over 140mph due to it’s shape. This was a problem with early Panteras as well. But that did not deter the company, who wanted to produce the car as a limited-production image car, with plans to make 24 cars in 1970 and gradually ramp up production as things got good.

Unfortunately, it’s about this time in history that things started to fall off of a cliff. Union strikes hacked away at production, a suitable builder of the bodies could not be located, the upcoming Federal bumper regulations hadn’t been planned into the concept and were going to increase cost, and the car’s cost itself, already high at a projected $10,000 per vehicle, was now at $12,000 per vehicle…or about 20% higher than a Pantera. Ultimately, AMC completed six cars and Bizzarrini completed a seventh using leftover parts. Teague owned two of the cars until his death in 1991, when one car was sold and the other was kept by Teague’s son. All of the AMX/3’s exist, including one rolling mockup. Seeing one is a rare event but knowing that AMC had the capability and testicular fortitude to try to bring a Miura-fighter to the market is quite eye-opening from the company best known for quirky hatchbacks and Jeeps.