While recovering from the Christmas feeding frenzy food coma (prime rib here at Casa de Rourke) I wasted time perusing RacingJunk.com for all the stuff I cannot afford, have no place to put, but can’t live without. I generally check out the AMC classifieds hoping to find an affordable Gremlin, and I stumbled over this Von Piranha AMX.
A what? Yeah, I never heard of it either. The seller claims they were like a Baldwin-Motion or Dick Harrell car, that might be a bit of a stretch. What they were is a dealer modified Go Pack AMX, done by a dealer in Colorado. It seems only 22 examples were produced, and possibly only two are left.
So what is a Go Pack AMX? It was the performance package AMC offered on the AMX and Javelins. It wasn’t offered on the 290 equipped cars, only the 343 or 390 units, and later the 401 cars. It included a four barrel carb, dual exhaust, power front disc brakes, and massive (he said, sarcastically) F70-14 rubber on sport wheels. Without this package, your AMX might have come off the transporter with skinny whitewalls and full wheel covers. You also got a handling package, a seven blade fan with shroud, and a space saver spare tire that was an uninflated tire with a canister of compressed gas. It worked about as well as you imagine.
AMC called their posi rear “Twin Grip”, you got that as well. Stripes could be added or deleted. You couldn’t tell from the VIN or trim tag if the car was Go Pack equipped, you needed the window sticker or broadcast sheet, so Go Pack cars are often faked.
So we have a Go Pack AMX. What was the Von Piranha? It got you a set of headers, an Edelbrock intake apparently stamped with some sort of Von Piranha logo, and a Holley 3 barrel 950 cfm carb. They were in vogue at the time, the Baldwin Motion cars were indeed equipped with them. Instead of two round secondary butterflies, you got one big oval one. Then we have two scoops added to the C pillars, claimed to be functional to cool the rear drum brakes. So far, so good. But what about the two goofy scoops added to the roof? No, they weren’t functional, just goofy. Perhaps they had them on sale at J.C. Whitney and the dealer ordered a pallet of them and needed to get rid of them.
The seller has an asking price of just under 35k, and a claimed appraisal of over 50k. Appraising a car with such low production is always sketchy, you have little history on what they sell for. His asking price isn’t far off what genuine Go Pack AMX’s sell for, so who knows. You’ll almost certainly be the only one at cruise night or the drive in. Just make sure no one stuffs burger wrappers in the roof scoops.
Check out the images below and then hit the link below to see the RacingJunk ad!
Wow kind of a catch 22 I wouldn’t want the scoops…. But to preserve it’s history umm take them off and put them in the trunk? Nice car regardless
Rather have a Hurst prepped AMX.
The amazing part is 22 people actually drove their cars with those hideous scoops!
I’ve heard of these and have seen pictures but have never seen one in person. It’s quirky for sure.
It’s not even a Go Pack car! Look at the center of the dash where the speaker grill is. That piece should look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/1969_AMX_in_Big_Bad_Green_umi.jpg/330px-1969_AMX_in_Big_Bad_Green_umi.jpg