Usually when I traipse over to CraigsList for my daily dose of wistful window shopping, the “Cars & Trucks” section is rife with overpriced SUVs and 2008 Corollas, which I typically ignore before mashing out a string of barely incoherent search terms (like “Camero” and “Just needs“). But yesterday, something magical happened: Right at the top of the listings was a fresh post—15 minutes old—for a pair of mid-1960s Rambler/AMC Marlins. How do you not click on that in a sea of 13 identical posts for the same Acura MDX?
Admittedly, they don’t (A) run or (B) look like they’re in sterling condition, but who can deny that the Marlin is cool, if an oddball. The fastback shape predates the much more desirable ‘Cuda Fastback and the design is just perfectly mid-1960s. The red one sports a Chevy 350 under the hood while the worse-for-wear white one is a straight-six car.
Both cars’ interior looks pretty complete, though.
Marlins, of course, have a tiny bit of racing provenance. Drag racing fans likely know of the Bill Kraft Marlin Funny Car and the Hess Brothers raced a near-stock Marlin at the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona. In more modern terms, Jason Patrick runs a ’65 Marlin in Drag Week, earning the “Majestic Marlin” moniker a couple years from Bangshift impresario Brian Lohnes and some fry-cook guy. Some of the crazier 24 Hours of LeMons racers also picked up a hopelessly rotted ’66, cut out a couple hundred “speed holes” in the already-swiss-cheesed body, and threw a Chevy 454 at it.
So what would you do with a pair of Marlins for the price of the trimwork on a ’67 Cuda Fastback? As someone else suggested when I mentioned the listing on the Facebook, I’d personally drive the red one every day and work on making the white one a race car.
Sell the Chevy motor and fix up the white one to get the cash to fit a full-on 401 and drive the Hell out of that red beauty..
Once you toss the Chevy motor and restore the Marlin to AMC power, the world will realign, karma will flow unhindered, global warming will be exposed as a hoax and you can drive both Marlins w/o caring about carbon credits or MPG. See? Nothing but good things happen when you restore a car with it’s proper driveline.
You are a man of great wisdom indeed!
Have you heard the latest – apparently all the extra CO2 is causing an explosion in plant life that is in turn producing more oxygen. The tree-hugging morons are at last made to look like the fools they are and driving a gas-guzzler is actually good for the environment – unless its powered by an LS that is…
These cars make Pacers look appealing.
Ever here the term “rough helmet”? Worse!