Car people know Burt Reynolds. They know that he is probably responsible for selling more Pontiac Trans-Ams than GM’s marketing team was in the 1970s and early 1980s. They know that he could make a turd-brown Ford Custom 500 more appealing than any tarted-up, brightly painted musclecar sold back in the day, or that he was part of the homage paid to Brock Yates’ Dodge van that he used in the real-deal Cannonball Run. And that’s just a short list of the better-known cars…there’s the Thunderbird from Stroker Ace, the Torino from Hooper and the Imperial limo from Cannonball Run II as well. So what in the wild hell is a ragged-out 1982 AMC Concord Sundancer doing being even mentioned in the same breath as the mustached one?

Oh, no, what is this? “Burt Reynolds’ Dinner Theater”? That was actually a thing? Yes, it was, between 1978 and 1989, Reynolds had operated a dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida that was successful in just about every way but financially, it seemed, and at some point this 1982 Concord was custom-built explicitly for the theater’s use…which explains why Burt Reynolds’ name is physically attached to this thing. So what, exactly is a Sundancer? The Griffith Co. converted about two hundred Concord and Eagle vehicles, turning them into the closest thing you could get to a full convertible in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Built around a monster rollover hoop, the Sunchaser had a targa panel and a fold-down soft top behind the hoop.

So is the Concord worth owning for any other reason than the celebrity attachment? We aren’t so optimistic. The interior, and probably the wiring, have been mauled by rodents during an extended storage period, the underhood is your typical Malaise nest of hoses, and we think that it’s a 258ci six under the hood…we say “think” because to know requires an archeology team to start an excavation through the mass of rubber tubes to be certain. The body looks fairly straight and the missing soft top for the Sundancer setup might be easy to source. Fixing the wiring and bringing the interior up to par will take some restoration magic, and as for underhood…we’d gut it and go sourcing the nearest AMC 360 and 727 to replace it. Much like Burt Reynolds’ Dinner Theater, we think that overall this car will be a money sink with no hope of return, but who knows…just like the actor, there is a cult following for these things, too.

eBay Link: 1982 American Motors Concord with Sundancer Conversion