AMC Used To Be A Real Car Company
The goofball CC/Rambler isn't the only AMC that has been modified and raced in the pages of Car Craft. Early staff longhairs beat the stuffing out of this '68 Javelin after being invited for a testdrive by Skip Randall, whose family owned and operated Randall Rambler in Mesa, Arizona. At the time, the Javelin was one of the first 390-powered cars out of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, plant, and it was being prepped for the sort of drag racing/advertising campaigns that were prevalent in the late '60s. The photo depicts Skip on the right and dealership wrench Mike Warren preparing to install 4.44:1 gears in the Sure Grip in proper magazine ringer-machine fashion. The 390 was also poked to 393 inches with 12.5:1 slugs, and someone added a Crower hydraulic flat-tappet cam with 310 degrees of advertised duration and 0.540 lift. At the nearby Beeline Dragway, Car Craft staffer John Raffa dumped the clutch and speed-shifted his way to a 12.20 at 112 mph. Sounds eerily familiar, don't it?