There’s a reason the auction listing for the 1977 AMC concept vehicle called the AM Van didn’t include photos of the interior when the compact red wagon came up for sale last summer: It didn’t have one. The 4×4 drivetrain that its decals advertised? No such thing. No real chassis either, just four rolling wheels. But German collector and customizer Andreas Wietzke intends to rectify that with his plans to make the AM Van into a running and driving vehicle.
“I love to perform correct restorations, but sometimes also create and build new constructions in the period style,” he said. “That is what I am doing now with the AM Van.”
What were the Concept 80 vehicles?
Built at a time when the public’s confidence and interest in the independent automaker was flagging, the AM Van was one of several concept cars that AMC whipped up for its Concept 80 program in 1977. Conceived as a sort of GM Motorama-like traveling road show, the Concept 80 program was intended “to demonstrate in a tangible way that (AMC) still had plenty of new ideas for the small car market, and to reinforce its reputation as an innovative small-car manufacturer,” Pat Foster wrote in his account of the show’s stop in New York City in the September 2009 issue of Hemmings Classic Car. “For several months, newspapers had been full of doom and gloom stories about American Motors… Management hoped the Concept 80 show vehicles would influence the press to be more upbeat about AMC’s future.”
In some ways, AMC showed prescience with its concepts – or, at the very least, showed that company execs and stylists paid attention to what was going on in the auto marketplace. For instance, Foster described the Concept I – a compact two-door hatchback – as something like AMC’s answer to the Volkswagen Rabbit, though it also looks very much like Honda’s second-generation Civic. The reduced size of the Jeep II foreshadowed the Samurai and other compact SUVs. The Electron predicted a far-flung future of battery-electric power that wasn’t nearly ready in the late Seventies (and which was no more ready than when the Electron initially appeared as the Amitron in 1967). And then there was the AM Van.
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
![1977 AMC Concept 80 vehicles]()
What was the AM Van?
In some ways, the AM Van was prescient as well. Aside from the Volkswagen Type 2 and perhaps Dick Nesbitt’s designs for the Ford Carousel, the minivan – that is, a taller station wagon able to squeeze in an entire family, their dog, and all their stuff and still fit into an average suburban garage – was still several years in the future.
On the other hand, nothing about the AM Van was geared toward grown-up Baby Boomers and their suburban garages, especially with just two doors up front and barn doors in the rear. Instead, the AM Van was little more than a reflection of the times, when custom vanning took off as young men – not yet able to afford velour-laden personal luxury cars, nor willing to suffer the insurance premiums of what little American muscle remained – discovered that the vast flanks of cargo vans doubled as excellent canvases for Frazetta-like artwork and as cozy hideaways that readily accepted shag carpet and wood paneling. Magazines, movies, even music sang the praises of these rumpus rooms on wheels, and an aftermarket sprung up to outfit both the interiors and exteriors with chandeliers, sidepipes, and the like.
American Motors, however, had no such vans it could offer those youth, despite the fact that renderings on styling room walls as far back as the early Seventies reveal AMC designers’ interest in the bodystyle. In fact, it had nothing closer than the FJ-3 Fleetvan and other postal vehicles, which was why Dick Teague and his staff of designers started from scratch with the AM Van.
True to the American Motors way, the AM Van was envisioned as a compact van, shorter even than the Volkswagen Beetle. But like the custom vans, it had flares, sidepipes, custom wheels, and sundown stripes. One version of the AM Van even had porthole windows. Like the forward-looking supercars of the day, it had a very wedge-shaped prow. Teague and his staff took advantage of the clean-slate design (and the fact that the AM Van didn’t need to actually run for the Concept 80 show) to suggest that the van could have had four-wheel drive and a turbocharged engine at a time when the latter, at least, remained an exotic technology. It had youth-market bait literally written all over it. Little wonder that, according to Foster, exit surveys of Concept 80 show attendees ranked the AM Van the most well liked among the show’s concept cars.
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
![1977 AMC AM Van concept]()
What happened to the AM Van?
Photos, renderings, and even video of the AM Van in period show it with the aforementioned porthole windows, vertical stripes, and non-turbo graphics. While some have speculated American Motors built two AM Vans – one with the portholes, the other with the full side glass like we see today – it’s more likely that American Motors simply updated the former version into the latter either during or after the AM Van’s Concept 80 tour.
Despite the positive reception for the AM Van, it never proceeded beyond the pushmobile stage, with its body rendered in fiberglass, but its chassis little more than a wooden frame supporting rolling – but not steerable – wheels and tires. According to concept car collector Joe Bortz, AMC held on to the AM Van after the tour and through Renault’s ownership of the company (a period that nearly saw a production AMC minivan based on the Renault Espace) before ultimately selling it to Bortz around the time that Chrysler bought AMC in 1987.
While Bortz has motorized other non-motorized concept cars in the past, he said he ultimately came to the realization he’d never get around to doing the same with the AM Van, as he intended, so he put it up for sale, initially on eBay with a $72,000 buy-it-now price in 2017, then in 2022 as part of RM Sotheby’s Sand Lots online auction. It didn’t sell during the auction, but a month later Wietzke and Bortz made a deal, and in September it arrived in Wietzke’s garage in Frankfurt.
![Andreas Wietzke with the 1977 AM Van concept]()
![Andreas Wietzke with the 1977 AM Van concept]()
![Andreas Wietzke with the 1977 AM Van concept]()
What are the plans for the AM Van?
Wietzke has restored a Pacer, a Kellison, a Volkswagen Fridolin, even an Albar Jet, but he’s perhaps made more of a name for himself driving a Coca-Cola-themed 1965 Mustang converted into a station wagon to Concours d’Lemons and building a roadworthy P-51 Mustang atop a 1968 Ford Mustang’s chassis. “I sleep in a loft only 20 stairs above my ‘playroom,’ so when some engineering solution appears in my dreams at 3 in the morning, I walk down and get to work on it immediately,” he said.
Rather than place a forklift motor and some basic steering under the AM Van and drive it no further than on and off a concours green, Wietzke decided the AM Van needed a full roadworthy drivetrain and chassis. Others have suggested AMC was considering some version of its Eagle all-wheel-drive system for the AM Van and that it would make the most sense for anybody in Wietzke’s position, but he instead bought a 1977 Jeep CJ-7 (“Same manufacturer and same year as the van,” he said) for the project.
While the CJ-7 didn’t come with a turbocharged engine, it did have a 304-cu.in. V-8 and four-wheel drive, so close enough. Wietzke also discovered that the CJ-7’s wheelbase was too short by an inch and a half and its track width too narrow to fit perfectly under the AM Van’s fiberglass shell, so he fabricated a longer rear frame section, installed wheel spacers, and cut off the front frame horns to get everything to line up. He said he’ll also have to relocate the entire drivetrain rearward by 10 inches and lower by three inches just to make it fit under the AM Van’s hoodless shell. And that’s all before he installs floors, an interior, lighting, and everything else necessary to make it drive.
The whole project should take him about three years, he said, after which he intends to ship the AM Van back over to the States so he can hand the keys to Bortz for a ride.
As for the rest of the Concept 80 cars, only the Amitron/Electron is confirmed to still exist.
