mod@tech

The description for this 1976 Toyota Celica GT listed for sale on Hemmings.com doesn’t state what it was in the midst of being modified for (road racing? drifting? time attack?), but whatever the purpose, the wrenches behind the modifications were serious about it. The full roll cage is the first clue: attached to the frame and fully welded, it’s reportedly rated for 9-second passes. Then there’s the turbocharged and intercooled Toyota 3SGE BEAMS four-cylinder built to a claimed 450 to 480 horsepower, mated to a six-speed manual transmission and turning an Eaton differential in a custom rear axle shortened to fit 10-inch wide Watanabe wheels wrapped in slicks. Aftermarket coilovers and Wildwood brakes round out the chassis modifications.

With all the go-fast stuff swapped into or bolted on to the car, one would expect the body to have only a passing resemblance to what came from the factory. Instead, it remains rather sedate, with a chin spoiler, a couple hoses and AN fittings peeking out from behind the bumper, and the stock rust-free Nevada sheetmetal still in place. (That said, it does come with steel fender flares should the need to cut the original fenders arise.) Similarly, despite the roll cage, the interior looks like it’s meant to go back together again with stock door panels, a stock dash, and even the original seat belts still in place.

The seller admits it’s not ready for primetime. The fuel system needs to be finished, we see brake components that need to be reattached, it’s missing seats and carpet, and surface rust under the hood and on some chassis parts indicates it’s sat partially completed for a while. Plus, there’s the potential for customizing it to an entirely new vision or to built it to a different race spec. Either way, it’s a good start on a Japanese muscle car project.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With nearly 2,000 cars on site, finding five personal favorites, cars that I’d bid on if I had the money to secure a bidder’s paddle, shouldn’t be difficult. Yet the preponderance of restomods and customs, done to the taste of the builder and/or a wide prospective audience, rarely resonates with me. Listen, I bought a Nissan S-Cargo. On purpose. You really think my tastes are inline with the bulk of the people who show up at Westworld? I like what I like. At Barrett-Jackson this year, from what I saw from my brief time on the ground there, these five stood out to me.

Lot 1018.1 1969 Chevy Nova SS396

The muscle car recipe–full-size car engine in a mid-size car–is one that has sustained our hobby and stoked our enthusiasm for (checks calendar…) yeesh, nearly 60 years now. But what about dropping a full-size car engine into a compact? What madness do you call this? I call it Nova SS396. So did Chevy. And this four-speed example is both super-sano and in super-sleeper mode. If someone twisted my arm and told me I needed to head out to Dove Valley Parkway for a night of recreational quarter-mile indulgence, I’d probably bring this. Dark green paint. Black bucket seat interior. When the sun goes down, you’d barely be able to see it. Hell, we barely saw it and we were standing right in front of it. Only the flashy wheels and SS in the grille are obvious; the 396 on the front corner marker is far subtler. Otherwise, no one would suspect. Good.

Lot 1278 1998 Toyota Supra

Ordinarily I’d say that a car like this last-year-Stateside Supra is a collector car for a new generation, but I’d be wrong: with multiple fourth-generation Supras achieving six-figure sales results in the past couple of years, it’s pretty obvious that this car is happening now. It’s aspirational to a new generation in the same way that a Highland Green Mustang fastback is aspirational to Boomers–and for the same reason. While plenty of these succumbed to Fast and Furious syndrome (sketchy paint, dodgy body kits, questionable underhood modifications that their long-suffering twin-turbo 2JZ engines were robust enough to account for), the ones that haven’t been beaten into the ground are the ones to look for. This one, in clean silver that shows off the body lines, equipped with the six-speed stick, and showing less than 19,000 miles on the odometer, was the one that I most wanted to hop in and drive to Vegas.

Lot 1109 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

I (through the pages of Hemmings Muscle Machines) have long espoused the basic mechanical goodness of the ’79 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. W72-code Poncho power ratings that were actually on the upswing in an era when horsepower seemed like a dirty word, the proud availability of a four-speed stick in a world of increasingly-prevalent slushboxes, and the optional WS6 chassis pieces (including four-wheel-disc brakes for ’79) that let it handle like a Corvette for half(ish) the price are at the heart of this particular recipe. But the two versions you see most often don’t inspire me to own. The Bandit-homage black-and-gold Special Edition models feel overdone, and the silver-on-silver Tenth Anniversary Trans Am models seem just a skoshe too disco for my driveway. And so there’s this beauty: optioned how I’d like, and painted gold with a camel interior. This example has way under 1,000 miles from new; that said, I’d never be more tempted to make tracks in a low-mileage classic than with this one.

LOT 1152.1 1971 Plymouth GTX

Muscle-era Mopars are a lot like pasta. The shapes differ, and there’s a lot of ways to make them so that they’re to your taste, but the basics are the same basic blend. Spaghetti? Fettucine? Penne? Fusilli? Farfalle? Orecchiette? All made from flour, water and eggs. Belvedere? Coronet? Road Runner? Coronet? Satellite? Charger? ‘Cuda? Challenger? All made from more or less the same unit-body chassis, give or take a couple of inches of wheelbase, with a K-frame in front and leaf springs out back, and the same range of engines between divisions. So for me, it comes down to shape. And my favorite shape of the muscle car era, bar none, is the 1971-72 Plymouth B-body coupe. Paint it a bright color and install a 440 under the hood, like this one has, and that sounds just as tasty as the ziti with vodka sauce I get for dinner at local Italian hot-spot Lorenzo’s.

LOT 1586 1983 Rolls-Royce Corniche

Sometimes, I just want to get away. Sometimes, I want to revel in the silence. Sometimes I want to be alone with my thoughts. Sometimes I want to marvel at the Western scenery outside my windows as I cruise, rather than focus on the road and storm up the highway. Sometimes, I don’t want the tires to talk to me. Sometimes I don’t want to hug the curves like I’m humping their leg. Sometimes, I need a sensory deprivation tank. Sometimes, I need a Rolls. And this ’83 Corniche, with its convertible top coming apart at the seams near the rear deck and the paintwork starting to check, would let me achieve this with peace of mind–that with 118,000 miles on the clock, it’s used to running and there’s no fear of ruining the value of a pristine machine. Peace be with me.

After a brief hiatus, the Arizona Concours d’Elegance returned in 2023, officially kicking off Scottsdale Auction Week as it had in the past. Held in partnership with Scottsdale Arts on Sunday, January 22, on the city’s newly renovated Scottsdale Civic Center’s central outdoor space, this year’s event fittingly celebrated “The Art of Aerodynamics,” which featured roughly 100 vehicles arranged in 13 classes. At first blush, it may seem like a small gathering for a concours; however, each vehicle invited boasted rarity, historical significance, or a combination thereof, all in a cozy, spectator friendly setting. Uncharacteristically chilly temperatures greeted the day – a heavy frost had set overnight – but it did little to cool car owner and spectator enthusiasm. If you’re looking for an excuse to arrive in Scottsdale early for 2024 auction week, this could be the best reason. Here’s a brief look at this year’s gathering.

Date: circa 1980s

Location: Rock Island, Illinois

Source: via Historic American Engineering Record / Library of Congress

What do you see here?

We appreciate you making time to check out this week’s Hemmings Auctions Roundup. Thirty-seven new listings ran through our online auctions between Sunday, January 15, and Saturday the 21st 2023, and we had 39 vehicles find new homes, bringing a sell-through rate of 108 percent. Thirteen of the total were post-auction Make Offer listings.

Terry Shea, Director of Auction Operations, explains how we can sell at a better-than-100-percent sell-through rate: “While most post-auction Make Offer sales take place the same week that those cars are listed, while interest is still hot from the auction, some of those sales take place weeks or even months after they initially failed to meet reserve. Since we counted those cars against the sell-through rate when they did not meet reserve the first time, it only makes sense for us to include them when they do sell. We are constantly working hard to bring together sellers and buyers of collector cars. When we can make that happen, we want to celebrate that success. So, we are counting them in our sell-through rate.”

View the latest consignments and consider placing your own bids after subscribing to the daily Hemmings Auctions newsletter.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL

Reserve: $90,000

Selling Price: $111,300

Recent Market Range: $93,150-$115,450

Under the definition of “timeless classic” in the dictionary, you’ll find the second-generation Mercedes-Benz SL. This final-year example sported the most powerful, mechanically fuel-injected straight-six engine mated to an automatic, both rebuilt and working properly. The suspension and brakes were also refreshed during the car’s 2019 refurbishment (documentation and photos were included), when the paint, chrome, seals, and leather-upholstered interior were all tended to. Both the soft top and hard top were called “excellent,” and the 280 wore stylish European-market headlamps. Minor condition issues were noted, but nothing bad enough to stop this SL from nearly topping its market range.

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Reserve: $53,000

Selling Price: $65,100

Recent Market Range: $51,300-$68,700

Because it’s easy to “clone” a popular muscle car like the 1970 Chevelle Super Sport, it’s important to verify the authenticity of such a muscle machine before paying top dollar. The seller of this repainted example provided numerous photos and documents proving the 402-cu.in. V-8 was factory-installed; it and the column-shift automatic may have been rebuilt, but there wasn’t proof. It’s believed the sub-41,000-mile odometer reading was accurate. Despite a minor rear main seal leak, the well-cared-for car was said to run and drive well, with fresh radial tires accompanying new suspension and brake components. Six videos and ample detailed photos helped the Chevy hammer for a healthy sum.

1967 Honda CA77 Dream

Reserve: None

Selling Price: $2,700

Recent Market Range: $1,500-$3,500

You meet the nicest people on a Honda like this 1967 CA77 Dream, which was mildly customized in a way that didn’t detract from its usability. Features added to the motorcycle included a different, specially upholstered Honda Z50 seat, shortened exhaust pipes, custom billet components, and the yellow paint scheme. There were minor condition issues and overspray noted with that paint; the seller also divulged some corrosion marred the wheels, the chain enclosure was missing, and the speedometer didn’t work. Those demerits were balanced by how well the 23-hp flat-twin engine and four-speed operated, as proven on one of numerous videos. The seller answered questions and the bike sold well.

1929 Ford Model A

Reserve: $6,000

Selling Price: $22,418

Recent Market Range: $9,400-$16,700

The market for Ford’s Model A is perennial, with nicely presented examples still bringing solid money nearly a century after they were built. This rumble-seat-equipped 1929 roadster appeared very nice, with seller-submitted photos showing shiny paint, crisp accent striping, a taut top, and a welcoming artificial leather upholstered interior. The car wore numerous accessories including a radiator stone guard, wind wings, and a luggage rack. Its 40-hp engine showed age and use but was said to run “perfectly,” and the undercarriage looked correct despite minor surface corrosion. No side curtains were present. It took an impressive 38 bids with nine time extensions to secure its new home.

1977 Toyota FJ45 Land Cruiser

Reserve: $41,000

Selling Price: $42,000

Recent Market Range: $39,100-$55,500

The seller of this rarely seen, late-model Land Cruiser pickup revealed the Toyota originated in Venezuela, and that it had enjoyed a ground-up restoration finished one year ago. The truck offered a blend of factory-correct and custom touches, the latter including a raised suspension with off-road tires, a winch, bed-mounted roll bar, air conditioning, and a touchscreen stereo head unit. The 4.2-liter inline-six engine was rebuilt with a new carburetor and aluminum radiator, and the adjacent four-speed manual said to shift without issue. In-process photos showed the extent of the restoration work that left this FJ45 looking appealingly fresh. It sold post-auction as a Make Offer listing.

1994 Mercedes-Benz SL 600

Reserve: $28,500

Selling Price: $32,550

Recent Market Range: N/A

The little “V12” badges on the fenders of this SL 600 were easy to miss, and if you didn’t otherwise know the numerals in the car’s name indicated its engine displacement, you’d find little to tip you off that this was the ultimate Mercedes-Benz flagship of the 1990s. Coming out of single-family ownership, the convertible sported very low miles and appeared very well maintained. It appeared to be a turnkey modern classic, having some $22,000 in recent services that included a key suspension part. A minor accident, cracked windshield, and older tires were noted, which may have tempered bidding. The SL ultimately sold as a Make Offer listing, and its selling price represented a real bargain.