A red-orange 1966 AMC AMX prototype with a Rumble Seat - CZmarlin/Wikimedia CommonsIn the 1960s, AMC needed a big win with American customers who largely favored cars from the Big Three: GM, Chrysler, and Ford. To get the public more interested in its cars, it decided to think both outside the box and outside the country and hired Vignale, the Turin, Italy-based design firm. What it came up with debuted at the 1966 New York Auto Show, the Vignale AMX. One look at the very pretty coupe, and it's easy to see why it never went into production. Instead of a normal trunk, the Vignale concept's trunk lid flipped the other way and turned the rear end into two seats, which was AMC's take on the rumble seat, called a "Ramble Seat." Naturally, such a thing wasn't deemed safe enough to mass manufacture. So, when it came time to finally build the AMX, it had no such Ramble Seat.However, the company actually built a couple of production-ready Vignale-designed models. The final fate of the cars is unknown, but at least one is rumored to still be alive. After some back and forth with AMC brass, the long-surviving Ramble Seat car was allegedly acquired by a former AMC employee who bought it for just $50 and kept it for many years.Read more: 5 Iconic Poster Cars That Just Aren't That GoodThe company allegedly built three prototypes but only one survivedA rearview shot of a red-orange 1966 AMC AMX prototype showing the rear Rumble Seat - CZmarlin/Wikimedia CommonsVignale's Ramble Seat AMX was never long for this world. Just a few months after AMC showed off the AMX concept car, President Lyndon Johnson, known for being quite the car guy, passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. While flip-out rumble seats like the AMX's weren't specifically banned, making them safe enough to pass the newest regulations seemingly wasn't worth the risk. rumble seats hadn't been a thing for almost 20 years at the time, with Triumph being one of the last to offer them in 1949.AdvertisementAdvertisementDespite never going into production, AMC was rumored to have built three prototype AMXs with Ramble Seats. What happened to them isn't exactly clear, but it's rumored that one was crashed, while another was destroyed.Dom Jairdine worked on the assembly line at AMC's plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and heard the other AMX prototype was headed for destruction. So, he approached the company's president about buying it, rather than letting them destroy it. "I just walked up and asked if he was going to destroy it as they do with all prototypes," Jairdine reportedly told Kenosha News in 1975, according to SportsCarMarket. "I don't like to see anything destroyed and, besides, I collect old AMCs and Nashes. I told him that if he was going to destroy it, why didn't he give it to me instead. All the guys I work with thought I was nuts." One week after that conversation, Jairdine got a phone call from the president, saying he could buy it for $50.Where is the surviving Vignale AMX now?A red-orange 1966 AMC AMX prototype showing the rear trunk lid opened for the Rumble Seat - CZmarlin/Wikimedia CommonsOf the two or three Vignale AMXs, only Jairdine's has been seen since the prototypes were built. In Stakes' YouTube video, you can see Jairdine showing off the red one he allegedly bought for $50. He was said to have taken the AMX to car shows and events, where he could show it off to car enthusiasts, and he seemed quite proud of it. In the video, he mentions that the car was made in Italy and claims it only weighed 2,240 pounds, which is less than a current Mazda MX-5, but it packs a 290-cubic-inch V8.Jairdine also mentions that he worked at the AMC plant for 15 years in the video and handed someone his card, which read "Mr. Prototype." Clearly, he was proud of his incredibly rare AMX. Later in the video, you hear from a different AMC employee, who mentions how another AMX was used as an alignment template, but he never explains what happened to it afterward. So, it seems that it was lost to time and potentially destroyed.AdvertisementAdvertisementHowever, there is another video from YouTube channel CarsInDepth showing off what is allegedly a Vignale AMX in white. In the video, it has a door sticker that reads "American Motors AMX Prototype," with who seems to be its owner in the driver's seat saying that it's a prototype from 1966. Aside from that, and an explanation of to work the Ramble Seat and interior seatbelts, there's no other information in the video. Importantly, the video seems to have been made recently enough that it may indicate that a second Vignale AMX prototype is still alive out there. AMC is one of the most interesting American car companies, and there's even a documentary about it, so hopefully the two prototypes are out there somewhere.Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox, and add us as a preferred search source on Google.Read the original article on Jalopnik.
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