12 Facts About The AMC Javelin Only Hardcore Car Fans Know

For a company disadvantaged by having smaller budgets and smaller networks, it is good to have a secret weapon. For AMC, that was head designer Dick Teague. Some people do great work when blessed with nearly unlimited resources and free reign to create while others do well when tightly constrained and forced to make something from nothing. Teague was the latter, shining at AMC by coming up with workable designs that took advantage of the automaker’s budgetary and resource constraints (via Hemmings). Under his direction, AMC came up with several classic designs including the Gremlin, Hornet, Jeep Cherokee, and, of course, the Javelin and its cousin, the AMX.

Teague had penned the somewhat divisive Marlin for 1965 and it fared poorly in showrooms, so AMC needed a win for its first true pony car. New AMC chairman Robert B. Evans decided AMC needed to refresh its image and come up with more exciting cars to drive sales. With this idea in mind, he pressed Teague to come up with a new concept to that end. The result was the attractive and highly styled AMX concept, which was presented to the public as a non-running mockup, but featured such stunning styling it was well received (via Story Cars). While the concept featured styling that would be a bit too radical for regular production, many design elements from this car filtered down into what became the Javelin and AMX production cars.