A contemporary interpretation of the AMX by Jeff Teague.
This post: An AMX scale model posted by Jeff Teague; photos of a Chrysler Turbine Car prepared for the ’60s movie, “The Lively Set;” and a photo of what appears to be a full-size fiberglass model of the AMX/2. According to Mark Olson who uploaded the Turbine Car photos, Chrysler loaned one of the prototype Turbine Cars to Universal for the movie, and George Stecher, a Chrysler mechanic, drove the car in the movie. These photos were found on The VRL.
AMX Scale Model
Jeff Teague (Teague Design International,Inc.) is an American automotive designer and the son of the renowned Industrial Designer, Richard A. Teague. His father was known for designing many American Motors Corporation (AMC) cars such as the Gremlin, AMX, and Pacer. I met Dick Teague once at his home, but I cannot recall the circumstances.
Chrysler Turbine Movie Car
A Chrysler Turbine Car, painted white with blue racing stripes, was featured in the 1964 film “The Lively Set.” The car, loaned to the producers by Chrysler, was one of the test ‘mules’, and was returned to Chrysler after production. It was among the cars scrapped.
Paintings by John Krsteski
John Krsteski is Design Manager for Hyundai. There is a short interview with john by Petrolicious that is worth reading. An excerpt: “Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Mr. John Krsteski attended the College for Creative Studies, although he now teaches at Art Center College of Design in addition to his full-time job as a design manager at Hyundai Design North America. In contrast to many automotive artists, John doesn’t try to reproduce a photographed moment-in-time. He takes his subjects out of their natural environment and places them in a graphic composition that gives his art an explosive, fluid quality to it. And while he loves creating auto art, he says that he still enjoys design too much to choose one over the other.”
AMX\2
Love John’s artwork…any for sale?
Jeff Teagues mid engine AMX is certainly prettier in my opinion than the C-8 Corvette, purposeful with out looking like a cartoon. Clearly inherited some excellent styling genes… Thinking dad would be quite proud.
Could be that a lot of designers might very well share that view.—Gary
Hmmmm. The history that I wrote for Hemmings “Special-Interest Autos” magazine published in 1980 featured all of this about the movie and the Chrysler Turbine racing car. I even included photos from the movie and behind-the scenes shots not seen even here. All included the article.
Almost no car people knew or remembered about “The Lively Set” movie back when my article was published. But I made certain they knew about it and the racing Chrysler Turbine. I guess many have forgotten.
And yes, I interviewed George Huebner, George Stecher (still have his business card) AND Mickey Thompson about the driving scenes in this movie. I can even tell you what the huge scratch was on the curb on the movie set (one of my photos)– and how it got there. Yes, I saved my notes.
To this day I still have 8 x 10 glossies that I got from the movie studio and movie press kits back in the 1970s. I also have a photo of George Huebner and the movie’s producer under the raised hood on the racing turbine raised and looking at the engine.
So I hope all this has not been lost in the sands of time and that photos and info on the racing car are not too startling. There were others and I have them.
As for the right-hand rear quarter view of the AMX/2… I have always felt that the Nissan 300 ZX of the mid-1990s was a kind of homage to this very slick design. Look at the Nissan with its horizontal slotted tail lights from this point of view… in a similar color about 20 feet away. Had one for a while and I loved both the look and the automobile.
Thanks.
.
I have always liked this car (I even have a 1/18 scale model of one, a brochure for one and a couple of b/w glossies. For my own use I have researched all the Chrysler Corp turbine cars as they really interested me.
I have often wished that even it the car in its turbine form could have been refitted witth a conventional motor. But I guess the bean counters would have killed that idea!
I think this AMX 2 was a proposal by Bob Nixon.
I see elements of the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car styling in the 1965 Chryslers, especially the 300s. One of the styling feature of the Thunderbird and Lincoln in the first part of the 1960s was the straight line deck, that was especially true of the 1964-1966 Thunderbird, and seemed to be mimicked by the 1965-1966 Chryslers. As many have noted before, the Elwood Engle-designed Turbine Car was dubbed “The Engle-bird”.
I thought that the Turbine Car in the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis was the car used in “The Lively Set”, but I must have mind-melded it with Bobby Darin’s “Da Dia”, which is also a part of the museum’s collection.
Leon, a copy of your turbine car article for Hemming’s Special Interest Autos, along with an intro article can be found here:
https://www.turbinecar.com/sia/sia57.htm
I went to Art Center College of Design with both Jeff Teague and his wife Glenda, although he was a couple of semesters behind me. Jeff and I reconnected on one of the AMC forums (I was driving a 1974 Hornet Sportabout at the time) and through social media in late 2008. As I recall, he started the AMX IV (as he called it) project late 2008 with his daughter helping on the clay model, and recall talking several times about the project. I had some images of the work in progress but unfortunately lost them when my computer crashed.
Jeff died on July 29, 2016.
As I mentioned in my comment, Jeff and talked about the his project and that he died in 2016, but what I didn’t mention is that at the time I urged him to trademark the AMX IV name before he proceeded with the project, mainly because some guy had trademarked AMC years earlier. What I don’t recall about our emails back and forth about the project is if I mentioned or showed him some of my ideas for an updated AMX, as I thought it would be fun to see what I could come up with. (Click to see rendering.)
In 1965 Jo-Han Models of Detroit, the official scale model supplier to Chrysler Corporation, released a scale model of the Chrysler Turbine Car to its dealers for use in sales and promotion. However, the very earliest issues were produced in summer 1963 and were limited to select participants who worked in the design and development of the car itself.
A lady named Simone Olsen was a free-lance contractor for various auto builders, among them Scarab and Chrysler, for whom she did test drive work. She also had a pilot’s license and was acquainted with my father, who was an air traffic investigator who worked with the FAA in Los Angeles. When Simone learned he had a little boy at home who was crazy about cars, she made him a gift of two she had received from their CEOs, a 1958 Scarab and a 1964 Turbine. The Scarab was a kit made by Strombecker with a nicely articulated steering and the Turbine came in a lavish box with photos of the actual car’s engine, interior, wheels, vinyl roof, exhaust, console, etc. This box was only produced for Chrysler’s in-house versions and is rarely seen.
When promo collectors with whom I regularly corresponded discovered I had just acquired a Jo-Han Turbine Car a good two years ahead of its dealers release date, cash and trade offers ran wild. The unique Turbine Car color was named Turbine Bronze and soon became a mainstay Chrysler corporate color.
Both are proudly in my collection today.
I built one of the Johan Turbine Car kits as a teen when they first came out in, what, 1965 (I think the box was coded “149” for the price of a dollar forty nine). They’ve been acknowledged as one of the best model kits of the period for its attention to detail. Chrysler reportedly spent a quarter million 1964 dollars on backing the Johan kit “engineering” and it showed. (My Dad was a car buff, an engineer, and passed on his passion for all things cars to me. He had an admiration for Chrysler because of its history of engineering excellence although he was a 1941 GMI graduate and a GM man all his life. When a real Turbine Car came to a local Chrysler dealership during its publicity tour, we went together to see it.) Today, any of those early issues of the Johan Chrysler Turbine Car model in unopened boxes go for over a hundred dollars on E-bay…
The formal Chrysler Turbine cars were needlessly “scrapped”, but Chrysler also had equipped a number of taxis with turbine engines – what happened to them?