LE BARON
Power User
The American Motors Corporation had a brilliant idea in 1971 but totally choked at the finish line. The market was suddenly getting flooded with tiny cheap Japanese pickup trucks from Toyota and Datsun. AMC had just bought the legendary Jeep brand and decided they desperately needed a compact hauler to fight back. They gave the green light to Jim Alexander and his design team to build the Cowboy.
This specific green and white survivor is the absolute wildest of the bunch. The engineers did not just build a boring economy truck. They secretly based this exact prototype on the high performance Hornet SC 360. That means this little compact pickup hides a massive 360 cubic inch V8 engine under the hood paired with a manual floor shifted transmission. It even came with custom green bucket seats and factory air conditioning. It was a pure tire shredding muscle truck hiding in a utilitarian work body.
But the corporate accountants ruined everything. AMC was bleeding cash and decided it would be far cheaper to just build a standard Hornet hatchback instead. They permanently shelved the Cowboy project and completely missed their chance to dominate the 1970s compact truck market. This surviving 1971 prototype was actually used as a factory test mule for years before being sold to a lucky employee. We traded this brilliant piece of blue collar hot rodding for boring imported appliances and it is a massive historical tragedy.
This specific green and white survivor is the absolute wildest of the bunch. The engineers did not just build a boring economy truck. They secretly based this exact prototype on the high performance Hornet SC 360. That means this little compact pickup hides a massive 360 cubic inch V8 engine under the hood paired with a manual floor shifted transmission. It even came with custom green bucket seats and factory air conditioning. It was a pure tire shredding muscle truck hiding in a utilitarian work body.
But the corporate accountants ruined everything. AMC was bleeding cash and decided it would be far cheaper to just build a standard Hornet hatchback instead. They permanently shelved the Cowboy project and completely missed their chance to dominate the 1970s compact truck market. This surviving 1971 prototype was actually used as a factory test mule for years before being sold to a lucky employee. We traded this brilliant piece of blue collar hot rodding for boring imported appliances and it is a massive historical tragedy.
