American Motors had big plans to take on GM, Ford and Chrysler across a fatter slice of the product line during the second half of the 1960s, creating a sporty fastback and making the Ambassador bigger and ritzier. Since Kenosha-built sensible compacts sold like crazy under Rambler badging during the late 1950s and well into the 1960s (inspiring a hit novelty song along the way), AMC held onto the Rambler marque until the 1969 model year. From 1961 through 1966, the Rambler Classic was AMC’s low-priced midsize car, stealing many a sale from its Big Three rivals. Here’s a final-year-of-production Rambler Classic 550 sedan, photographed in its final parking space in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service boneyard.
From the late 1930s through the early 1960s, most American family cars had straight-six engines. Flatheads gradually gave way to pushrod sixes, with Chrysler building its last U.S.-market flathead cars in 1959 and AMC hanging on to the valve-in-block design on its cheapest Ramblers through 1962. The engine in this Junkyard Gem is the 199-cubic-inch AMC six, rated at 128 horsepower. If this six looks familiar to you Jeep fanciers, that’s because it’s the direct ancestor of all those 258s and 4.0s used in Jeeps from the early 1970s all the way through the 2006 model year.
