Strangest Features and Quirks of the 1980-88 AMC Eagle

Well , hello , this is Adam and welcome back to Rare Classic cars .

Today , we're going to talk about this 1982 A MC Eagle four door sedan .

You often see the wagons , but you don't usually see the four doors or the two door coops or the S X four S .

So a bit rare of a model than what you see and you don't see hardly any A MC Eagles anymore at all .

I've owned this car for almost 10 years and I bought it out of northern Michigan .

You can see here the sticker Roose motor sales from Ish Michigan and I have to say it's been a very reliable vehicle always starts up .

Never gives me trouble , always runs good , just an all around , great vehicle .

But today we're going to talk about the quirks of it , the strangest features as opposed to an overall review .

So let's start with a few things .

Certainly these mud flaps , those are pretty sweet .

Gotta love those .

But the first thing is the body fits , look at the body fits on this car .

I mean , I can stick my pinky all the way up to second knuckle in there the body fits in this car and the trim and everything are just terrible and that was pretty typical of a MC in the era .

They also had these interesting interfaces here like the drip rail to this molding is , you know , not quite right .

If you look at the sheet metal in some lights , you can see it's slightly rippled and wavy .

The dyes on this car were just wearing out as this was approaching the end of the run of what was effectively a hornet underneath .

But all these fits like even the trunk gap here is really bad .

So typical for a MC .

That is the first thing that is interestingly and quirk interesting and quirky .

Take a look on the inside .

There's a number of quirks .

The second is the back seat room on this car is pretty limited .

That bottom cushion is relatively short .

It's a very upright seat .

Now , these seats are all the way back in the front , but still , it's not overly roomy .

It's a pretty small car on the inside and this is one of the last cars where there's no , unless you got it optional , there's no electric switch to turn on the dome light in the rear , only the front door , the driver and passenger side on the front , something from the sixties , there was a hold over and ac charged extra for it .

This car doesn't have that also on the inside .

Ok .

As we sit here on the inside .

First quirky thing is this four wheel drive selector , which you have to operate with two hands .

You have to pull this lever down with one hand and then move this over with the other later .

They would go to shift on the fly capability for select drive .

But in 1982 they did not have that .

They only came later .

So you had to stop and then operate this to put it in four wheel drive .

And also the manual tells you that if you think you're going to encounter rough terrain or adverse terrain , you should do this before you encounter it because it takes a full revolution of the front wheel in order for the hub to automatically engage .

So if you're stuck in spinning your rear wheels , if you can't get the front wheel to rotate one full turn , you're not going to have four wheel drive , so helpful , but somewhat challenging .

The second thing on here is this button which is the automatic squid deploy .

No , it's not .

But I think the logo for this is kind of quirky .

This is the fresh air vent that you push in or pull out to let some fresh air in the vehicle .

I think that logo is pretty hilarious .

And then over here on this control panel , think there's something else interesting .

This is all cable operated , there's nothing vacuum in here .

And if you want , you put it on heat , let's say you want the air to just come out of the lower registers , you actually have to manually close the upper vents off .

Otherwise the air , even though you have it on heat is going to still come out the top .

So different from pretty typical vehicles of the era .

And certainly today next is the steering column .

A MC used G M Saginaw steering columns and one giveaway is the key .

Does that look familiar ?

Yes , it's a G M key with an American Motors logo on it .

And some of the quirky things in this car are all of the shared parts that it uses from other automakers , including the Chrysler torque flight transmission .

But that torque flight transmission goes through this Ford shift lever here and right out of a Mustang and they all break this little piece here breaks .

I don't know if anybody's got any replacements .

It's pretty typical of these to have that issue but really a part spin car not necessarily quirk , but I will say the A MC stereos in this are shockingly good .

They did have good stereos .

Next quirky thing is this package shelf down here which you only got with air conditioning .

It added this lower vent and it added that lower vent .

You didn't get air conditioning , you had these two uh upper vents , this was just a pocket where you could store things and then there were other little fresh air vents that would get added down here .

But this is what you got in the air conditioned cars .

Next is , I love how they've put this little piece over here .

If you got power windows , this would be the switch here .

But instead you have this kind of stick on applique .

Next , the wiper switch on these .

Very interesting if you have delay wipers , which this car doesn't have .

You turn it backward to activate the delay .

You want to operate the wipers , you rotate it , that's low and high two speed wipers .

But again , if you have delay , you go backward and then you turn it clockwise for operating at continuous wiping speeds .

By the way , other interesting tidbit .

If you want to remove these pole knobs , this is just a sticker , take the sticker off and then there's a screw behind there .

Kind of clever , I guess .

Let's look under hood .

There's plenty of things to discuss under hood and here's the hood release in a strange spot .

Let's take a look .

So here we are under hood in a sea of various vacuum hoses , which is very typical for the era .

This one's pretty bad though , I would say in terms of how many vacuum hoses exist .

First thing we'll talk about is this , it's a G M and a steering pump under hood .

No surprise .

A MC didn't want to engineer their own G MS A and a steering pump .

Then we have a set up here for the Evaporative canister from Rochester products .

Very similar to the Rochester product set up found on GM vehicles .

Next , we have the ignition box here that says a MC .

You can see it there , but this is a Ford Moto Craft ignition box .

So all the wiring is Ford Motor Craft as well .

So they just put this sticker over top of the motor craft logo to tell you that it's an ac piece .

Next under hood .

We have the valve cover , which is this right here .

This is infamous on these for leaking and warping and providing wonderful challenges .

This car only has about 35,000 miles so it doesn't leak too badly .

This valve cover was made by an A MC division called Creighton .

So it's actually made by AM CS Own division and they had gone from a metal valve cover to this which was a retrograde step .

Some people changed them over back to metal , but you do have to make some modifications in order to do that .

There are fewer places that this is secured and it has these nuts on top that you can see .

It says torque to 28 inch pounds .

You can imagine back in the day that none of the service bays had inch pound torque wrenches .

So these just got cranked down and warped and Creighton , the AMC division also made these fender flares for the car which were made to disguise the 2.5 to 3 inches higher ride height than it had over the Concord .

So various ac divisions also made parts of this car , like I said , including Creighton that made those fender flares and the perennially leaky valve cover .

Next , you also have a Ford starter relay on these a Ford starting system .

So very typical for your Ford lovers even mounted on the firewall , just like the Fords are and down there , it's hard to see .

But trust me , that's a G M style alternator .

So a real Frankenstein of different components from various companies .

And as I mentioned previously , the transmission of this is a Chrysler torque flight does have Dana front and rear ends .

One other thing I called it a quirk .

It's an annoying quirk .

A lot of cars in this area have these headlight adjusters break over time .

They're just plastic .

You can see they clip in back here and that's what screw threads to .

So if you ever see these headlights angled funny or tilted downward , chances are it's the headlight adjuster that's broken and on this car , it's not fun to get those off .

If I recall correctly , you got to take part of the grill off , then you have to take this trim piece off , which also includes , interestingly , this trim piece also includes this molding , this whole thing pulls out from the car , then you can get access to the screw .

I've had to replace at least three of them on this car .

Last let's check out the trunk and the quirky thing about the trunk here is it's pretty shallow .

This is not a big trunk , really can't fit much in here .

You could fit a golf bag or two , but it's very shallow this way .

And the opening here is very small .

So not a great design .

And last , but not least , we'll just say on the interior one feature .

I love the tartan Check interior here with kind of the shrugged shoulders and the headrest in the middle .

I think it's a very attractive pattern .

The seats are very comfortable and they do have backrest adjusters , which was very rare on American cars of the era , so you can adjust them and tilt them back if you want .

In any case .

I hope you enjoyed this .

Look at the quirk of the A MC Eagle and how could I forget the A MC door handles ?

I shouldn't say that just door handles .

These were even used on Jeeps , the tailgate handle .

These were everywhere on AM CS , something that was unique to them .

I don't mind it .

I kind of like it , it worked just fine .

Hope you enjoyed that video .

Stay tuned for a full review and ride and drive on the Eagle coming soon .

Thanks for watching this video .

Be sure to stay tuned for the full review and ride and drive and until next time , check out the video thumbnails at bottom , left and right for some suggestions for you .

Thanks again for watching .