Big Bad Brothers - 1969 AMC Javelin SST, 1969 AMC AMX

Ray Tetrault wasn't quite sure what his brother had in store for him.

It was late October 1971; Ray had let Bob borrow his 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 Cutlass for the day when Bob, Ray's junior by two years, came rushing into the house yelling that he found the perfect car for Ray.

"But I'm not looking for another car," Ray said. True, he wasn't actively on the lookout for another vehicle. He liked the Oldsmobile well enough--it had a white leather interior, the 185hp 215 V-8 and the floor-shifted automatic, and he had bought it for just $600 the year before--but like any teenager in those days, he still lusted after a proper muscle car.

Bob insisted, though, and practically pulled his older brother out of the house and down to J&B Parsons, the lone AMC dealership in their little town of Wappingers Falls, New York. As they pulled into the dealership's lot, Ray realized that he needn't have doubted his brother. There amid the new Hornets and Gremlins and Matadors sat a 1969 AMX with 24,000 miles on the odometer, the 315hp 390-cu.in. V-8 under the hood, a Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed and--best of all--the rare Big Bad Blue paint.

"Blue was my favorite color, so I immediately knew I wanted it," Ray said.

As it turned out, Parsons used the AMX as a demonstrator, then sold it "new" with 2,400 miles on it to a local police officer, who, within the next couple of years, proceeded to marry and father a child. Without a back seat for the family, the AMX got traded in for a new Ambassador station wagon, opening a chance for Ray to finally get the muscle car he'd dreamed of.

The salesman on duty wouldn't let 19-year-old Ray take the AMX out for a test spin on his own, though. "Go get your Pops," the salesman told him. Ray returned with his father in tow and then, a few blocks away from the dealership, he floored the throttle.

"I got rubber in first, then banged second, and my dad said, 'That'll be enough of that,' " Ray recalled.

Despite his father's hesitation, Ray succeeded in convincing him to float the money needed to buy the car--$2,055 after the $500 Parsons gave him for the Oldsmobile and the $25 deposit Ray left with the dealership.

E-Ts on Ray's AMX

"Not long after I bought it, I found out who the previous owner was and went down to his house," Ray said.

"He said, 'Hey, that's my AMX!' and I told him, 'Nope, it's mine now, and I'm never letting it go.' "

How true that would turn out.

Bob, right, may have spotted Ray's AMX first, but he ended up with a Javelin of his own.

Meanwhile, Bob was getting ready for a car of his own and ended up purchasing his uncle's 1965 Mustang GT with the K-code 271hp 289-cu.in. engine a few years later. By then, thanks to Ray letting him borrow the AMX from time to time, both brothers had become regulars on U.S. Route 9, the main thoroughfare through Wappingers Falls and the best place to pick up a street race on a Friday night.

Nowadays, Route 9 is a busy six-lane highway, lined with shopping centers and strip malls and divided by a steel barrier. "But back then, it was a two-lane road," Ray said. "We'd race all up and down it, but a lot of the racing took place between Myers Corners Road and Hopewell Road." They weren't so organized as to surreptitiously mark off quarter-mile lengths on that three-quarter-mile section of road back then; instead, they just went by the mile markers posted at the side of the road and took off when the traffic lights at either end of the strip turned green. The more serious contests shifted over to the Taconic State Parkway just to the east of town, where it didn't take long to wait for a break in the traffic to go side-by-side at triple-digit speeds.

"AMC was always the underdog then," Ray said. "Everybody would say, 'It's just a Rambler.' "

Nevertheless, both brothers recall the AMX performing well against the competition. Bob said it held its own against a 1966 GTO with the Tri-Power 389, and Ray remembers pulling away from a 1969 Camaro Z/28 even before the Z's driveshaft snapped when shifting into fourth at 100 MPH.

A few other AMCs did make the rounds at the time. A 401-powered 1971 AMX ran just as hard as Ray's AMX, and Ray had a buddy, Charlie Edwards, who drove a 343-powered 1968 Javelin, later replaced by a 390-powered 1969 AMX sporting Big Bad Green paint.

"That was a sight, seeing the two of us cruising around that small village," Ray said. Neither brother could recall ever seeing another AMX or Javelin sporting one of the Big Bad colors at that time, so to see two at once was novel, if not a little overwhelming for the retinas. Of the 8,293 AMXs that AMC built in 1969, just 195 had the Big Bad Blue paint, while 284 came in Big Bad Green.

Bob happened to like Charlie's Javelin, but grew more interested in small-block-powered Corvettes over the next few years: a 1963, '69 and '71 all passed through Bob's hands during that time, though he continued to occasionally swap them for the AMX for a night here and there.

"The 'Vettes would get more chicks, definitely," Bob said. "Especially when you put the top down on the convertibles. But the AMX still had tremendous torque off the line."

Ray, on the other hand, felt the AMX compared equally with the '63 and '69 Corvettes. "The ass ends of the Corvettes were all lighter, so they were all over the road," he said. "The AMX had the heavier tail and the 3.54 take-off gears, but it couldn't stack up against the '71, which had an LT-1 engine. That car just flew."

While Bob felt the desire to sample other cars throughout the 1970s, Ray held on to the AMX. He said he only kept it on the road through the first winter he owned it; after that, he'd always find a winter beater to take the brunt of upstate New York's frost-heaved and salt-encrusted roads, then bring the AMX out of its hibernation in the spring. He even worked for a short time at Parsons AMC, where he obtained a set of Trendsetter side pipes and bolted them to the AMX, using Parsons' bays and lifts.

He also wanted to ditch the factory smog system, but not make the car look hacked up. Fortunately, he discovered that, while four-speed-equipped cars such as his had the air pump and fittings in the exhaust manifolds, automatic-equipped cars did not. So while still at Parsons, he found a set of exhaust manifolds from an automatic-equipped 390 and swapped them onto his engine.

His AMX didn't emerge from the 1970s unscathed, however. While driving (just driving, mind, not racing) on the Taconic, Ray rounded a corner and came upon a guy who ran his Austin-Healey off the road, then bounced off the trees back onto the highway. Ray pulled over to the side, turned on his hazards, and got out to check on the Austin-Healey driver, but a moment later heard the screech of tires skidding on pavement and turned to see another car plow into the back end of the AMX. Everybody involved came out of the incident unhurt, but the AMX would require a new trunklid, taillamps and a subframe rail.

"And the cop said I was at fault for not pulling farther off the road," Ray said. "That's what I got for being a long-haired kid back then."

A few years later, with the damage from that incident repaired and with 98,000 miles on the AMX's original 390, Ray tore the engine down for a rebuild. However, he found that an overbore wasn't necessary, so he simply replaced bearings and seals, then put the 390 back together and took the AMX over to Lime Rock Park in Connecticut for a day of time trials racing around the park's road course.

"It was balls to the wall, do whatever you can to get around the course," he said. "Even though I was running on street tires, I took something like third out of six in my class that day."

Though Ray never treated the AMX to a full restoration, he kept excellent care of it through the years. During a seven-year hibernation period for the AMX in the mid-1990s, he kept it up off the ground on jackstands and periodically turned the engine over; after waking the AMX from its deep sleep, he treated it to a repaint and a thorough once-over of the brakes.

Ray didn't move too far away from Wappingers Falls as an adult--just north to Poughkeepsie. Nor did Bob move too far away--just south to Beacon. And while Bob didn't find it as easy to hold on to the muscle cars of his youth as Ray did, he did hold on to his memories of that time just fine.

In particular, Bob never forgot that Javelin that Charlie Edwards owned, so when Bob's kids were grown and out of the house, he started to look for a Javelin of his own. That search led him in January 2008 to New Jersey, where a 1969 Javelin SST sat under a cover for sale.

"The seller gave me directions to his place and said that if he wasn't there when I showed up, then I could just pull back the cover and check it out," Bob said.

Just as Ray fell in love at first sight with his AMX 37 years prior, Bob knew he had to have this Javelin the minute he lifted the cover and spotted the Javelin's Big Bad Blue paint.

"I wasn't looking for a Big Bad car; it just happened to be that color," Bob said. "And the Javelin was in beautiful shape."

Bob wasn't able to track down much of the Javelin's history. Plenty more Javelins received the Big Bad Blue paint than AMXs, but with 465 total so painted from the factory (out of a total 1969 Javelin production run of 40,675), they're still quite uncommon. The seller had only owned Bob's Javelin for a couple years; he bought the Javelin from another guy further upstate who performed much of the restoration work.

Aside from the Big Bad Blue paint, Bob's Javelin also featured a four-barrel-equipped 290-cu.in. V-8 and floor-shifted Borg-Warner automatic transmission. Like Ray's AMX, it had a set of Trendsetter side exhaust pipes and a charcoal interior; unlike Ray's AMX, it had the hood from a Mod-package Javelin, the stock Magnum 500 wheels and the Javelin C-stripe.

"It didn't bother me much that it was just a 290 with an automatic," Bob said. "I knew then that I could put in a bigger engine and convert it to a four-speed down the road."

Indeed, since buying the Javelin, Bob has picked up a 360 to rebuild, as well as a junker four-speed Javelin to use in converting his car to a four-speed. Yet he hasn't done much to his Javelin since buying it. "I plan to make this Javelin look right, so that nobody can tell it's really a 360," Bob said. "But every time I get into it, it starts right up, so I see no need to mess with it right now."

It's for that reason that Bob and Ray have been making the rounds at shows in the Northeast together in the last couple of years, providing just as unique a sight today as Ray and his friend Charlie did nearly 40 years ago. In fact, the brothers monopolized the AMC awards at our own Musclepalooza VIII at Lebanon Valley Dragway in May 2009.

"I've probably driven my AMX more in the last few years than I did in the whole time I owned it before then," Ray said.

"Yeah, and he's smoking his tires the whole way up to the shows," Bob said. "He has a ball when he's in that car, just like he's a kid again."

Only one difference from when these two were teenagers, though: They don't trade off driving privileges in their cars any more.

"It was an even swap back then," Ray said. "It's not an even swap anymore!"

Bob said to just wait until he gets the 360 and four-speed installed in his Javelin. "It'll be a nice sleeper then!"

CLUB SCENE

American Motors Owners Association

1615 Purvis Avenue

Janesville, Wisconsin 53548

608-752-8247

www.amonational.com

Dues: $35/year • Membership: 2,000

AMC Big Bad Javelin & AMX Registry

bigbadamc.tripod.com

Membership: 198

SPECIFICATIONS

1969 AMC JAVELIN SST

ENGINE

Block Type -- AMC Gen II OHV V-8, cast-iron block and cylinder heads

Heads -- Stock AMC, 51cc combustion chamber, 1.787/1.406-inch intake/exhaust valves

Displacement -- 290 cubic inches

Bore x Stroke -- 3.750 x 3.280 inches

Compression ratio -- 10.0:1

Horsepower @ RPM -- 225 @ 4,700

Torque @ RPM -- 300-lbs.ft. @ 3,200

Camshaft Type -- Unknown aftermarket, hydraulic lifters

Fuel system -- Edelbrock Performer RPM four-barrel intake manifold, single Edelbrock 600-CFM four-barrel carburetor, mechanical pump

Ignition system -- MSD HEI

Exhaust system -- Stock manifolds with Trendsetter Sidewinder side pipes

TRANSMISSION

Type -- Borg-Warner M-40 aluminum case three-speed automatic

Ratios:

1st -- 2.40:1

2nd -- 1.47:1

3rd -- 1.00:1

Reverse -- 2.00:1

DIFFERENTIAL

Type -- AMC Model 20

Ratio -- 2.87:1

WHEELS & TIRES

Wheels -- Magnum 500 stamped steel

Front/Rear -- 14 x 6 inches

Tires -- BFGoodrich Radial T/A

Front/Rear -- 215/70R14

1969 AMC AMX

ENGINE

Block Type -- AMC Gen II OHV V-8, cast-iron block and cylinder heads

Heads -- Stock AMC, 51cc combustion chamber, 2.025/1.625-inch intake/exhaust valves

Displacement -- 390 cubic inches

Bore x Stroke -- 4.165 x 3.574 inches

Compression ratio -- 10.2:1

Horsepower @ RPM -- 315 @ 4,600

Torque @ RPM -- 425-lbs.ft. @ 3,200

Camshaft Type -- Stock AMC, hydraulic lifters

Fuel system -- AMC four-barrel intake manifold, single Carter 650-CFM AFB, mechanical pump

Ignition system -- MSD Pro Billet distributor with electronic ignition

Exhaust system -- Stock manifolds with Trendsetter Sidewinder side pipes

TRANSMISSION

Type -- Borg-Warner T-10 four-speed manual with Hurst Competition Plus shifter

Ratios:

1st -- 2.23:1

2nd -- 1.77:1

3rd -- 1.35:1

4th -- 1.00:1

Reverse -- 2.16:1

DIFFERENTIAL

Type -- AMC Model 20 with Twin-Grip limited-slip differential

Ratio -- 3.54:1

WHEELS & TIRES

Wheels -- E-T V five-spoke aluminum

Front/Rear -- 14 x 6 inches

Tires -- BFGoodrich Radial T/A

Front/Rear -- 235/60R14