1958 Rambler Ambassador | A Turquoise Treasure

Hey Frank, can you tell us a little about your car? Well, first of all, this isn't my car. It belongs to an associate of mine who's camera shy, but I will tell you all about it. It's a great car. This is a 1958 Rambler Ambassador with a 327 four-barrel push-button transmission. This is what we call a survivor car. Some paint work, some minor repairs, but this is how it left the factory. And it's in decent shape. It's a driver quality. And what we would say in the hobby, oh, it's not a show car. Maybe this isn't a show car, but when this car pulls up to a show, people love it. It's got, of course, this great color, which screams the fifties, right? The aluminum side trim and these fins. And these fins are something that he just came up with to make it look of the era. But it's got the fins. It's got this beautiful rear end, the Ambassador logo here, which is really cool. It's also on the hubcaps and of course the beautiful radio antenna. In 1958, there was a recession where almost every car company in the country lost sales except for Rambler because Ramblers were easier to park, more compact. And this is as big as they got right here with this Ambassador. It is what would have been a 58 Nash or Hudson. It's got the long wheelbase, the big motor, and this one is fully equipped. Meyer Lansky, who was like the bookkeeper to the mob, he always drove a Rambler Ambassador because it had all the equipment, the good ride, but it wasn't flashy. You know, the mob guys didn't want you driving a flashy car. The tech at Green's Garage has rebuilt the power steering, power brakes, the generator, and rebuilt the carburetor. So this thing is ready to go. It's got a unitized body, lightweight, and this thing will haul ass. It is a sleeper. In 57, Rambler Rebel was the fastest car you could buy in America along with the Chrysler 300. And nobody expected a four-door Rambler to be so powerful. It's a 327 and that's American Motors 327, not the 327 that everybody knows from General Motors. Neutral, reverse, and your drive gears. And here's your parking park setting for the automatic transmission. So we're going to fire up. Got willing. So we're going to fire up. It's got the big 327 in it with four barrel. Okay, so we pull the park off and then we go into drive. Wait for it to engage and off we go. This car as we sit in is how it left the factory. We put a little seat cover on it, but it's got the floor mat which came from Montgomery Wards in 1958. We've got the gun sights on the front fenders to help guide us down the roads here. George Romney was the president of AMC. That's Mitt Romney's dad. He took over AMC when George Mason passed away. He was the president of Nash. And he just saw that these Rambler cars were gaining popularity. They had good resale and the big Nash's and the big Hudson's were falling out of favor. So he went on this campaign, this ad campaign, showing people driving these big thin cars, calling them dinosaurs. Can you fit them in your driveway? Can you fit them? Are they easy to park? And that's how the Rambler became known as easy to park, easy to handle, easy on gas. This Ambassador was not their biggest seller, but it was a car they put out there for the customers of the Nash cars, the big Nash's and the big Hudson's. This was originally, if you read American Motors history, this was going to be the 58 Nash and the 58 Hudson with minor styling variations. But they decided to just go all Rambler. And business-wise, it was the right decision to make, but it was kind of sad for those of us who love Hudson's and Nash's. Well, I had no idea these things had 327s in them. That was an American Motors design. I assumed it was a six-cylinder. I don't know why. Well, most Ramblers are. Eighty percent of them are. They used the 196 six-cylinder, usually a three-speed in overdrive. They came out with the 232 in 1963 or 1964. Now, that 232 motor was considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, six-cylinder engine of all time. It went from 1964 to the last four-liter Jeep motor. That 232 became the 258 and the four-liter inline-six Jeep motor. So, that motor was in production for over 30 years, 30 years plus, and had the seven main bearing design, which started out as a Rambler motor. Jeep adopted it as American Motors took over Jeep and is considered one of the great six-cylinder motors of all time. But yeah, this thing will move.