Oddball Muscle Cars

dakota tom · 03-08-2010, 10:43 PM

There are two versons of the story behind the AMC V-8 I found.

One is that AMC was using the Packard V-8 in the Nash and Hudson cars until Packard did not honor its end of of the deal. AMC was to get engines from Packard and Packard would buy body stampings and other parts from AMC. Then AMC president, George Romney, Mitt Romneys father, ordered engineer Meade Moore in 1954 to design an in house V-8. It was in production in April 1956.

Studebaker also merged with Packard about this time so that may explain the simularities in the engines both being infuenced by Packard design.

The other verson is that a former Kaiser-Frazer engineer, David Potter, who had designed a V-8 for K-F designed the AMC engine. I could not find the book tonight that has a photo of the K-F engine in it, The Last Onslaught on Detroit. K-F managment decided to go ahead with the Henry J car instead of funding the V-8 engine. It looks nearly identical to the AMC engine. They then added the Paxton supercharger to the inline six in the Kaiser cars.

The Studebaker R-3 engine had the Paxton supercharger. A road test had a 0-60 time of 5.5 sec for a R-3 Avanti.

There is a 2 door 1964 Studebaker in my town that was a R-3 four speed originally. The current owner found it without an engine and it now has a R-1 engine but he is gathering the parts to build it to R-3 specs.

In the last year or two of Studebaker production they did use a 283 Chevrolet engine

03-08-2010, 10:43 PM	#11
dakota tom Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 13 Likes: 0 Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Re: Oddball Muscle Cars There are two versons of the story behind the AMC V-8 I found. One is that AMC was using the Packard V-8 in the Nash and Hudson cars until Packard did not honor its end of of the deal. AMC was to get engines from Packard and Packard would buy body stampings and other parts from AMC. Then AMC president, George Romney, Mitt Romneys father, ordered engineer Meade Moore in 1954 to design an in house V-8. It was in production in April 1956. Studebaker also merged with Packard about this time so that may explain the simularities in the engines both being infuenced by Packard design. The other verson is that a former Kaiser-Frazer engineer, David Potter, who had designed a V-8 for K-F designed the AMC engine. I could not find the book tonight that has a photo of the K-F engine in it, The Last Onslaught on Detroit. K-F managment decided to go ahead with the Henry J car instead of funding the V-8 engine. It looks nearly identical to the AMC engine. They then added the Paxton supercharger to the inline six in the Kaiser cars. The Studebaker R-3 engine had the Paxton supercharger. A road test had a 0-60 time of 5.5 sec for a R-3 Avanti. There is a 2 door 1964 Studebaker in my town that was a R-3 four speed originally. The current owner found it without an engine and it now has a R-1 engine but he is gathering the parts to build it to R-3 specs. In the last year or two of Studebaker production they did use a 283 Chevrolet engine