Movie Star Car: 1975 AMC Gremlin
AMC didn’t have deep pockets, so when the imported sub-compacts started to pick up sales steam in the late 1960s, what were they to do? AMC responded by taking its new Hornet and removing 12 inches from the mid-section — and the quirky Gremlin was born! It wasn’t a sub-compact per se, but it was priced in similar territory, helping the car to stick around for nine years. This 1975 edition of the Gremlin is said to have been a movie star at one time, appearing in films and music videos. After sitting for a dozen years, it’s been refreshed mechanically and is now ready to go! Located in Hermosa Beach, California, the car with the funny name is available here on eBay for $12,500 (Buy It Now!).
The Gremlin was the second car in just a couple of years that was created out of resizing another. The AMX came two years earlier from the then-new Javelin pony car. Between 1970-78, AMC sold 671,000 Gremlins, so even though folks liked to pick on the name, they kept dealer showrooms busy for a while. In 1975, AMC buyers had two choices of strange-looking cars: besides the Gremlin, the Pacer was introduced with its upside-down bathtub styling and cut into Gremlin sales, causing a 67% reduction to 56,000 units.
As the story goes, this ’75 Gremlin was owned at one point by a movie car rental company. The seller’s understanding is that it saw use in many feature films and TV shows, with its last gig being in a Beastie Boys music video. The car had been idle for a dozen years when the seller came across it and decided to nurse the Gremlin back to health, starting with the 258 cubic inch I-6. The price tag for all the service and repair work that was done is said to total up to $5,500, with the list including the following:
- New tires and brakes
- Replacing all fluids in the engine and transmission
- Flushed out the gas tank and replace all the fuel lines
- Belts, hoses, tune-up, etc.
- New radiator
As a result of all this work, we’re told the cars runs and drives great now. The exterior of the car has been detailed and the Mellow Yellow Orange paint and graphics have been brought back to life. The finish is not perfect, with the grill area being the most noticeable, but they’re only original once so why mess with it? The interior is vintage ‘70s, with the front seat covers and carpeting looking tattered and ready for an intervention.
One throwback to the car’s movie star days is that it still wears a set of hydraulic shocks up front that were used to bounce the car up and down. You could stay the course or remove the pump and batteries and go back to regular shocks if you wanted to. It would seem that the custom work has not harmed the vehicle. The odometer reflects just under 5,000 miles, which is more like 105,000, but the seller says he has no way of knowing what the real story is. Gremlins are so strange that they’re cool now.
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Comments
Which films and music videos did this car appear in?
I did an IMCDB search for AMC Gremlin and came up with nothing that resembles this car.
The quality of bodywork and paint say this car was used as a period car in backgrounds. The cable and hardware behind the backseat suggest it may have been used as a camera car. None of this makes the car anything more than a beater which an insurance company might value at about $800. As a driver it might be worth a couple thousand dollars in today’s marketplaces.
There’s a much nicer ’74 Gremlin X on eBay for 20% less than this seller’s asking price.
Please shoot me if I paid $12,500 for this.
Pow pow
They have the whitewalls turned the wrong way.
Gross, Eminem sat in this car!
Junk
Someone was definitely high on something when they set the price on this beater.
2nd ugliest car ever made behind the Pacer. I would take it if you paid me, 12,500.
This is a great find. My daughter works in the movie biz, and calls on these agencies all the time in making movies. You can get everything from race cars ( @$2,000/day) to,,,well, Gremlins( for considerably less) While this car may not have been a feature in any show, producers go for the most accurate vehicles for the time period, and a Gremlin was a staple of American roads. It screamed the ’70’s, and any show depicting that period, should have a Gremlin.
Fast forward to today, with good wholesome shows like the Brady Bunch or That 70’s Show collecting dust in favor of zombies disemboweling each other, the poor Gremlin has seen it’s movie days. Like a has been actor ( Jimmie Walker doing Medicare commercials,,DYNOMITE), time to sell off the baggage. Everybody has a Gremlin story, they touched a lot of lives. Not many other cars, except maybe a VW Bug, can say that. Today, it will cost someone 5 figures to discover the absolute cheapest car known to man, @ an original $1,895, it under cut the VW by $100 bucks. In a changing time, it’s all many that still bled red, white, and blue needed to hear, and we sold a bunch.
Very close to me, the seller also has 3,000 skateboards for $90k, and its just the boards!!
There are lots nice examples of Gremlins out there for a price like this or less. I’d pass on this one. Looks to have been “rode hard and put away wet” as they say. No doubt, the people making videos weren’t too concerned about preserving it.
it would take a pretty dumb hipster to pay for this pos what a mint condition Lexus would cost.
Investigation Discovery prop car, used in at least one documentary on serial killer Gerald Eugene Stano aka “The Real Italian Stallion”.
This car deserves a Blown Big Block something with a drive train to match and rear wide tires.
Look at the amount of sag in the driver’s door… I bet it’s fun to open and close. New bushings will usually take care of it. Way too much money, an old toggle switch and a cable in the back seat don’t impress me as a “movie car”
Surprising seeing staggered shocks here, but not on many other bigger rear leaf spring cars with hi po motors. Makes no sense.
There are those skinny 3 tread groove “modern” tires again.
I’m not sure why people say the Gremlin is so strange! Every other company copied it!
I had one of these in high school. Exact year and color but mine had tinted windows Cragers and big tires in the back. It also had two big house speakers in the back inside and shag carpet! Loved that car! It met its demise when I was driving home from a Frank Zappa concert in a snow storm sliding off into a guard rail, ahh memories!
I am a Gremlin guy and was a movie car guy. Red or orange cars were not used for back round because they never disappeared into the backround