You have to give struggling American Motors credit for trying. They always seemed to make something come out of nothing. Case in point is the four-wheel drive family of cars called the Eagle which AMC launched for 1980, a few years before their acquisition by Chrysler (who really wanted Jeep out of that deal). In basic terms, the Eagle was a Concord with a Jeep chassis underneath it. It worked so well that they applied it a year later to the sub-compact Spirit and called it the Eagle SX/4. This one from 1982 has been sitting in a barn/garage for quite a while, but its seller had converted it to V-8 power. It’s located in Champaign, Illinois, which is south of Chicago on I-57. It can be found on here on craigslist, but the seller has not included an asking price.

AMC’s Eagle product lines were the only four-wheel-drive passenger cars produced in the U.S. at the time. The goal was to combine automobile-quality comfort on paved surfaces with good off-road traction capabilities in light use. In today’s terminology, it would be thought of as a crossover. The first Eagles were half Concord and half Jeep, and the same concept would also be applied to the Eagle SX/4 (Spirit). Because the Eagles and SX/4’s used established mechanical components, they proved to be reliable vehicles, enough so that they’re still running around in the Pacific Northwest, Canada and Alaska where 4X4 is a way of life. The overall Eagle brand saw 192,000 cars built over nine model years, with 30,000 of them being SX/4’s which were only made for 1981-83. Thanks, AllPar and AMCEaglesDen for historical and production data.

The seller doesn’t offer us many photos of his treasure, nor does he tell us what he wants for it. But what he does tell us is that it’s an ’82 model SX/4 that has had its original, well-worn GM “Iron Duke” inline-four replaced with an AMC 304 V-8 that came out of a ’71 Javelin. He did the work himself but advancing age has prevented him from going any further, so here the car sits. He’s a self-admitted AMC fan (there’s a Concord sharing the barn with the SX/4). This car has a 4-speed manual transmission and the seller says that everything worked when the transplant was finished, including the A/C and 4WD. Besides this change, dual exhaust is now on-board and 304 emblems rest on the front fenders, the car is stock. With the engine change combined with a lengthy hibernation, what’s a good price to pay for a car like this?