1973 AMC Javelin Pierre Cardin Barn Find!
This 1973 AMC Javelin Pierre Cardin edition was found in a barn, presumably the one in the background. This dusty designer beauty can be found here on eBay in Defiance, Ohio with heavy bidding and by that I mean 131 bids as I write this. There is no reserve and the current bid price is $9,600.
Whoa, that’s quite a change! This car does not look like any barn find that I’ve ever seen in the photo above. As in, a dusty, dirty old car that someone found sitting in a barn or garage somewhere. The thing looks like new!
I believe this color is called Diamond Blue and it really is muted on the indoor photos, so much so that it doesn’t even look like the same car. But it is, of course, and what a car. The seller calls this a barn find and we don’t normally see such nice looking vehicles being referred to as barn finds.
Being hidden away in a barn is one thing, but this Javelin is a rare Pierre Cardin edition. If that isn’t enough, this car only has 18,046 miles on it! Zinnnng! The Pierre Cardin Javelin was about a $90 option and only around 4,000 of them were made for the 1972 and 1973 model years. This car isn’t perfect, however, the seller has included a photo showing what appears to be some corrosion starting to rear its ugly head, but they say that it’s a straight, solid car.
Here’s where the magic happens, on the inside. It almost looks like they had the driver’s window open when they hosed off the car, but they mention that the driver’s door doesn’t latch. That’s scary given the rodent population in your average barn. I get the idea of taking photos of how a vehicle looked when you pulled it out of a barn, but I don’t see any harm in spending five minutes vacuuming them out first. The Pierre Cardin interiors were wild and cool at the same time, two things that don’t always go together.
The engine is a 304 cubic-inch V8 which would have had 150 hp. It looks appropriately barn-find’y, and looks like a simple enough engine to detail and get looking like new again. But, when you see what’s hiding under the air cleaner cover, yowsa!! Rodents are the worst thing on the planet. Ok, wait a minute, maybe the second worst thing. They say that the engine “spins” and sadly they also say that rodents have dined on some wiring under the hood so expect all kinds of work there. Have any of you seen a Pierre Cardin edition Javelin?
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Comments
Can the 304 cid be “awakend” for more (modest) power output levels? Say, with a 550 cfm 4bbl/intake combo? Just for more spirited driving. Or would an automatic overdrive and deep gears work better? Or both? Maybe too cost prohibitive for the power gains experiencd…
I know the AMC fellas on this site prefer the 401 and 360 mills.
Oh, by the way, my mom was driving 55 mph on a left handed curve when the driver’s door opened up or her ’73 Javelin… mechanic said that the mechanism came apart. Probably what this one has as well.
MIne was the hood coming open at about 100km/hr my fault sort of I had picked it up from the body shop and couldnt wait until they got a new hood latch and drove off with wire holding it shut
Wow.
Great “Mouse House” in the air filter housing.
Chewed wires…. Sometimes a real pain in the butt to sort out, but a clean looking car!
Appears to be the first item of any sort the seller has posted to eBay, the small number of feedbacks are all for purchases.
Top dollar only with higher resolution photos, including some from underneath.
And yea, I am jealous of the seller’s pole building.
We sure were proud of this car. From the folks that brought us mostly oddities, Javelins were the best “in your face” car AMC produced. It’s great someone thought enough of these cars to save it, albeit poorly, still a very nice car. Missing a plug wire, for starters ( pun intended) and while swoopy in design, many will notice typical AMC shortcomings of the era. Switches, door latches, etc, all poor quality. Most engines were oily slugs and all AMC cars used the same parts underneath, with so-so quality. It did clean up nice, but the work is far from over. Great find, tho.
At least by this time, they’d upgraded from the archaic vacuum windshield wipers! Looks to be a beauty! GLWTA! :-)
I built a 1971 one of these a few gears ago, but not Pierre Cardin. I went with a 304 4bbl that I had from another car. I chickened out when the speedo hit 130. The switches were of such “poor quality” that I reused all of them from 1971 and had nary a problem; also reused the dash pad, ac plena, and almost everything else. Aluminum radiator, sanden compressor, new upholstery, etc. A 401 was prohibitively expensive to get and even worse to rebuild. These tend to rust over the back wheels and in pass floorboard, but you can get patch panels, and almost anything else. When done you have one badass car!
I picked up a 68 Mustang fastback and opened the air cleaner to find a nest of baby mice. I put the air cleaner under the car for a day and the mother came and took them all away. They were the only thing alive and moving in that mustang.
I remember my AMX from 1973… It looked the same but could lite em up with the 401v8 under the hood. When I floored it from the light. Had to be careful because it had a posi rearend and wouldn’t stay in it’s own lane. I loved that car!
Why does the color change so drastically from picture to picture?
It is the lighting. Outdoors vs whatever is in the shop, plus the angle light reflects to the camera. Photography issue, not something funny with the car.
I forgot to say above how cool the headliner was in these cars, and that this one appears to be ok!
Has potential but it’s a non-A/C car. I think it will sell for more than its worth.
When I produced the test issue of Legendary American Motors Magazine (still available as a print-on-demand and Kindle editions on Amazon) back in 2016, I featured a friend’s Piere Cardin Javelin that I photographed back in 2006. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.
I forgot to include a link to the story’s opening spread.
https://app.box.com/s/jkahnstgc496j3c6hifsn3rptud4ilor
That’s a very, very shapely ride. Nice. In the late 60s or 70, we had some Rambler wagon or other, that needed work, so my dad took it in and was handed the keys to a Javalin (or maybe it was an AMX) as a loaner. We begged him to buy it – it looked so cool. He did not, alas. A bridge too far on an army officer’s (with 5 kids) salary.
Nice find. Amazing the guy didn’t try to dry the seats before taking the pictures for the ad. These are cloth and easily stained without the proper care. I think a proper detailing on the interiorwould have been in order.
And the seats are one of the highlights of the Pierre Cardin. A large part of what you were paying for was that swoopy early-70’s design.
Bidding is now over $10,000 with five days to go–wow!
Both this site and the auction site need better pictures of the headliner, arguably the best feature of the interior. Nothing else like it on the planet.
And mice… We HATES them! They will destroy a car. What kind of creature pi$$es and sh#$s in it’s own nest? And the acid in that stuff will eat through paint and clean metal. Grrrr!
What a difference some air in the tires and a quick car wash can make! Kudos to the seller. Nice looking AMC.
Cool car nice find when running and driving it’s a real time capsule!!!! Lot more work to do but all the parts are there!!