For 1979, the Spirit took the place of the Gremlin. A sedan version was nearly identical to the Gremlin, but with a more conventional rear side window design. The new liftback Spirit was one of the best looking cars to emerge from AMC in its later years. The Spirit line was dropped after 1983. Interestingly, after Chrysler acquired AMC it applied both the Concord and Spirit names to its own cars.
An “AMX” version of the Spirit liftback was offered for 1979 and ‘80. It featured special trim items, performance suspension, and white-letter tires, but speed was not its forte: the biggest powerplant on the 1979 AMX was a 304 V-8 capable of reaching 60 mph in a whopping 13.4 seconds. For 1980, the only engine was the 258 in-line six. Still, it’s the last car to wear the “AMX” name, and it’s understandably popular with AMC collectors.
Click on the photo of the Spirit race car at left to see a series of “pictures from the late 70’s of Irv Hoerr and his team when they were racing AMC Spirits,” sent by Dennis Kupferschmid. “This series of photos were taken at Road America, shortly after a shop tour of the Hoerr racing facility in Peoria, IL, with the local AMO chapter. Some of the modifications Irv described to us were very labor intensive and meticulous!”
The 4-wheel-drive Eagle, introduced in 1980, was the last true AMC car; its production run ended on December 15, 1987. Based on the Concord platform, the Eagle featured the first full-time 4WD system ever offered on a passenger car in the U.S. (the Subaru wagon had a part-time system). The transfer case was a British design built for AMC by Chrysler. The car rode high off the ground to accommodate the revised drivetrain layout. Instead of creating new sheet metal stampings, AMC used plastic filler panels to mask the gap between the tires and wheelwells. Most Eagles were 4-door wagons, but 4-door sedans were produced 1980-87 and 2-door sedans were made 1980-83.