Ever wanted to make your loudmouth mother-in-law sit in the trunk? Back in 1966, AMC was reading your mind and came up with the Vignale AMX concept, complete with a ‘Ramble Seat’ – a not-so-clever play on the rumble seat to replicate the trunk-mounted fold-up rear seat. Sure, it was a pain in the ass to get into, took up all possible trunk space, would plaster passengers with motor flies, but the real prize was guaranteed death in a rear-end collision! Later prototypes included a janky fold-up windscreen, so that theoretically would have kept the bugs out of mom’s teeth, but alas, this AMC fever dream never came to fruition. Well, not as a factory production model…
In the 1960s, AMC needed a big win with American customers who largely favored cars from the Big Three: GM, Chrysler, and Ford. To get the public more interested in its cars, it decided to think both outside the box and outside the country and hired Vignale, the Turin, Italy-based design firm. What it came up with debuted at the 1966 New York Auto Show, the Vignale AMX. One look at the very pretty coupe, and it’s easy to see why it never went into production. Instead of a normal trunk, the Vignale concept’s trunk lid flipped the other way and turned the rear end into two seats, which was AMC’s take on the rumble seat, called a “Ramble Seat.” Naturally, such a thing wasn’t deemed safe enough to mass manufacture. So, when it came time to finally build the AMX, it had no such Ramble Seat… read more >
