Cruising down memory lane in the family’s Rambler ragtop
Owner restores classic convertible that used to belong to his mother
People getting into the old-car hobby have a variety of reasons for choosing the kind of vehicle they’re going to buy. Sometimes it’s the car they drove in high school or to university. Occasionally it’s the family vehicle in which they learned to drive. Ross Wylie can tick all those boxes, and all with the same car.
In December of 1966, Wylie’s father came home with a new car for his wife. Most mothers of five would have ended up with a station wagon, or at least a four-door sedan. But Wylie’s mom’s car for the next few years would be a 1967 Rambler Rebel SST convertible. With Rajah Burgundy Metallic paint and a Dusty Rose interior, her ragtop showed very well, although its 232-cubic inch six cylinder engine and three-speed automatic transmission didn’t give it much speed.
“As there were five kids in the family, we all got to use it and learned to drive on it,” Wylie says, adding that because he was the youngest, he watched his siblings move on to cars of their own. “It was left there for me to drive.”
His mother moved on to an AMC Ambassador, and since nobody else was interested in it, Wylie’s dad sold him the Rebel in 1975 — for $1.
The car went through the usual cycle from being new and pampered to used and patched up. Like most convertibles of the time, the Rebel had vinyl seats that got very hot in the summer sun. An upholsterer redid the interior with a velour material that didn’t heat up quite as much.
The car served Wylie through university and he kept it even after it stopped being his daily driver.
“It was always on my mind,” he says. “Wherever I decided to live, I had to find a place to put it.”
By 2005, Wylie realized that his convertible wasn’t just an old car, it was a somewhat rare 40-year old car and it was time to start investing in it.
“It was just a mode of transportation back in the day. It was just nice to have a vehicle to go places. When I was younger, doing the work myself came easily, but those were minor fixes. The bigger challenge was finally having the resources to get the vehicle back to what it looked like when it was brand new. I wish it hadn’t taken so long and that my father was still alive to see it.”
The first step was the interior. Fortunately, when the interior was changed, the material was just put on top of the original vinyl, so the door panels and seats were well-preserved underneath. The engine was rebuilt, which wasn’t too difficult because an evolution of the American Motors six-cylinder engine introduced in 1963 was still used in Jeeps until 2007.
The winter of 2017 saw the biggest job of the Rambler’s restoration, when the body was redone and painted. The rear quarter panels had to be fabricated because there are no new old-stock or even decent surviving body parts to be had for a ’67 Rebel.
The Wylie Rebel is one of 1,686 convertibles made in 1966. American Motors had been watching the new compact and intermediate cars from the Big Three eat into their formerly comfortable small-car niche beginning in the early ’60s. The 1967 Rebel was a replacement for the somewhat humdrum Rambler Classic, and the SST was the top trim level.
With handsome new styling and a number of leading-edge optional features, Rebels were too late to the market to arrest the momentum gained by competing brands, despite the high praise the cars received from the automotive enthusiast press. Just 100,627 Rebels came down the assembly line for 1967, a 20 per cent drop over the ’66 Classics.
Wylie’s convertible has power steering with an impact-absorbing steering column, and power brakes with discs, as opposed to drums, on the front. Front and rear lap belts were standard. The car has a power top and a glass, rather than plastic, rear window.
It is always a temptation, when restoring a car, to make it better than it was originally. Wylie managed to restrain himself from installing a V-8 engine.
“I know it came with larger engines, but with the size of the vehicle, it didn’t make sense. I like the fact that it’s a six. It gets from point A to point B.”
This isn’t to say he’s always happy with the 155-horsepower, two-barrel carburetor engine.
“It’s a thorn in my side over the last number of years. There’s always a hesitation when you hit the gas pedal. I actually had the thing rebuilt this summer and it still has issues.”
But he gets a lot of pleasure out of taking his Rambler to show and shines. He goes to about 15 in a normal summer and makes his summer plans around the larger shows.
“The unfortunate thing is that I go to show and shines and I’m stuck in the muscle car area,” he says with a laugh. “It’s well-received. A lot of people walk by and remember that their family had an AMC car.”