This AMC Gremlin Could Beat 454 Corvettes Through The Quarter Mile

The year is 1972. You go to your Chevy dealer and shovel over $6,000 or so for a Corvette with the hottest engine available: The LS5 454 big block. Sure, it's down to 270 horsepower, 31 less than a modern Toyota Camry V6. However, with 390 pound-feet of torque and a curb weight of around 3,500 pounds, the Chevy big block rat motor 'Vette can still haul through quarters in the low 14s. 

You come to a stoplight next to an AMC Gremlin with a surprisingly choppy idle. When the light turns green, that Gremlin takes off in a cloud of tire smoke, and you can only watch its taillights disappear. That wasn't an ordinary Gremlin. That was an AMC Gremlin 401-XR from Randall AMC, and unless you had the cash for a Baldwin Motion Phase III Chevy, that puny economy-hatchback was about the quickest car you could buy in '72. Serendipity, fate, and/or great fortune allowed for the unique circumstances that permitted a 401-cubic-inch V8 to be IKEA-ed into the engine bay of the Gremlin. 

First, all of AMC's Gen-II V8s used the same block with varying bores and strokes. With a 4.75-inch bore center spacing, there was reasonable room to grow. So, if a car could fit the 290 version of the V8, it could also fit the 401. Second, AMC based the Gremlin on the larger Hornet, which already had an engine bay large enough for the V8. Third, AMC started putting 304 V8s in the Gremlin X for the 1972 model year, so the V8 engine mounts were already there. Fourth and most important, Mesa, Arizona's Randall AMC was full of gearheads who wanted to keep the muscle-car era swinging. And they did it!

From 1963 until 1982, Corvettes had a tight-turn-friendly 98-inch wheelbase. Heck, the C4 Corvette (1984 to 1996) went down to 96.2 inches. We say this to help you understand just how small the Gremlin really is, as it somehow could be optioned with a rear seat, yet also had a wheelbase of just 96 inches. That 3,500-pound '72 Corvette is an F-250 Super Duty compared to the 2,800-pound Gremlin 401-XR. So, when Randall AMC put 401s with 255 hp and 345 pound-feet of torque in these slot-car-sized hatchbacks, with AMC's blessing no less, the resulting power-to-weight ratio was akin to putting an Allison V12 aircraft engine in a Smart ForTwo. 

Now, '72 Corvettes could also come with the lighter 255-hp LT-1 solid lifter 350, but it was only packing 280 pound-feet of torque and wasn't as quick through the quarter as the 454 LS5 'Vette, much less a 401-XR. It could certainly handle, though, and would easily zing past the Gremlin when the road got twisty. But that wasn't the point of the 401-XR. 

Buyers of a 401-XR could rip mid-13-second quarter miles with no changes, handily keeping up with the finest from the height of peak American muscle excess on the straights. Of course, leaving the 401 bone stock was not the gentleman's way of humiliating the Big Three's finest smog-era machines. Car Craft magazine did some light modification to a 401-XR, giving it a set of headers and a hotter cam, as well as readjusting the ignition timing. That was good enough for a 12.22-second quarter mile. Keep in mind, this is still with the engine's stock 8.5:1 low-octane-friendly compression ratio. 

Randall AMC made 21 Gremlin 401-XRs between 1972 and 1974. Out of the 671,475 Gremlins AMC produced from 1970 to 1978, 401-XRs comprise only 0.00003127%. No, 401-XRs weren't prohibitively expensive or anything, and they started at a shockingly cheap $2,995 ($23,272 today). Compare that to the yellow 1970 Corvette Phase III GT that Baldwin Motion sold new for $13,000 (almost $109,000 today). It's just that the Gremlin was an economy car first and foremost, and it took specific kinds of buyers who wanted an econo-box that could win drag races, but drag race they could:

Just as Baldwin Motion guaranteed your $10,000+ Phase III Corvette could run 11.5-second quarters, Randall would look you in the eye and tell you your sub-$3,000 Gremlin 401-XR was going to run a 13.9 right off the showroom floor. And the Randalls would probably applaud as you did so.

Unfortunately, identifying bona fide Randall AMC Gremlin 401-XRs isn't an easy task. No two were exactly alike, and these days, there are plenty of replicas to muddy the waters even further. Mike Randall and his sons, Skip and Grant, just wanted to make fast AMCs for people who liked fast AMCs. They ordered 30 401 V8s at a cost of $389 per unit and put them in Gremlins, as people paid them to do just that.

Now, if your Gremlin 401-XR has a 727 Torqueflite automatic (which Randall recommended since it could easily handle 426 Hemi levels of torque) and you want to know if it's legit, ask Mike Randall. He simply pounded on the Gremlin's firewall to make the transmission fit, and he says he can quickly identify his hasty craftsmanship.