Feature car backstory: the KUDL Machine

Photos courtesy Tom Guarr.

In researching the stories we publish in our print magazines, we often uncover fascinating tales associated with the origins of a particular car’s history or the path that led its owner to become so enamored with a certain model above all others.

It happened again recently when we were assembling the Buyer’s Guide for the May issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines. The subject was the AMC Rebel Machine that the independent manufacturer offered for the 1970 model year, best known for its wild red, white, and blue paint scheme. We’d been looking for a good one to illustrate a guide for some time when freelance contributor Barry Kluczyk suggested the example owned by Tom Guarr.

In that story, Tom briefly mentions that the featured Machine is one of six that he currently owns, but we didn’t get to hear much more about his collection in the print story.

So when Kluczyk, who authored the piece, emailed us after the story went to the printer with a vintage photo of a Rebel Machine with radio station call letters on the door, we were intrigued. Turns out, the car shown in the black-and-white image is not the same one that we featured, though it is one of the six in Tom’s stable. So what was the deal with the call letters?

“The local news radio station in my home town of Merriam, Kansas, was using that Rebel Machine as one of its reporter vehicles,” Tom told us. “My older brother had noticed it sitting in the lot at the station with expired tags some time in 1973; the next day after school, I nearly broke the door down to ask them whether it was for sale.”

Tom went on to explain that even though it had damaged fenders, a rough interior and a locked-up engine, he wanted it bad. Still, it took about six months of paper chasing with the radio station to make the deal. In the end, he took possession on his 16th birthday, buying The Machine for $150. “I figured it was worth it since it had new tires,” said Tom with a chuckle.

The first order of business, after getting it home, was getting it running. Tom and his father performed what he refers to as, “the world’s cheapest rebuild,” on the 390, describing the process as a basic re-ring with new bearings and an “ultra-cheap” valve job. “I cut corners every way I could.”

In spite of that, Tom reports that the Machine ran great, borne out by the fact that he used it in that condition through the rest of high school, then on to college and even grad school, taking the car from Kansas to upstate New York, then California, and finally to his first job in Kentucky. One of the images he shared shows The Machine during his move to Rochester, New York, with his motorcycle tagging along on what he referred to as a “homemade towing apparatus.”

“I put about 90,000 miles on that rebuild, and stopped driving the car regularly in about 1989,” Tom said, explaining that he then switched over to his next Machine, which he’d bought for $50 while in grad school. He still has that one, too.

For now, Tom’s first Machine is stored, awaiting restoration. The call letters were removed after about six months when the radio station’s lawyers sent Tom a letter strongly suggesting that he remove them. However, he held onto the placard he’d found inside, alerting law enforcement officers that the operator of the Machine was a “qualified member of the news media,” and should be treated with appropriate professional courtesy. It was signed by then Kansas City chief of police, Clarence Kelley, who later served as the director of the FBI.

AMC fans take note: This one is a four-speed, and the particularly keen-eyed will note the “Up With The Rebel Machine” AMC promotional decals in each of the rear quarter windows.

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