So Many Eagles In Colorado, But Not All Can Fend Off The Subaru Hordes
Yes, there’s a place where you’ll see AMC Eagles on a regular basis; there are several parked on the street in my Denver neighborhood, and you see even more when you go into the mountains. Even the ahead-of-its-time Eagle can’t last forever, however, and this one has begun its journey back to the steel mill.
It took Subaru quite a while— say, well into the 1990s— to build a four-wheel-drive (no, I’m not going to get into the AWD-versus-4WD terminology debate, which is about as much fun as the “tomato: fruit or vegetable?” debate) car that didn’t clatter off the road in shuddering paroxysms of mechanical suckitude within a year or two after manufacture, but once they got it right, they got it right (disclosure: I own— or, more accurately, married into— a late-model Outback). That means that the devoted Colorado Eagle owner, confronted with a cascade of 30-year-old-car headaches and truck-ish ride, is often tempted to give up on the ol’ AMC and give in to the Subaru peer pressure.
I may have to go the other direction, though; the Outback is a helluva competent machine, but it just hasn’t won my heart. I’ve been eyeballing Eagles, so it’s good to see that used parts won’t be terribly difficult to find.
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Some of my Jeep SJ ( Grand Wagoneer) buddies down around Mesa Verde have an up graded Eagle with a fuelie 4.0, a 727 Tourqueflite tranny with a NP 229 transfer case. I am sooo jealous. In stock form Eagles made decent beach buggies. Prolly because the weight was distribut4d well front and rear like the wags are
One of my brothers-in-law had one , bought new, with the same copper two-tone but a whiter colored body. He got it when they briefly moved up to th snow belt. It also had a stick shift but I don't remember ever seeing another one with a stick. It was also fairly stripped and didn't have A.C., possibly why he sold it after they moved back to Texas but as I recall he really liked it.I always preferred the kooky looking coupe version which had a rather peculiar looking vinyl top.Eagles were always rare here in Texas but when I lived in Denver in the eighties saw quite a few.