There aren’t many certainties in life, but Jim Schwartz of Hudson, Wis., can be pretty sure of one thing: When he takes his bright red 1974 AMC Matador X out of his garage, somebody is going to talk to him.
The conversation might not always be flattering, but the affable Schwartz is almost always entertained. He knows he’s got a bit of an oddball car that is pretty much guaranteed to get some kind of reaction wherever it goes — and that’s the way Schwartz likes it.
“The current Matador is probably roughly AMC No. 20 for me,” he says with a laugh. “That’s in 21 years of driving. I’ve owned a lot of them and they say you have to be a little bit off to be an AMC guy, and I think with the Matador Coupe you have to be even a little more off. Even in AMC circles, the Matador Coupe is a love-it-or-hate-it car.
“I’ve got some AMC friends that say they don’t get the Matador Coupe. They say, ‘Those things are ugly!’ and these are people that love the Pacer and the Gremlin! It’s a bit of an oddity, but I guess that’s why I’m drawn to it.”
For Schwartz, landing the Matador was a case of persistence paying off. He had been on the trail of a nice, original Matador X for quite a while when he spotted his current car in 1999 for sale in Bismarck, N.D. Before he could get there to buy it, however, the car was snapped up by a one of Schwartz’s AMC friends who lived in Dundas, Minn. “We didn’t know we were both interested, and he kind of bought it out from under me,” Schwartz recalled. “I was going to go look at it on Saturday and on that Thursday night I talked to the seller. Then on Friday night he said don’t come out, somebody just bought it … I told [the new owner] if you ever sell it you better contact me first, and almost two years ago he e-mailed me and told me he was going to sell it, so that’s when I got it.”
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