Dec - 2005

Joie Vaughan sold her Scrambler - Russell after 19 years
to Kevin McGown in Dallas Texas

I had owned my SC/Rambler for almost 20 years by this time, but as many long time owners will tell you, it was a lonely 20 years, these cars just weren't popular like they are today. To say that I stuck up for the underdog was a mild understatement. Although I now look forward to my 69 Rogue street car, I will never forget the experience of owning my Scrambler and driving it, I have never driven such an incredible muscle car and those of you already smiling know exactly what I mean! Kevin Mc Gown in Dallas Texas now owners this piece of AMC history that sparked the creation of the 1512 HURST SC/Rambler Registry.

2004

Joie Vaughan, Founder of the official

Established in 2004, After 25 years my enthusiasm for these cars had not diminished and I had long dreamed off building a registry, but not just any registry, a community of people that can work togeather for the good of each other and share the experiance and pure enjoyment of owning and driving a rare muscle car like the HURST SC/Rambler. The registry exsists today becasue of my strong detication to AMC and the good times and memories I will charish forever with the people I have got to know becasue of this car.

2000
Time to retire this 360 engine

By this timeI had put over 110,000 miles on this car as a daily driver. Un beknowing to me, this would be the last time I ever got to drive my Scrambler! :(

This picture was taken the day I retired my trick 360 motor from the line of duty! This perticular engine had served 86,000 miles of my daily performance addiction.

[ Click here or on image to read more about this motor ]

2000
Mission Raceway Park "Olds Time Drags"

July 9, 2000

1ST Place This was another one of my favorite car shows to attend. They had a class for AMC and no Fords or Chevrolet allowed and they had nice door prizes!

The year 2000 was the year I retired my Scrambler, I had attended this show now for 4 years in a row and brought home first place for as many years. This was especially cool for me considering the amount of mileage I had put on the car by this time as it had always been my daily driver and now in line for a second restoration.

July 2000
Still my daily driver

Did I mention this was my daily driver? Yup it was! My parts girl Wendy at Wakefield Sperling, helped me load parts in and out of the trunk as needed. This was a typical trip to the parts store!

1999

Mission Raceway Park Friday night Street Legal's My very first 1/4 mile pass

1999
Langley Good Times Cruse Car Show

1999
" Head Over Wheels"

Featured in Television series on WTN The publisher of the Street & Strip magazine, was also the advertising director for the Mission race track at that time. So when Credo Productions contacted him about doing a tv series about women in motor sports, I found myself right in the middle of stardom, or at least that's how it felt.

The TV series HEAD OVER WHEELS on WTN, aired The following season, I was featured on 1 of the episodes for my mechanical ability's. I was very proud of my scrambler, and my ability's, but mostly it felt great that I had become an inspiration to other women.

July 11 1999
Mopar Madness

1999
Shane turns 16 and gets his drivers licence, yikes!

My Son Shane had been helping Mom on this car for over 10 years by this time and he knew he would be able to drive it when he turned 16 and he had fully expected to cash in on all that banked hard labor.

In the top picture I had painted the red down the side during the week while he was at school and he only discovered it when he took off the car cover to bring the car around front of the shop on a friday night.

Shane was a very capable driver but on this day when he got his learners, well... I had to wait till the end of the day before I could let him drive because one of us was too nervous. So after a long day in at the shop I threw him the keys, and he got to drive home. Over the next few weeks he more often found himself too tired to drive and would say " No thanks Mom, it's too much like work!" He was a very good driver and it was obvious that he was going to be a good driver. I took full advantage of being a passenger and asked him to drive most of the time. Once we had a passenger and I got to ride in the back seat for the first time. Did you know the cars sounds different from the back seat

Over the next month he was pretty used to driving, he worked at the drag strip at that time and was getting that racing bug into his system. One day on in the perfect spot for it, I encouraged him put his foot into it, he was calmly cruising about 25 mph on a nice wide road, he was in second gear, I told him to bring the rpm up to 3000 ( so he wouldn't break the tires loose) then I said ok now ...open the 4 barrels and shift when it hits 6000, well... he almost shit himself , he got so freaked that he forget to shift, he backed off the throttle and almost put both of us through the front windshield,. I tried not to laugh but It was pretty funny. Well the cool thing is how many kids can say they learned how to drive a hi performance 4 speed HURST SC/Rambler SC/Rambler when they were 16.

April 1998
Street & Strip Motorsports Magazine

[read as text article]

Un be knowing to me, and I didn't find out until the magazine was published, that I would be featured on the cover. This was a high quality magazine that had a distribution of about 10,000 to our local business & hotrodders. Now everyone knew who I was and I was after all these years I was finally getting attention at all the car shows.

I had a modest restoration business I called Supercar, Extreme Glass beading, specializing in aluminum profiling. I took this process to a science and created works of art out of other wise discarded intake manifolds and other aluminum and stainless items. I had a nitch in the market, there was no-one else that could produce this type of finish, so to take full advantage of the advertising. I took my Scrambler to every car show and trade display known to me with in my driving distance. I proudly displayed the car along with the display for my business. Even though I had always used this car as an example of my restoration abilities, my newly painted red-white & blue scrambler now featured in this magazine had become my company's recognized icon over night. It was clear that the car was going to attract a lot of attention in it's original colors.

July 12 1998
Mopar Madness

1997
Outstanding factory Muscle Car

Vancouver Camaro Club of BC Super Car Cruise-in 97

July 13 1997
Mopar Madness

1997
A&W Drive-in Red's Classic Theatre

1996
Insurance vehicle replacement appraisal

I had been driving this car for about 8 years now with no carpets and very poor seats. No door panels or anything else. It had a head liner but was in very poor condition. The original material was still on the back seat , but was not salvageable.

I found some door panels in a wrecking yard from a 68 American but they were white, So I died those black. I had no luck finding the correct material for the seats, so I decided to just go with black vinyl and make up my own pattern. My friend Pauline was great at upholstery, and this suited me just fine , because then only girls had worked on this car! I found a stainless steering wheel out of a 1981 Jeep pick up, and was lucky enough to be able to order a carpet kit from Canadian Mustang. I painted the headliner and the package try satin black, (this really helped with the visibility out the rear view on sunny days! I had saved up all the best chrome trim I had from all the fancy Rouges I had parted out and put it all on my Scrambler. When all was said and done, the car looked spectacular.

The same summer I decided to get the car painted. In plain white it fooled all the kids, nobody new what it was. I had put 71 AMX rally wheels on the car, glass beaded & repainted and with no beauty rings, It looked very bossy! I finally felt like I had a show car!

All these Pictures were taken Oct/96 by an Insurance appraisal rep. A necessary document. Here in you can get collector plates depicting it's value as a collector car and cheap insurance, but it severely restricts the use of the car. This was not an option for me. I licensed Russell as a daily driver and after spending so much on this restoration, I had to worry about how much this car was worth to the insurance company, my concern was, what if the car got stolen or crashed. What was the insurance going to pay for it. So I hired an ICBC rep to come out appraise the car for this purpose. Because all my slight modifications were done with completely factory parts, I had not compromised the value. In 1996, and with-out the proper A Scheme paint colors, this car was appraised at $20,000 and would have been more had it been red/white & blue!

1991
Daily driver now 3 yrs, 1/2 hr touch up needed! Yeah right!

This part of the restoration was completed in just under 2 months. And this stage of things came about just because now that the engine compartment looked so good, the rest of the car wasn't measuring up. I pulled my Scrambler in the shop and decided to touch a few spots on a lazy thursday afternoon, and started to blow off the car with the air hose, This was going to be a quick 1/2 hr job with a spray bomb of etch primer, well... the factory paint was flaking off like snow, so I hung the licence plate on the wall and started sanding that night. By Monday I had the entire car sanded down to bare metal, removed the bumpers, I had pulled out the motor, almost all the glass, all the interior, dash and the wiring harness and the exhaust system. "What was I thinking?"

My friends Larry & Pauline came by on a monday evening and wondered why I wasn't down at the A&W all weekend. Larry said to me with his hands in the air, "JOIE, what have you done?... It's licensed isn't it?" That's when I realized that lego's don't go back together as fast as they come apart. I had to borrow my moms car for the next 2 months.

You see, the problem was..It was time to pull the 390 out anyway. It was at this point that my friend Daryl said well, you know, you have enough parts just laying around the shop, you could probably put something together. So I did, I assembled 360 ci with all the tricks I could get away with, using mostly used engine parts and it was never balanced. Just under 2 months later and the car was ready to have the licence plate put back on, however, Now I didn't want to use the original windshield because it was milky in the corners, and I had no exhaust. So... Yes I drove this car down town about 5 miles with no windshield and open headers in the middle of the afternoon (what a rush). The glass shop and the muffler shop were only blocks apart. At one point I was followed by a police officer, but he let me go when he seen me turn into the muffler shop. Lucky girl! I thought I was gonna get a ticket for sure. I don't know if he noticed that it had no windshield.

This 360 turned out to be the best engine I ever had!, I ran it for 5 years then I pulled it out and rebuilt it while I was going to school and working at Diamond engines. The rebuilt version was just a replica of the experimental version, but at least I felt safe taking it over 7500 rpm. And I did that all the time, because it was loud inside the car. Oh did I mention that all this time I had no carpets in the car, just a bare white metal floor.

1990
QUICK WEEKEND DETAILING - NOT

In about 1990, I had the car for going on 3 years now, and I needed to do something with it. All my GTO's were very clean, and this rambler although rust free, was very shabby looking. With a car show coming up, I decided to do something with the engine compartment. I was using the car to drive back and forth to work all week, so I had to start on a friday night and be finished in time to get to work on monday. ok...

Friday night, I got the motor out , removed the wiring harness, and the breaklines. I did my first clean up with oven cleaner. Now you could see red over spray from the factory A scheme paint. Let it dry overnight.

Sat, morning I did a real good job of sanding and prepping, then believe it or not, I went and bought 4 spray bombs of Plasti-kote bright white enamel, and went at it. Looks great, while it dry's lets get started on the motor it was weeping water from the head gaskets, so I took it further apart, and installed some head studs. I also took this opportunity to change the cam. That turned out to be a bad idea. (but we won't go there right now) At the time, there was an AMC dealership just down the road and you could still buy the factory engine paint in those 1/2 size spray bombs. 4 of them later and the 390 was LOOKING GOOD!

Sunday morning. All is ready and everything goes in without a hitch, white headers and all. By dinner time it was ready to drive. We fired it up and were ready to break in the new cam. With-in minutes of it was missing real bad and had trouble holding a high idle. This was not a good thing, then it got real hot real fast, we shut if off and let it cool down. We came back 1/2 hour later to find the color of the new oil to resemble silver metallic paint. Let's just say that Joie has to take a different car to work monday morning.

Aug 12 1989
My very first trophy Under-construction

I had just put in a new motor when I went to this show in Olympia WA. It was about a 5 hour drive each way for me concerned all the way as I watched the oil pressure gauge on my motor that had less than 500 miles on it. It was a 2 day show but I just drove down for the day I was there for a complimentary breakfast and left early around 4 pm for the long drive back. Ordinarily I wouldn't have risked my new engine, but I was hoping to see that Dick Teauges AMX 3, unfortunately he never made it to that show. The show was great with lots of awesome cars, I wasn't used to seeing so many AMC cars being from Canada, so it was worth the trip anyway. Then to my surprise this wall plaque showed up in the mail a few weeks later. We posed for this picture, I was not in the same class as these cars.

There were 2 other real Scramblers there, I'm the one in the middle, the one on my left belonged to a fellow named Bruce from Oregon, and to my right was Joe Buffington's car from Washington. Joe is a good fabricator and body man. He sold his car a few later to his boss, and then it was his job to restore it. I'll bet that never happens to often. Ouch that had to be painful for poor Joe.

1988
Super Cars West Car Show

1st yr big car show , Joe & Joie turn heads at a Supercar West

July 5 1987
First day home in Canada with my Scrambler! Purchased from Russell Nida out of Grangeville ID

I smile as I remember the day after I got the Scrambler home, that was July 5, 1987. Now we have to go back a week or so prior to that day to appreciate this story. I had a cool 69 GTO race car project and an early, rare Corvette 427 Big Block engine and hoped to go racing for the first time in my life. The engine was all machined up and I was ready to assemble it… all the goodies, spared no expense. This was a plain Jane GTO and I had been there and done that with all the Judge stuff and was quickly growing tired of breaking & blowing up parts every time I drove it, so I decided to go big block… it was what all the kids wanted!. Even my son Shane who was only 4 years old at the time.

The turn in my preference happened when, by total luck, I actually had found one of these rare SC/Ramblers I had been looking for… for over 6 years. Now, remember I spared no expense on the 427 Big Block , so to say I was broke was an understatement. But another good friend of Randy's, Dale, who was also a partially converted AMC, had offered to lend me the money to buy the Scrambler if I used the Big Block for collateral. So you know what happened next, a trip to Idaho and a Rambler SC/Rambler was coming home. We arrived home with this little gem at about 2 am and left the car parked on the front lawn for the night. I didn't get much sleep staring out the window at this Rambler that I had been dreaming about building for 6 years now and of course realizing we have a problem… hum, a one car garage and a race car project in the said garage… and a Rambler Scrambler parked on the front lawn. Heck, that will never do… I called up my good friend Gordie for help...”Hey, Gordie, dude, can you come and help push the GTO out of the garage?”. Silly Gordie, thinking we were about to install a Big Block in the GOAT said, “OH, GOODY, GOODY! I'll be right over.” Well, if you could have seen his face when he got there… it was priceless! I wish I had taken a picture… the picture would have said a thousand words (nasty words, that is). He was pissed. I believe he uttered something like "Have you completely lost your freaking mind...it's a Rambler… NO! NO! NO!" He just stood there with his arms folded and refused to help me push the GTO out of the garage. I think the next thing he said was “you will come to your senses, girl...this is the stupidest thing you have ever done! and how much did you pay for this thing? I didn't have the heart to tell him that the big block would be for sale now.

So, disappointed with Gordie, I called my old friend, Tim Wrightman. Well, I got a different reaction this time. Tim wasn't a big fan of “belly button” cars, so to him, this was the coolest thing I had ever done and yes, he gladly helped me push the GTO out on to the front lawn. Actually, I think he even put the for sale sign in the window of the GTO, like minutes after Gordie left (dissapointed to say the least and he was not going to be a part of this “madness”). Now as for my friend Rick Purser, his only question was...”Is it a stick car?”... “Yep.”… “Right on… no sissy cars here!”. Rick taught me everything I knew about breaking parts and how to walk to a phone to call a tow truck (this was long before cell phones). Rick broke darn near everything he drove! If we really wanted to go somewhere important, I had insist on driving. The possability of me letting any of them drive this car was slim to NONE!