Interested in a AMC Hornet

Interested in a AMC Hornet. I'm not sure of what year yet. I'm mostly
worried about the repair costs and the availability of the parts.
Please help. Thanks.

> Interested in a AMC Hornet. I'm not sure of what year yet. I'm mostly
> worried about the repair costs and the availability of the parts.

Not bad, I'm thinking.

Though not something you can find three of in every junkyard, it was
a fairly popular car. What's more, a lot of its parts were, or were
no worse than kissing cousins of, the same things used in contemporary
Jeeps, and are pretty honest stuff. A close descendant stayed around
for many years under the "Concord" badge (and in AWD guise, the Eagle
-- which you can think of as a technology proof of principle for the
downsized unibody Cherokee, so in a cockeyed sort of way your
prospective little car is a lineal ancestor of the whole SUV fad!).

Earlier is better, I'm thinking -- as the 70s and their smog and gas-
mileage standards wore on, these (like many other American cars of
the day) were ever more strangled by what a friend of mine dubbed the
"heart-lung machine" approach to engine controls. Didn't do
horsepower any good either.

You'll definitely want to explore
http://www.amxfiles.com/resource/index.html
....preferably before purchase, so as to acquaint yourself with any
model-specific gotchas in addition to the generic concerns of looking
for a resto or driver candidate.

Best of luck,
--Joe