The Forgotten AMC Cop Car LAPD Instructors Said Outran Every Plymouth
Back when V8s ran on leaded fuel, it seemed like every sedan had a powerhouse under the hood, including police vehicles. In 1970, 85% of police cars in the U.S. wore a Dodge or Plymouth badge on the hood. Chrysler had a majority share of supplying Johnny Law with V8s to catch speeding muscle cars.
Yet in 1972, an automaker most people overlook to this day decided to offer its own V8 police interceptor. This big block V8 was developed too late to see the peak of the horsepower wars but arrived in time to grab the attention of the Los Angeles Police Department and Hollywood.
AMC 401ci V8, The Underdog
American Motors Corporation (AMC) developed a new V8 for 1971. It needed some serious firepower to compete against the Big Three’s wide array of big-block V8s like 440s, 454s, 455s, and 429s that were running amok on the street and track. AMC responded by taking a 390 V8 and increasing its displacement to 401 cubic inches. This would be the largest V8 in AMC’s history. The 401 V8 used higher compression, better flowing “dog-legged” cylinder heads, and a four-barrel carburetor to make healthy lumps of power and torque, while breathing easy through a dual exhaust system.
The power of AMC’s big-block 401ci V8 in 1971 was rated at 330 horsepower and 429 lb-ft of torque. Now that AMC had the muscle, the engine needed to be fitted into a car and shipped off to dealerships. The vehicles AMC chose to equip with its new muscular V8 were the freshly redesigned second-generation 1971 AMC Javelin AMX and the modest four-door Matador.
The Matador received its own high-performance upgrade called “The Machine Go Package,” which offered heavy-duty suspension and distinctive paint graphics. Sadly, fewer than 70 examples were built, making it one of the rarest AMC models and muscle cars of the era.
Thankfully, the Matador would get a second chance to prove itself on the streets. Not as a muscle car, but as a car built to chase them down.
Beating Plymouth at Their Own Game, The Legend Proven by Jerry Bush
In 1972, AMC began offering the Matador sedan as an option for law-enforcement fleet buyers. By this time, the method for measuring horsepower had changed, so the previous year’s 330 hp rating had dropped to 255 hp for the 401 V8. Nevertheless, a 1972 Matador Enforcer armed with a TorqueFlite 727 automatic transmission, heavy-duty suspension, upgraded gear ratios, and a more robust cooling system allowed the Matador police package to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in under 7 seconds and reach speeds of over 120 mph.
The car performed so well that it caught the attention of Los Angeles Police Department driving instructor Jerry Bush. In an interview decades later, Bush recalled the car’s surprisingly impressive performance.
“At the time, American Motors didn’t have that great a reputation, but the Matador was an extremely good police car,” Bush continued, praising the car for its performance, which managed to outclass the popular Plymouth Satellite from Chrysler. “It was fast, it had superior brakes to the Plymouths, and it handled pretty well.”
Jerry Bush single-handedly created a legend for the Matador Enforcer that only members of the LAPD and Hollywood stunt drivers would go on to experience firsthand.
The AMC Matador Joins the LAPD and Stars in Adam-12
Jerry Bush managed to convince the Motor Transport Division to order 18 new AMC Matador police cars to use in training officers on how to handle them before going on duty. The LAPD would go on to order and use the Matador Enforcer in their fleet from 1972 through 1974 before AMC stopped offering the 401ci V8 police package in 1975.
These cars also appeared in the popular TV series Adam-12, a police procedural crime drama set in Los Angeles, California. The show followed two LAPD officers, played by Martin Milner and Kent McCord, solving various crimes around the city while on patrol. It was the equivalent of today’s popular police TV dramas like The Rookie and S.W.A.T. The show ran for seven seasons, from 1968 to 1975. But more importantly, in 1972, the show’s production team cast the AMC Matador as the police cruiser for the main characters, officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed. It would keep this role on the silver screen through the rest of the series.
The thing about ex-police cars is that they are often ideal candidates to be used as cannon fodder in movies and TV shows. Part of the reason the AMC Matador police car isn’t a common sight at car shows and collector car auctions is that people of a certain age grew up watching them get crashed and smashed on TV shows like CHiPs and The A-Team, or blown up in movies like Ron Howard’s Grand Theft Auto (1977). Funny how things change. Today, the majority of modern police vehicles aren’t “cop cars” at all. Most are based on an SUV like the Ford Explorer, Dodge Durango, or Chevrolet Tahoe.
AMC Matador is The GOAT at Being Underrated
If you have a soft spot for the underdog, then you have to love AMC. This was the automaker that lived in the shadow of Detroit’s Big Three. It was ultimately bought and swallowed by Chrysler in 1987, but it didn’t go quietly into the night. If you know AMC, then you know its long history of being underrated, overlooked, underestimated, and catching people by surprise by exceeding results. Whether it was winning the Trans-Am Series Manufacturers’ Championship in 1971 with no prior motorsport experience or creating the first 4×4 sports utility wagon before Subaru did.
Today, car collectors drool over a Dodge Monaco 440 or Plymouth Fury ex-police car from the 1970s. But most will probably overlook the Matador and its law-enforcing 401 V8. Even among AMC loyalists, the Matador would struggle to crack the top five, with models like the Gremlin, Javelin AMX, Rambler, Eagle, or Pacer coming to mind before this humble sedan.
The tragedy of overlooked or underrated cars is that people forget to preserve them. Finding police cars from the 1970s is already a difficult task, as many ended up smashed, wrecked, and scrapped. It’s probably easier to find an original 1970s Hemi muscle car tucked away in a barn than it is to find a 401 V8 AMC Matador. As a civilian car, the Matador was a mundane four-door sedan that faded into the background, but a big-block V8 and black-and-white livery turned it into a muscle car interceptor that beat Plymouth at its own game.
Source: FOP Connect, AMC
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