Did you or your family own a car from a company that doesn't exist anymore?

[Spike89]

79. We had a DKW (650 cc 2 stroke if I recall) and my 1st car was a Javelin

The DKW was cute enough, but pretty spartan inside and it smoked like crazy in the morning. I do think my Dad may have run it rich--you had to mix in 2 stroke oil--but it was cheap and he finally got a mammoth Ford LTD station wagon to replace it.

My 1970 Javelin is still the favorite car I've owned. It looked great, ran great, and was a joy to drive. The 360 engine was a pain to work on though--I blew a head gasket and discovered that not only had AMC put about twice the number of bolts onto each head as common, the specs called for each to be tightened to 125-130 pounds (most cars of the era called for about 80 foot pounds of torque)--I busted 3 "unbreakable" (2 snap-on and 1 craftsman) sockets trying to get the heads correctly tightened down.

AMC just didn't quite have the engineering chops needed to compete in the pny car era--the Javelin had the looks and the raw performance, but rather than really fix a problem, they just added bolts and hoped things would hold together.