American Time Capsule: Abandoned Dealership Collier Motors AMC Has 200+ Classic Cars! (FULL TOUR)

You see the sign here? That's been here since I was a little boy. This is open? Yeah. When I was 13 years old, my daddy took this car in on trade. This was a drag racing car here. It's a '55 Hemi DeSoto two-door hardtop. cars are in here? There's over 200. This got a tree growing up between the grill and the bumper. Wow. There's a bunch of those oddities out here. This was my dad's personal car in the '70s. Daddy said, "You either you don't want that car. It's It's too fast for you." We are on the way to Pikeville, North Carolina right now to check out Collier Motors, known among the internet as the last remaining AMC dealership. I don't know what the what the full backstory is. We're going to figure that out, but all we know is it's an AMC dealership. All the signs are still there. It was abandoned for a long time, but still owned by the family, and they have, from what I've read, a couple hundred cars in their lot that have been there for 30 years or something. We're going to check it all out and get the story from the owner. So, let's go find this place. He said it was right across from the AutoZone. Oh, man. I see a car right there. I couldn't even tell you what that is. I'm not really familiar with all the AMC models, but Oh my god. This is like the coolest thing ever. I'm I'm so pumped for this. Wow, if you didn't know what you were looking at, you'd whiz right by this place and not even see it back there. No trespassing. We are not trespassing because the owner is coming to meet us. This is just the most epic thing ever. I can't believe this is real. Are you excited? This is so cool. I know he's selling stuff out of here now, so maybe we could walk through here and see if there's anything cool that we might want. I already told Mitchell that we should have brought a trailer. Well, good thing we're not that far away. Oh, I think this is him right here. How you doing, man? Pretty good. I had the camera filming when you pulled up. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Robert Collier? Mitchell. Mitchell. All right. Was this paved at one point or was it a field? a It was a It's all grass. It was a lawn here. We This was no cars out here at all. And no cars over there except for the front line. And we had a back line back in the '70s. But it was It was manicured pretty good. I used to mow the grass when I was a kid here. We actually started downtown in Pikeville. It was a small building that had a garage in the back, showroom in the front. We were there from '55 to 19 '1973 or '4. That's when he had bought this property here. And uh Wow, I didn't even see there There's cars that are completely Yeah. Yeah. hidden in there. Right. There That's blackberry vines. They They just happens within a couple years it grows up that bad. So when did cars start getting parked out here like in their current configuration? they sort of got onto us wanting us to put a fence on around the place. So uh it wasn't filled up here, but uh sort of when we got the fence and we sort of sort of felt free to fill it up. Uh We just bought We would buy and sell cars and we'd sell one and buy two and it just That sort of uh adds up after a while. This is an Ambassador here. This is their top-of-the-line car. This is a '69 Ambassador 343 V8. All Ambassadors came with air conditioning. It was a standard option standard equipment. You You can't say that about even Cadillac. They've got a Cadillac Coupe DeVille in the back and it doesn't have dealer I mean it doesn't have back or air in it. Wow. Also, this is an Eagle Wagon. It's a four-wheel drive Eagle Wagon. Uh there's also a little uh And these were four-wheel drive. It's sort of like the first crossover um SUV type car cuz it was four-wheel drive and they built it on a Concord chassis. That's neat. I've never seen a four-wheel drive car like that. That's a little CJ-5. It's got Dana 44 rear end under it. It started out as a V8 Jeep, but it's got a six in it now. But it runs and drives, but it's just rough as a cob. This little Rambler American, it's a wagon, but I had a two-door hardtop with a V8, four-speed, four-barrel. I just sold it to a fella. Uh this is a This is around a '68 or '9 Rambler American wagon. Here's another '70 Ambassador. The '70s Ambassadors that are 360s or four or uh 390s all have special cylinder heads that are made really good for drag racing. Mhm. So, we always take note if it's a '70 360 or 390 car. Those heads are worth at least $500 or more. This AM If you want to focus on the AMC motor, that's a V8 in there, which you can't really see much of it. But uh that same motor started in 1967, and it continued uh the same design motor through 1991 Jeep Grand Cher- Grand Wagoneers. You can't tell them externally very much apart because they're all small blocks, and they all look the same, but there's difference in the deck height and the bore. It goes anywhere from a 290 up to 401, the biggest motor they made. Concord's were their uh mid-size car in the '70s. It used to be a Hornet, and then '78 it turned to a Concord. Uh sort of Jeeps, we have some Jeeps out here. Mostly 10 Jeeps out here right now, but uh AMC was uh struggling a little bit. They'd been purchased partially by Renault in 1980 when my dad got out. They got bought by Chrysler in 1987, and that's when AMC officially ended, and it became Eagle and Jeep. This Ambassador here is a '71 two-door hardtop car. Uh we sold it to a family friend who worked right next to door to my dad dealership downtown. His name was Carl Scott. He uh it would had been a program car where the uh the our district rep was driving it. And usually it has a lot of options on it. Well, when he retired it and got a new car from AMC, Daddy bought this from AMC. And he uh sold it to Carl Scott and he loved it and all, but it came time to buy a new car, and so he traded it in for a new car. And Daddy polished it up and tuned it up really nice. And the guy fell in love with his car again and came back and bought it twice. And he uh ended up keeping it until he passed away. And I bought it from his grandson. He's uh his grandson was out here this past month just looking over and see what kind of shape it was in. Is he going to take it back? Well, there's thoughts of it. We don't know yet. It's It's got a little bit of repair that needs on it now. But it's a really I think it is a early '71, so it I think it still has those special heads on it. That's a Gremlin. If you remember the Gremlins? That's about the only AMC I know what the name is for sure. Car Cars 3, the movie Cars 3, I think had Pacers and Gremlins in it. But these came out in 1970. In fact, the very first Gremlins were two-seaters with 13-in wheels. They were really economical. And they wanted they compared them with the Volkswagen Beetle and how they had like twice the horsepower of the Beetle. This is a 360 70 model car, so it has those special heads. They're big valves and very small combustion chambers. So it has really high compression. Um we do have other cars. There's over half the cars are what we call off-brand cars. They are uh Fords and Chevrolets. We always Daddy called them off-brand cars because they weren't AMCs. But uh there's a little Chevette. Yeah, there's actually a Chevette club and uh there's like a Escort EXP club. I just sold a Escort EXP to somebody. Uh Rutledge Wood, I don't know if you know Rutledge Wood. Yeah. He uh he came he filmed right here. Uh we were he was doing a overhauling type show called Lost in Transmission and he came looking for some fender flares for that Eagle. So, he filmed here with his buddy uh that does uh music videos. These are Pacers. What did you What did you guys dig out of here? A Ford EXP. A guy he had look looked for 3 or 4 years for a this little uh sporty-looking two-door Ford EXP Escort. And after he found it, he went a month or two later he came here and saw another one. So, he bought it for parts. He's getting the title with it and everything. Wow. These are Pacers. If you focus on Pacers over here, um there's three right in a row. I have probably 10 or 12 maybe 13 Pacers and then another 10 Pacer wagons. If you focus on this right here, that's a AMC 401 engine. Yeah. I've got a guy who uh hauls cars for us. Um he's spoken for this. He hadn't come got it yet. So, uh yeah, I guess he's still going to get it, but uh it's the biggest motor AMC made. You can put them in Wagoneers. This is in an Ambassador, but they're really popular in AMX Javelins and and such. This uh This has a in '73 and on up they had they made it it with a the 401 motor they made it with a Chrysler 727 bulletproof transmission. Um there's a little Ford XS Escort GT. Look over here uh this Javelin. Let me tell you a little bit about AMXs, okay? AMX first came out it was a came out mid-year '68. They'd already released the Javelins. But the AMX was a two-seater sports car sort of positioned between the uh Corvette and the Camaro. Um two-seater V8, really fast. The weight proportion on the from front to rear was just optimal to drag race with. So, in '68 to '70, it was a two-seater car. But, it shared some body parts with a Javelin. Well, '71 through '4, the AMX package was what they put on a Javelin. It included Now, this is a This is actually a Javelin with an AMX spoiler on it. And door panels and stuff. The AMX package was a fiberglass hood. Some Some of them were fresh air hoods. Has a rear spoiler. Had a 140 mph tick-tock gauge set that had a tachometer and a clock built in. One side has a fluorescent lights in there. It has turned aluminum. You can look through there and see the AMX door panel. Yeah. Uh, they had turned aluminum. This one's been picked over some, but uh, we've had dozens and dozens of Javelins, but we're down to about 12 parts cars now. Uh, yeah, this is just a parts car. Some of the rarest things we had was a state of Alabama in 1971 and '2 purchased from AMC about 120 some state highway patrol Javelins. And they had their Javelins interceptor cars with 401s. And where it says AMX on that spoiler, it said 401s cuz that's they had to fill in those holes. And it also said straight state trooper on the spoiler. That's cool. They all had the uh, they had the Huh? Where they at? We sold them. Yeah. Highball Racing, what's that? Team Highball Racing, they were uh, international uh, road racing team out of Raleigh. But, uh, we used to get posters from AMC when they were right racing these uh, Spirits. They're really pretty paint jobs on these Spirits. And they were in like Nürburgring, uh, Ger- Germany racing. And they were They were a It was a Dennis Shaw. One of the guys that was with him was a guy named Kurt Spenser. And Kurt Spenser. He uh, uh He always was into really fast six-cylinder AMC's. He uh He even went down to Mexico and got some of the four-barrel cast-iron intakes. This was a drag racing car here. Like I said, the AMXs, they hook up really good at the racetrack. In fact, Hurst Corporation prepared 52 of these two-seater AMXs with 390s in them and they specially prepared them. Had a two Holly four-barrel carburetors on it. Uh It's called a I can't think of the name of it right now. But uh Dual quad. Yeah, it was a dual quad, but it was staggered. It was it's uh It was a cross ram something. Yeah. This one actually had a at one time had a big block Chevrolet motor in it, but he really bragged on the car um cuz they, you know, just hook up well. This is a Javelin here. It keeps going back here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's back here. How many cars are in here? Uh there's over 200. know. We don't know. We never documented them, but This Javelin, this is a '70 Javelin, which also has those special heads. But um AMC got in in in the '60s got into uh Trans Am races, which was competition. A lot of them factory sponsored cars uh like the AAR Cudas. Yeah. The AR Cudas, the Trans Ams, the Z28s, Boss Mustangs, all and the Javelins. And uh like Cudas and all, they all competed in Trans Am racing, which was a road race. They did pretty well to start with, but then Bobby uh this guy named Mark Donahue and Roger Penske uh they had been winning in Chevrolets in Camaros and AMC talked them to coming over to AMC. So in around '68 or '9, they came over to uh AMC and started doing really well. Uh the '70 Trans Am car, they had to make a certain like 2,501 production cars like the race car so it could be homologated. Yeah. So, to have this spoiler I mean this ram air hood and the spoiler on the back they had a ducktail spoiler on the back. They made these limited production Mark Donohue specials. My dad ordered one is a green one brand new. This little old lady came up wanting to buy it. And he had it up on the line. He always did his own dealer prep. He did all the door alignments, the front end alignments. He did it tuning it up before the customer even had the first chance to to drive the car. So, he had them well prepared when some dealers just took them off the truck and put them on the front line. Uh so, he had this up on the alignment rack and the lady came in and said, "I like the color of that car. I I like that car." Her name was Edith. Daddy said, "Y- Edith, you don't want that car. It's it's too fast for you. It'll just get away from you. You need something more like" he was trying to sell her a Hornet or something. So, Daddy said, "Go get your brother Charles and we'll talk uh talk it over about the car." And Daddy in the meantime had talked to Charles and said, "Charles, let's talk her out of this car. It's too fast for her." Well, Charles came over and looked at it and they looked it all over and uh Edith said, "Charles, what do you think of my car?" And he said, "Edith, it's the car for you." And they she was sold and Daddy just gave up and sold it to her. But, sure enough she it was too fast for her and she spun it around an intersection or two and she ended up damaging the front door on it and but it was a well-known car around town and this guy who uh grew up to become a dentist, I think he used to take her groceries out. And he hounded her for the car if she ever sold it let him let her sell it to him and somehow he ended up with I don't know if we sold it to him or if she sold to him directly. We followed it all through seven owners. Wow. And finally, uh we wanted to always wanted to buy it back. So, that's that car over there? No, it's a it's that car is now It was here. We kept it here until about a year ago. I sold it to a guy in Maine, and he's restoring it up there. That's awesome. But, we had a we had one other Mark Donohue car, 396 motor. I had a I had a '69 Chevy CST pickup truck with air, long bed, red and white. And uh some guys from Miami came and bought it. The man had rebuilt the motor. This is a Jeepster Commando. Um AMC bought Jeep in 1970. Before then, uh they were putting Buick V6s in their Jeeps uh and other Uh in fact, but uh AMC did furnish motors for uh Does that have a latch on it? I yeah, I think you have to lift it. Oh. Um AMC did furnish engines for International. Uh they in their Scouts, you you could find uh AMC six-cylinder in some of their pickups and Travelalls. But, I I don't know how many 401 motors I bought that were in that came out of International Travelalls and pickups. This is my last little Gremlin here. It's a '72. It's a six-cylinder with air. A lady in Dudley, North Carolina, I I was after her for for years. It was if she ever sold it to let me buy it. Finally, she came up and agreed to sell it. Here's old '66 Chevelle four-door, hit hard in the front. Did you just buy this for parts? Uh he bought it just uh somebody came up wanting to sell it. Uh We always thought we could use parts off of it, but I don't think we sold anything off of it yet. We've had it for 30 years. There's a couple tow trucks in here. What What did you use? We used to use them. We uh Daddy, he never really was a commercial tow man. We always use it for our own purposes. But when when the snow storms happened we would he would just charge them $20 to get them pulled out and everything. He never really charged much but we only used it for our garage purposes. We didn't do it for the public. This truck here we it's got a big old big big Ford six cylinder motor thing a 292 or something like that. But it's got a tree growing up between the grill and the bumper. There's a bunch of those oddities out here. Here's the El Camino I got for sale as a parts car. If somebody wanted to buy a car from here how what's how how could they find you? Like we want to help you out. Well I guess you can my contact information is on Facebook. Um but my name is Robert Robbie Collier. It's Collier Motors AMC. The business is not not actually in business. I'm the executive my wife and I are the executives for the estate and we are strictly selling it was not open to the public. You have to come by appointment to look at the cars. We sell them one by one to people who visit and we've had people come over all over the country as far as just recently uh New Mexico so my bought just a couple of convertibles from me. Had people from Miami and Maine. This is a AMX it has the uh It's got a fiberglass hood and a fiberglass spoiler on the back. I bought that as a parts car. We just lifted the windshield out of it couple weeks ago but that still has a fiberglass hood but I sold that grill for like $1200 not too long ago. When was the last year that you had all the keys for these things on a rack that you could have gone out here and driven any of them? Well I mean they when you parked it. Each car is a different story and my dad knew the story on most all the cars all everyone of them. Each car is a different story. Some of them were we'd buy car cars at auction and some of them were auction mistakes. But some of these This was our body shop. Oh, really? an AMX in there. 343 four-speed car. It had a rebuilt motor. Uh See, uh these guys came three three brothers came one from Maine, one from Maryland, and one from Florida. They came together. Construction background but all of them. And they dismantled our roof cuz it it was unsafe. They dismantled the whole roof to get that AMX out of here. Wow. And uh it took them one one weekend. I got several trucks. Uh there's a Ford '74 Ranger. That's a Dodge Adventurer. Um a Ford '77 Ford. Some of these are people are spoken for. Let me show you something over here. This again is the Nash Airflight like my dad had the two-door. Wow. He had one that was like chocolate and mint colored. But it was a two-door. But look at the steering column. It's called a Uniscope steer uh gauges. Uh all your all your gauges are in that one pod called a Uniscope. Your temperature, electrical, gas, odometer, speedometer, all that. You just look at one that one spot. It's a very future minded car. Aerodynamically uh designed. It was a unibody car back when cars were uh had a frame on body. This was unibody. Only weighs like 3,400 lb. Really? Chevrolet that size would probably be 4,400 lb. It's uh it's uh They had a they were pioneers in the unitized body thing. This is a This was my dad's personal car in the '70s. In the late '70s, early '80s. It was a Mark uh it was a Barcelona Matador coupe. If you notice the back glass here, they had to homologate Madewell Coupes for NASCAR and they changed this back window here. See this back window? Yeah. They changed this back window cuz it's supposed to go all the way down, but Bobby Allison had to race them and they changed this configuration. So many production cars had to have the back glass to make it in NASCAR. So he did really well. He uh He He won the Daytona 500 and but my dad always loved this car. It was a 364 barrel. Just purred on the road. My My brother was We were They were going to visit me in Nashville, Tennessee. My brother was asleep in the back and he woke up and said, "Why Why are we stopped?" Uh why we You know, they were actually going about 65-70 mph and he thought…