AMC Gremlin GT
The American Motors Company introduced the Gremlin on April 1, 1970, and everybody thought this was a joke. The subcompact American-made car has a funny design and good fuel economy for the standards of the day. Very soon, the Gremlin became a very popular and influential model and helped AMC survive the recession of the ’70s. AMC tried its best to extract all that it could from the little Gremlin by constantly introducing different variants and versions and keeping that old platform alive for almost a decade (via Motor Trend).
In 1977, AMC decided to turn the Gremlin into a muscle car and installed a 304 V8 engine with 120 hp. The ridiculously low power resulted in a terrible performance. But the Gremlin GT was quite a looker with a fresh graphic package, sporty wheels, and interior equipment. Realizing that the performance was painfully slow even for a wannabe muscle car, AMC installed a 4.2-liter inline-six engine. Which didn’t produce much more power but produced more torque, enough for some improvement. However, even this and heavy discounts by AMC’s dealers didn’t help since the production was low at around 3000 copies. The GT option was discontinued for the 1978 model year.