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Transcript

The Kenosha AMC Homecoming Event

The Don Rosen Show · Tue Jul 22, 2025

All right, a big event is coming up. And we're going to talk about it right now. It's the Kenosha AMC homecoming event.

And it's coming up like real soon. And with me is Chris Allen Executive Director of the Kenosha History Center. And Joe Boyachek.

Am I saying right? Joe Boyachek.

I'm going to hear everything you guys have to say. Boyachek. Now you are just a big super fan of AMC.

I am. I've been my whole life.

Did you ever own a pacer? Yes.

Every time I hear AMC, I think of the pace. So you got the eagle like this.

I don't want you cars. We're going to talk about it.

So what is this event actually?

Because I want to hear everything you have to say on a miss one word.

Okay, so give us the date to the event. Let's talk about what it is.

Yeah, so this is something three years in the making.

A big celebration of American voters coming back to Kenosha.

Obviously the manufacturing center for American voters here in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

So we it's a worldwide event. We have people coming from all over Europe.

People come from Australia. Let's back up a second here.

AMC American voters get a little history of that. I don't know which.

Yeah, so car car manufacturing began in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1902.

Thomas Jeffery, a bike manufacturer in Chicago, moved up to Kenosha.

He was actually the second mass producer of basic or of cars in America right behind Oldsmobile.

Be forward by a year.

Jeffery eventually sold to Charlie Nash.

So Nash was in Kenosha from 1917.

Eventually they bought the refrigerator company, Kelvinator.

In 1937, merged with Hudson motor cars in 54.

That merger in 54 created American Motors Corporation.

They brought back the rambler name Jeffery started with rambler.

But that rambler name kind of was reintroduced in the 1950s.

AMC acquired Jeep in 1970.

Was producing jeeps until 1987, 88 and Chrysler came to Kenosha.

They purchased AMC, shut down the lakefront plant, continued to make engines in Kenosha until 2010.

And that's your history in.

So why did AMC have to sell out?

Why did they do that? Do they have the problems with money?

Nobody's buying their cars?

I think there's a lot of industry problems in the 1980s in general.

And Chrysler had problems too. Chrysler was looking for something to keep them afloat.

When he came in.

Yeah, so that was kind of golden egg to get Jeep.

They wanted the Jeep.

So they bought AMC for Jeep.

But Renault had something to do with it too.

So Renault got involved with AMC in the 70s.

And then really took ownership.

Majority shares in the early 1980s.

That's definitely about portion of that.

I took them to the cleaners.

So AMC, they owned the Nash Rambler at one time?

Yes.

Because I remember that song from the 50s.

The playmates beep beep.

That little Nash Rambler kept following me about one third of my size beep beep.

And that's the first time I heard of it.

Now we had a restaurant here called the Nash from the Nash Rambler.

And so AMC gone in 1988.

But not forgotten, obviously.

You guys know people who worked at AMC?

My dad worked at AMC.

Your dad worked? How many years?

On and off 10, 12.

Never taken.

Yeah, he was on the assembly line.

Yeah, final repair at the end.

And that's why he loves the Pacer.

He's got multiple Pacers.

I don't make fun of it. It's the one car.

It sticks in my head because it was so different than all other cars when it came out.

It was kind of like a dome.

I mean, if you think about the cars now, you look at cars now,

and you look at the Pacer then,

they had the door went into the roof.

And that's all cars now.

And then to save money, they didn't have the side markers.

They had the directionals and the tail lights go over to the side.

So then that was a part of it.

Your brake lights and your stuff.

So that was kind of side markers too.

The passenger side door is three inches wider than the driver's side doors.

You can get it in out easier.

It has a rack and pinion steering.

It's pretty cool car.

Give me some of the AMC names for the cars.

Well, you got all the big ones.

The AMX and the Javlon and the Rubble.

And the Javlon, I forgot about the Javlon.

Yeah.

And the Rubble and the Rubble Machine and Ambassador and Matador.

The Matador.

Yeah.

Concord spirit.

You know, Hornet.

The Hornet, Gremlin.

Remember the Hornet?

Yeah.

The Gremlin.

The following for the Gremlin.

Yeah.

People love the Gremlin.

Yeah.

We've got a whole event planned around the Gremlin.

It's kind of become one over things about the Kenosha homecoming.

They do a Gremlin cruise over to Jeffrey Elementary School in Kenosha.

Whose mascot is the Gremlin, man?

It's all the Gremlin.

It's all Gremlins in the parking lot.

The PTO comes out.

They sell T-shirts.

It's a really fun time.

Yeah.

Let's say you own one of the classic cars from AMC.

What do you get the parts?

There's vendors out there and there's people making stuff now.

But for the most part, you've got to find someone that has...

You come to Kenosha.

You come to the swap.

You know, that's right.

You'll find everything there.

Now, I'm trying to remember when I got my car in 1975.

I think that was the first year for unleaded gas.

Because I actually had it printed right on the dashboard.

Unleaded gas only.

Right.

And some of these cars came out before unleaded gas.

So they had to convert them over.

Well, that little thing, American Motors did stuff.

They had a higher nickel content engine.

And they had hardened seats from the factory.

So it affected them, but not like all the other manufacturers,

where you had to change everything over.

You know, so you didn't have to go and rip your engine down

or do anything to run the unleaded gas.

I still run unleaded gas in all my old cars right now

because the way they were built originally.

I was in Union Grove the other day.

And I pulled in to get gas.

And I'll show you the picture when we take the break.

I'll show you the picture.

And it was 110 fuel-letted.

Nice.

And it was for the dragway.

The great legs dragway.

And I had never seen that on a gas pump before.

Yeah.

And let it 110 octane.

Whoa!

That's a good stuff for that.

Joe Reese is the AMC's out at the dragway, too.

So he's your guy for that.

Yeah.

So we're going to be racing on Wednesday.

Doors open at five and on Sunday.

110 octane.

Actually, my current 100% alcohol.

Oh, there's a really methanol.

Yeah.

So, wow.

A lot of fun.

All right.

So this is a big party coming up.

It starts today, actually.

20 seconds.

It starts today.

When we go over the list of fun activities here.

Yeah.

So today, we're starting over at Danny's Cafe on Green Bay Road.

It's noon to two.

And then tonight we're going to be over at the Danish Brotherhood

Road.

So that's from four to eight o'clock.

Pretty much each night we have a cruising.

This thing just builds up all the way to Saturday where we do the big blowout at Kennedy Park.

Is it like American graffiti?

Yeah.

Okay.

Separate cooler cars.

You know that yellow car?

Yeah.

Harrison Ford driving it, right?

Yeah, but I won't tell you what they called it.

What the color is.

Okay.

So that's today.

So it starts at noon today.

And there's more tomorrow.

Let's go over there.

Yeah.

There's something every day.

So tomorrow.

It's really something in the morning for the gear heads.

Yeah.

So we're over at Elfano Performance Speed Shop.

And as well as Don's Auto Parts.

Nick Elfano at the Speed Shop is having an open house and barbecue.

And then over at Don's, they're doing something really cool and taking people through their

machine shop with the seminars.

Yeah.

He's going to be doing a bunch of different seminars over there.

Stuff that, you know, people don't really actually see how things are done.

He's going to have a car up on the hoist and he's going to be showing how to correctly,

you know, set the pinion angle when and how to do like if you're making a drive shaft,

if you're building the custom, he's going to have a guy over there.

Joe Ronaldo from TTA Performance doing a fuel injection seminar.

Like how to put a new style fuel injection on your old car to make it, you know,

just a little bit better than what it was.

He has another one set up to how he has a CNC boring machine.

So you're like redoing your engines and stuff like that.

He's going to have all that stuff set up and he's going to have like 15, 20 minute stations.

And you can go and check out through the machine shop, all the different things and how,

they do it. It's like you're rebuilding your car.

And it's not that whole thing.

It doesn't matter if you're an AMC guy or not, that's just cool stuff.

Any hot rodder would love to go there.

So kind of invite anyone that is interested in something like that to stop over by.

It's like it's not for classic cars.

You know what I want?

I want when I get into my car, what the key in turn it in the engine starts.

That's all I want.

Right.

And see that new style fuel injection will do that with your old car.

You don't have to worry about it.

Okay.

Just keep pumping it.

After five in the morning, I don't need to have a car going.

My grandfather, what he used to take me in his car.

He said, all right, hold the button and hit a choke button.

Yeah.

I'm like, all right.

And he's just starting to help the choke button in.

Wow.

This is great.

I love it.

I want to button like that on my car one day.

No, I don't.

Okay.

So.

And then five p.m.

A great lake's dragway.

Yeah.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

We're going to have a lot of cool old old cars out there.

It's going to be a pretty awesome.

It's ladies night.

Oh, yeah.

Ladies get in free.

And racing and spectating.

Yeah.

And then for the people that aren't racing or don't want to watch the races, we have an evening

car cruise over at the Brotstep on the back portion of their lot near the parkway Chateau.

So I think that's kind of nostalgic as well.

There's been a lot of car shows there over the years.

They do a great job out there and right off the interstate.

So nice and easy for people to get to.

And there's another cruise it on Thursday.

This one is at Lake Andrea Beer Garden.

That's on Park Avenue in Pleasant Park.

It goes down a little further south.

Yeah.

So that's our daytime cruise that starts at 10 a.m.

Goes to two.

And I think the buzz at the beer garden is going to be what they're doing later that day.

Returning to the AMC factory site.

That's our evening cruise and.

What's there now?

It's just empty.

So they're they've done remediation.

They've cleaned up the site.

Yeah.

And they're calling it the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood.

They just opened a high school there like few tech built on the site.

They built it on the site.

So that opened up in January.

And they're building.

I believe it's called the Kenosha Innovation Center,

which is going to be the hub for future development on that.

So there's there's roads on the site now.

This is going to be the first time that these cars return to the site of production.

It's going to be sad.

It will be.

You know, somebody like you who's just an enthusiast with AMC cars.

It's going to be sad to see that.

That's where it used to be.

So we were talking about going back in time earlier.

We're going to go back in time to the AMC plant.

Sure.

And just before they were about to sell it, you'll say,

no, I'll buy it.

Just before they sell the car.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

And so that's from 4 to 8 p.m.

At the old AMC site of 22nd Avenue.

When I first moved here,

I remember the overpass.

The train at AMC on it.

Yeah.

That's what I remember.

Yeah.

Now, Friday this weekend, we got some big events happening.

We kick it off at 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

This is the big car show.

And we got to call on.

Yeah.

That's the swap meet portion of the car show.

Okay.

So what's kind of really neat about what we do is,

is we do the swap meet on Friday and Saturday.

Then we bring all the classic cars in on Saturday with the swap meet.

The swap meet.

I don't want to undersell it because it is so cool.

We have hundreds of vendors there.

You can get pretty much any part, right?

Yeah.

Pretty much anything you ever needed or what you can get it there.

For AMC cars.

Yeah.

It is by far the biggest swap meet ever, you know.

So every, every time we have it, this, it's the biggest.

And I think even for people that don't own an AMC car or a Nash,

they're not digging through parts, you know,

looking for that specific door handle or side panel.

Right.

I think it's a neat spectacle anyway.

There's a lot of energy there.

And it's kind of just neat to see what people have collected over the years.

Right.

Or snuck out of the factory.

So my boys, they wanted to, you know, get in the action and everything.

And I have these garbage cans full of hubcaps.

Yes.

I know it's crazy.

And so I had a, I said, okay, you guys sell your hubcaps.

You keep all the money and you go do whatever you want.

And so many people just bought a hubcap to hang in their garage.

That weren't really, didn't really have a car or do anything like that.

And, you know, it kept, it kept their bellies full.

Because as soon as they got the, the money for the hubcap,

they went and bought ice cream and popsicles.

As a kid, you just go on the build parkway and just pick up all the hubcaps you can.

They're all laying there.

Yeah.

Just load up your car with them and sell them back to the guy who wants them.

Okay.

So the big cruising at the AMC factors that we talked about that,

the homecoming car show swap meet is on Friday, the 25th, 80, into 4 p.m.,

10 a.m. to do.

Now, this is the event you said about the, was it the Gremlin?

Yeah, the Gremlin event at Jeffrey High School.

Yeah.

So if you have a Gremlin, we're encouraging you to meet at Kennedy Park at the swap meet.

You can't miss it.

There will be a whole gathering of Gremlins there.

Whole Gremlins.

And then they will cruise on over to Jeffrey Elementary School,

over on 87th Street in Kenosha Park in the parking lot.

And it becomes its own car show there that's Gremlin specific.

When you get that many Gremlins around, you know,

things happen sometimes.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

So with the homecoming car show parade, let's talk about that.

Yeah.

So that's something we changed the route in 2022.

And we're really happy with what we settled on.

We have all the cars go down to Southport Park at the beach house on the Southside of Kenosha.

Again, that kind of becomes a car show at about two o'clock.

It is so fun.

We have a bull donor.

Yeah, it's great.

They're just staging for a parade, but it's 200 or 250 AMCs.

It's its own car show.

We take over the whole Southport, double parked.

No, not double parked.

It would be the legal.

It would be the world.

The Friday staging for the parade would be the world's largest AMC car show.

If we didn't do the world's largest AMC car show, the next day at Kennedy Park.

So they staged down there.

And then at four o'clock, we kick off.

It'll be led by a Nastas Motors, who's a great sponsor of ours.

The mayor will be in the lead car.

They're going to go through downtown.

They're going to go up through Pinoyer Park, Kennedy Park.

End up at the Kenosha History Center for our Friday night block party.

That starts at four p.m.

So it's one event right into the other.

Just kind of getting ready.

Everything builds until Saturday, which is obviously the big one.

Okay, let's talk about the big one.

Go ahead.

Yeah, so three years in the making, it is the date that everybody circles on their calendar.

We'll be telling people the 2028 date as they're driving in.

And again, it's a world gathering.

People are coming in from Australia, Finland, Norway.

Yeah.

As of the, I think on Friday, I looked at the registrations for American cars.

And we have cars from over 35 states.

Makna, the Metropolitan Owners Club of North America, is having their national meet within our meet.

So there's going to be 50 Metropolitan's at least.

Who's directing all this stuff?

You're looking at them.

And how many bottles of Tylenol in there?

Mostly do you have?

No, you know, it's, it's a lot of fun.

And we have, we have great volunteers.

We have a great staff at the Kenosha History Center.

That's who puts it on.

It's the Kenosha History Center.

It's not just people.

It's cars you're doing.

It's a lot of cars.

Yeah.

Well,

it's a lot of lines.

And then you just kind of, as they come in, they just park.

And it's only just stop them in the right spot and theory.

You should be that straight.

It just sounds like a big headache.

But when it gets done, it looks great.

Yeah.

No, it's, it's fun.

Yeah, it's a fun time.

AMC people are great people.

Yeah, they really are.

It's a lot of fun.

Yesterday.

At the, uh,

a friend of mine is part owner of Oso Brewery.

And he had a couple of beers specially made for our, for our homecoming too.

I really have to go or read, uh, beer.

And, uh, an AMC anti-free sour.

And it's, uh, it looks just like AMC anti-freeze.

But it, it doesn't taste like AMC anti-freeze.

It's pretty good.

And, uh, you can only get it at the, the puzzle house.

But we were there last night.

And I was with, this is, you know, way out.

People from Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Florida.

Um, you said in Norway, friends from Norway that are here already.

That came extra, you know, early.

They just get cards with them.

They just came themselves.

The people from Norway just brought themselves.

Yeah.

But people come in and they will spend, you know, a couple of weeks here in America, um,

doing an American vacation and flying in New York City.

Yeah.

They drive out to the Rackenroll Hall theme.

Maybe stop in Detroit, end up in Kenosha.

This is their mecca.

Yeah.

Um, they, they love American motors.

They just, you know, eat, sleep, breathe it.

Okay.

And, uh, it's, you know what?

It's a car show, but it feels like a big reunion, like family reunion almost.

That's, that's, that's the vibe.

It really is.

That's what it feels like.

The AMC have factory elsewhere.

Well, they had the, the Canada brand in this country.

Where is this it?

Kenosha.

This is pretty much it.

Headquarters were in Detroit.

Okay.

And then Kenosha was about it.

Yeah.

They made the bodies, um, for some of the nashes up in, at the semen body plant in Milwaukee.

Um, parts plant in Milwaukee.

And the Jeep still survived.

Yeah.

Still getting today.

Look great.

Yeah.

That's the right thing.

They should have crossed their fan.

They should have kept the eagle too though.

They really should have.

Yeah.

But not the pacer.

Oh, come on.

I liked it.

This guy has to pull up.

There was Larry Kopsky.

He's still works in radio.

Um, and he used to pull up in the pacer and they, they used to make fun of it.

I said, I like it.

Yeah.

I like that car.

I know it's time.

It really is.

The fishable on wheels.

Okay.

Quick review.

Uh, this is the, and we decided either way is fine.

I think we can know that this one's in a quick review.

Um, because there's a lot of over.

Some of the connoisional homecoming or the connoisional AMC homecoming.

I hear both ways.

I hear on the commercial.

It's connoisional AMC.

I have written down connoisional homecoming.

So either way, it all starts today and runs through this weekend and knock off your

calendar because there's so much to do and just keep going down there for different.

And you can really attend if you don't have an AMC.

You can pull up into your Chevy.

You know, pocket somewhere else.

No, we know we'll get away when nobody can see it.

They have dark alleys and garages.

Right.

For your Chevy's and your Ford's put it aside.

Something to shade.

Yeah.

Man, it's a lot of cars coming into town.

Sure is.

Yeah.

And you know, talking about Chevy's and Ford's.

But, um, at the AMC plant, when it was still running, there was an employee parking lot.

And only AMCs could park in that.

Right.

If an employee had a different car, they'd park him down the block.

That's our approach with this show, too.

We're going to be talking about this all right from now, right through the weekend here on WRJN.

So don't worry about that.

We're going to be kicking this all the time.

I want to thank Chris Allen, executive director of the Kenosha History Center.

I'm going to get it now here.

You got Joe Bach.

Bach.

Oh.

Oh, hot check.

Sorry.

I'm going to give you a time.

I'm going to announce where I can figure this out.

I went to college.

Uh, Joe Pajachek, who was just an AMC enthusiast.

I love AMC cars.

Yeah.

What do you do with them someday?

Pass them on to who?

I got three boys.

I'm going to want them.

They better.

That's all they're getting in the will.

Yeah.

My, uh, my oldest is going to be out there racing with us on Wednesday and Sunday also.

Oh, good.

So he's into it already.

And then the twins.

They're still kind of young, but they're getting there, you know.

Now we have the event list of WRJN.com.

But if you go to the history center, the Kenosha History Center dot.

Uh, that work.

Yeah.

We have information there.

Also visit Kenosha.com.

That's where I flash AMC.

They, they've been terrific with us.

I think I picture a page.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is great.

Thank you guys for coming in this morning.

And he all kicks off today.

It's all happening in Kenosha.

Where's, where was the actual plant again?

What's, it was on 52nd Street between 52nd and 60th between 24th Avenue and 30th Avenue.

I just remember the overpaired the train thing at AMC written on the American motors.

Thank you guys for coming in.

Good luck with this.

Thank you.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.