The Master of Hornets

So this is a several decade old project that began in the early nineties known as the Master of Hornets. I saw this car for the first time when I was 11 years old in 2009 and have been mildly obsessed with it ever since. Aside from the fact that it's and AMC, which I already have an affinity for with my previous project "The Grape of Wrath" ('74 Gremlin with a 401 centrifugally supercharged big block in bright purple), this car met all of my offroading needs of being affiliated with the Gambler 500.

The car was originally built by Pacific 4x4 by an unknown person, then it was sold to the owner of a small jewelry store in San Luis Obispo, California, where my current shop partner Jack Nageleisen worked on it and helped bring it into its current form. Now the jewelry store owner would spend exactly $315 on the car every month (matching his wife's car payment,) but eventually it got to the point where his wife was fed up with the car and called upon the man's church to do an intervention. So in 1998, the Jewelry store man was given a divine intervention by the mormon church, served his divorce papers, and taken off the title of his house, all in the parking lot of Wayne's Tire in San Luis Obispo. The last time he was seen, he was walking down the street away from said intervention. So the car sat there waiting to be paid off, but the man never came back after over a year. So in 1999 the car was sold of to a young surfer dude and daily driven until it disappeared in 2001. In 2009 the car turned up again in someones yard a few blocks from where my family lived and that's where I saw it for the first time and knew some day I would have to have the Master of Hornets. From there the car got stolen while the family that owned it was on vacation, recovered, and sold to a new owner all before the said family came back from their vacation to europe. The new owner (who I bought the car from) had let his daughter daily drive it until the engine experienced unscheduled rapid disassembly in 2011. The car was stored and not seen again until 1 month ago. I found the car while helping clean out the new owners property. I made an offer, and now I am the proud owner of the Master of Hornets. It is a 1973 AMC Hornet mounted on a 1967 Ford Bronco Chassis, with a Chevrolet 350 Targetmaster smallblock, Pontiac Turbo 400, full roll cage, dual adjustable monroe shocks on all four corners, and more history than I even know about at this point. I learn about new pieces of this car's story every day. Several previous owners have come forward and shared their experiences with the car and shared how happy they are to see it being restored to its past glory.

So, without further ado, I present the rough and gruff Master of Hornets!

But now I read it's a hornet ontop of a bronco chassis, that's interesting!