There was talk of using the Marlin as the performance car body style for 1970. But by then it was clear that the fast back had run it's course for all makes with the exception of the Mustang. But the concept was popular and artwork was created that eventually migrated all the way to the colourful envelope used for the Press Kit that announced the new Rebel Machines.

There was thought given to making the new Hornet body style the next AMC performance car - low weight and a 390 cu.in. motor would have made the car a winner at the drag strips. But that concept lost out to the new Rebel body style because the objective was to entice new customers into AMC showrooms with the flamboyant paint schemes then switch them over to the non-performance, regular line Rebels. That's where the money was, not in a high performance vehicle that would be costly to their warranty program.

AMC did not want to sell a lot of Rebel Machines. As a product, the car was not well liked at any level in the corporation. It was a marketing tool to them and  that's all it was. It received almost no marketing dollars. A single page ad and a double page spread, a salesman's training video, some brochures followed by a press kit was about the extent of it. There was no money for a racing program beyond the product launch at the Dallas International Motor Speedway on October 25, 1969 and some performance magazine drag strip testing by CARS Magazine and others. Many years later a video of the car at an airport turned up that was never used for marketing.

The Rebel Machine is the only car ever designed and intended as a spoof against the entire domestic automotive industry. That spoof is what prompted the cartoon of BC on a gear doing a burnout - raw power from practically nothing which was where AMC was financially as the only major independent car company left in the western hemisphere.

The cartoon was stuck on the car for the product launch but was not on showroom models. If you wanted one it you had to mail AMC 25 cents to get it.

On April 1st, 1964 AMC told th rest of the automotive industry that it wasn't interested in building cars for the performance market; the only race they were interested in was the human race. AMC became the butt of many automotive industry insider jokes for that public comment.

In 1969 AMC got that one back with the Rambler SC/Rambler that blew the doors off practically everything at the drag strips. In 1970, they did it again with the Rebel Machine when optioned out with dealer installed Group 19 performance options that boosted the Rebel Machine's horsepower to 472 and its drag strip E.T.s to 12.73.