REARVIEW MIRROR
1965 RAMBLER AMBASSADOR WAGON
NUMBER PRODUCED: 12,513 (8,701 with V-8 engine)
ORIGINAL PRICE: $2,970
VALUE RANGE: $6,160–$8,800
AMBASSADOR FOR LIFE
THE GOLD 1965 AMBASSADOR WAGON NAMED LOVELY RITA HAS BEEN PART OF SUZANNE EDMONDS’ LIFE FOR 48 YEARS
Jonathan A. Stein
Suzanne Edmonds was the youngest of three daughters to a father who took his cars seriously. Story time con- sisted of reading aloud from Automo- bile Quarterly.
Formerly a Ford family, on April 1, 1965, they took delivery of a Ram- bler Ambassador 990 Cross Country wagon. Finished in Barcelona Taupe with a Frost White roof, the Ambas- sador was fitted with the 327 V-8 and Borg-Warner three-speed automatic. The car was special-ordered with- out power steering, while they also deleted the driver's side headrest so Mom wouldn't mess her hair.
From the beginning, the Rambler had a tough life. “My mother was an artist who liked to go off road in the Eastern Sierra to paint,” says Suzanne. “She kept hitting the undercarriage and Dad got tired of fixing the transmis- sion.” So in 1972, her parents replaced
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the Rambler with the Wagoneer now owned by Suzanne’s son.
The Rambler then passed to middle sister Deedee, and it became Su- zanne’s when she turned 16 four years later. It served her through high school and college, but it remained behind when she started graduate school in Baltimore in 1984.
Her parents drove it occasionally, but after 1989, it sat while Suzanne started her career. In 2009, Lovely Rita joined Suzanne, husband Rick and son Matt in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the couple be- gan their first ever restoration. The only problem was that neither Suzanne nor Rick had any experience. “We pulled the seized 327 and a local shop rebuilt it,” she says. Luckily, the transmis- sion and rear axle needed little more than cleaning and servicing. Rust was limited to surface corrosion in the front cowl and inside the tailgate. They tore out the rodent-infested interior and stripped the car to bare metal. Rick, a retired satellite operations engineer, then rebuilt all the electrical compo- nents and Suzanne learned that “the only thing harder than taking a tailgate off is putting it back on.” After Rick
cleaned and stripped the engine com- partment, a local body shop sprayed one panel at a time, before the entire car was treated to more color and the clearcoat. During reassembly, Rick fitted a new wiring harness.
Using NOS fabric Suzanne had found years earlier, Ace Upholstery in Flag- staff crafted a new interior, while she and Rick fitted correct replacement carpets. The only visible concessions to originality are radial tires and the Flowmaster dual exhaust, which was Suzanne’s 50th birthday present.
A longtime member of the AMC Ram- bler Club, Suzanne loves that people don’t take themselves seriously. Despite being an “old lady’s car — because everywhere you go little old ladies wave at you —” it has consistently done well at all kinds of shows. “It kind of scares the crap out of me,” Suzanne says, “because, after all, it’s just my car.”
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