User:Farna

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My name is Francis Swygert. I usually go by "Frank". I've been researching American Motors Corporation history and cars since around 1983. I have an interest in all aspects of the AMC hobby -- from the first Rambler prototype in the 1890s to the current crop of Jeeps; daily drivers, survivors, modified for show and/or racing, and restorations (not much into heavy four-wheeling though).

In 1987 I self-published a book on the history of the Rambler (I can't recall the title now, and have my only remaining copy packed away) that only covered vehicles under that brand name from 1950-1969. Classic Motorbooks International showed some interest, but decided that the title wouldn't sell well enough to meet their printing demands (300,000 copies over three years). They concluded that the work was good enough, but would only sell ~100,000 copies over a three year period and recommended a smaller publisher. Rather than immediately go that route, I decided to expand the work to include all of AMC. I decided to try self publishing since I'd been telling people in AMC clubs that I was writing a book, and many had helped with research. Although the finished product as crude (there was no readily available, inexpensive desk top publishing software at the time), over 200 copies were sold. This was not just a history, but also a basic restoration guide.

The expanded book was titled "The Compact Chronicles - American Motors Corporation, 1954-1988", and presented to Classic Motorbooks again in late 1990. They showed some initial interest, but had recently released an AMC title and didn't want another at the time. A smaller publisher offered to publish, but the recession in the early 80s forced them to back out of the deal. Intead of pursuing another publisher, I self published with the help of a local printer and desktop publishing software (PageMaker, on the printer's Macs). The excellent DTP software made the resulting book much better than the previous work, but the printing quality of photographs left much to be desired. Just under 500 copies were sold, mainly through AMC clubs.

By 1996 I decided that the book could use a major re-write. But I also wanted to gather more information, and have some discussion on that information. I decided that the best way to accomplish this was to start an AMC magazine, thus American Independent Magazine (AIM) was born, with the first issue printed in October 1997. This is a small "trade journal" style, black and white, quarterly magazine (http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html). The magazine has allowed me to work on articles and gather feedback before printing in a book. A few glaring errors had crept into the first book, and I didn't want that to happen again. The magazine has helped to solve a few mysteries and gather information from a wider range of resources over the AMC community that I initially didn't have access to. AIM has been in continuous publication since 1988, and I intend to continue for some time. An electronic as well as printed version is available by subscription only.

So what happened to the book? Well, I've been contemplating self-publishing a second edition, but ironically the magazine takes so much time it's hard to find the opportunity to work on the book! I don't want to just compile magazine articles into a book, but I don't want to publish a simple update of the former book either. I may end up printing something in between, or go with just a restoration/numbers guide. Patrick Foster has written a good history of AMC since my book came out (American Motors: The Last Independent, published in 1993; and AMC Cars: 1954-1987 An Illustrated History, published in 2004).

So now you know who's been editing a lot of the AMC entries in Wikipedia! If anyone has comments either add here, send me an e-mail (farna@att.net), or join the AMC-List mailing list (www.amxfiles.com, or www.amcgremlin.com).