The AMC 401 V8 engine doesn't have the same level of notoriety as some of its competitors, but it was a top spec powerplant for some of AMC's most iconic cars.

Amid all the criticism, AMC's achievements often get overlooked. Consider the 401 engine. Even in the emissions era it put out roughly as much horsepower and torque as the 500ci Caddy motor of the ...

When Jeff Latimer of Southern California’s JGM Performance Engineering advised us he was about to build an American Motors 401 for an AMX, it brought back memories of the way AMC muscle cars ...

Therefore, the dealership received AMC's blessing, and both the batch of cars and the 401 engines began being shipped to Arizona in 1972. Christened 401-XR, the engine-swapped Gremlin was nearly ...

This 1974 AMC Gremlin got a V8 engine swap to ape the special-edition Randall-built XRs of the day. The Takeaway I haven’t driven a lot of cars from the Malaise Era, and never really wanted to.

This 1974 AMC Gremlin got a V8 engine swap to ape the special-edition Randall-built XRs of the day.

Still wearing its original paint and powered by AMC's biggest V8, this 1-of-776 survivor captures the last blast of the ...

AMC's biggest block, the 401, came for the ’74s, and the 258 left, leaving the 360 2V as the base engine. This coincided with the intro of the lower-cost Cherokee SJ.

Some of these old Jeep and AMC models have faded into obscurity, but that doesn't mean they're not significant.