DIALED IN
Allan Kremkau’s
American Express
By Van Abernethy
PHOTO: VAN ABERNETHY
A
llan Kremkau still vividly remembers the day he excitedly told his
dad about the 1972 American Motors
Gremlin that was for sale at their local
AMC dealer in Orlando, Florida. Allan
was 17-years-old at the time and admits he
had an undeniable attraction to the curious
looking little car. The year was 1973 and the
Gremlin that caught h is eye was barely a year
old, having just 10,000 miles on the odometer.
“When I first saw the car sitting outside the
AMC dealership it was yellow with black ‘Gremlin X’ stripes on it and was priced $2,100,” Allan
distinctly recalls.
Gremlins were hardly thought of as muscle
cars, although this particular model did pack
a punch with its factory 304ci V8 engine and
three-speed manual, floor-shift transmission.
When Allan first wheeled in to the dealership to
take a gander at the car he quickly realized that
someone had already taken the car to the drag
May 2016
strip. Ironically, the Gremlin had a couple stickers on it from Byron Dragway in Illinois, a track
located more than 1,200 miles from its current
home in an Orlando dealership.
“I’ve never tried to trace the car’s brief history
before I bought it,” says Kremkau, “but it was
pretty obvious someone had been drag racing
the car even before I got it.”
Since he figured his dad didn’t need to know
this information, Allan quickly scraped off the
drag strip decals before his dad saw them, especially considering how his father had already
mentioned that he didn’t figure his son would get
into too much trouble with the car since, after all,
it was “only a Gremlin.”
The opposite was actually true, however.
“I lost my license twice in the car,” Allan laughingly admits, having been slapped with multiple
citations for offenses ranging from street racing,
speeding and showing off in some form or fashion.
“I actually got a ticket once for ‘exhibition of speed’
which when translated basically means ‘showing
power of car’.”
Specifically, Allan was roasting the tires off
the Gremlin in a parking lot when a policeman
came along and thought his burnout was quite
excessive, so he ticketed him for it. It’s amazing
this car even held together for more than a couple
years considering that premeditated abuse was
the only life the pint-sized vehicle ever knew. It
featured no frills from the factory; it had no air
conditioning, no power steering or other options
- nothing but an AM/FM radio.
“I honestly think the guy who owned the car
before I did ordered it like this with the intention
of drag racing it,” says Kremkau.
Right around the time Allan was turning
18-years-old, he thankfully discovered the organized drag racing scene, which was thriving in
his native Florida.
“My brother was doing some part-time mechanic work and one of the guys in the shop said,
‘Hey, we should go to the drag strip’ and that’s how
it all started for me,” remembers Allan.
When the weekend came, the boys traveled to
nearby Lakeland Dragway and Allan was hooked
immediately on the sport of drag racing. A short
time later, he took the Gremlin to Orlando Speed
World Dragway where the car clocked 14.70s in
the quarter-mile, which was nothing to sneeze
at 42 years ago. One thing led to another and
pretty soon Allan had completely tapped out the
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