While Ford, GM, and Chrysler have long dominated any story about the American muscle car era, you can’t get a complete picture of the auto industry during this time without mentioning the American Motor Company, or AMC. Long the neglected stepchild of the industry, AMC was always at the bottom of the sales charts despite producing a number of respectable performance machines like the AMX and Javelin.

Then there’s cars like the AMC Matador, an unremarkable vehicle in almost every aspect, and virtually unknown outside of AMC circles. That’s why an eBay listing for not one, but two AMC Matadors caught our eye. Besides being an obscure automobile, this listing offered two Matadors at both ends of the restoration spectrum, one being a rusted hulk barely worthy of the road, while the other was a purpose built, NHRA-certified drag strip racer. It’s the tale of two Matadors, and while AMC fans may be few and far between these days, for the right car(s) they’ll pull out their checkbooks.

The main draw of this auction was the 1972 AMC Matador set up for NHRA-IHRA racing, boasting a 401ci V8 bored out 0.60 over with J&E Pistons and a 477 Group 19 camshaft and Edelbrock R4B intake manifold. The rear differential wields 4:56 gears and is fed power by a beefy Turbo 400 automatic transmission with a 5,500 stall converter. In other words, you wouldn’t want to try and drive this Matador on the streets.

That’s what the rust-and-green colored Matador is for. While the eBay listing didn’t go into detail about the “running, driving, spare parts car”, it did represent an opportunity to build a formidable street car, rat rod, or just a cool commuter to start conversations at your local car show. Somebody obviously thought this was a good deal, offering over $2,000 for this pair of bullfighters without meeting the reserve. But since the listing is now gone, we wonder: was this a good buy, or an investment into obscurity?