Arie “The Flying Dutchman” Luijendijk won the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race on two different occasions, in 1990 and 1997. Anyone who has an open wheel career with two opportunities to kiss bricks and drink milk is going to be regarded as an all-timer, but throw in an overall win at the 1989 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1998 Daytona 24, and you’ve got one of the most successful North American series racers of all time. When you’re good at racing, you’re kind of expected to have a cool car, right? Arie didn’t disappoint here, as he apparently purchased this 1959 AMC Rambler American and treated it to a number of So-Cal-style hot rod aesthetic modifications.
With the Indianapolis 500 coming up on its now-traditional Memorial Day Sunday date, and the grandstand tickets 100-percent sold-out, there would hardly be a cooler thing to do than to go over to Bring A Trailer, buy this Rambler, and drive it over to Indianapolis for the event. You know, short of actually being in the race itself. About one in every 1,000 people in the U.S. will be at the track for America’s biggest motor race, but if you pull up in this old machine, you’ll be the coolest guy in the parking lot.
As of this writing, the auction is sitting just under $2,000 and there’s no reserve on it, so you could just walk away with one of the best deals in motoring history right here. The aesthetic is a little on the dated side, I must say, with matte black paint, ghost flames, hand-painted surf shop marketing on the doors, and moon caps on the wheels. That said, because this trend is now 15-20 years out of vogue, it’s a unique look in 2026 that is showing its own form of patina and driven miles. This is a driver-grade kind of car that you could rack up some miles without feeling bad about it.
Ride The Wave
Luyendyk finally sold the little AMC two-door sedan to the current owner back in 2022. The listing shows that the interior was trimmed with a nice set of Coco mat floormats, a retro-style modern radio, lap seatbelts, and a stylish beer tap handle fashioned as the three-speed column shift knob. While the car looks hot rod on the outside, there’s plenty of room for improvement under the hood in the horsepower department. Currently the car is equipped with its original 196 cubic-inch inline-six, and while 90 horsepower is plenty for getting around, a few hundred more wouldn’t be out of place. There are a handful of readily available V8s that could fit in that engine bay for not much cash. Or a medium-powered EV swap wouldn’t be out of place, either.
Bring A Trailer
In any case, the bidding ends on Thursday, so you’ve got just over a week to fly up to Massachusetts where the car is being sold, and drive it around 1,000 miles to the Speedway for the festivities on May 24. That’s plenty of time to stop in to some cool car museums, and tent camp along the way for even more adventure. Kick it old school, man. Arie probably would.
There’s nothing particularly stand-out about this car, it isn’t fast and it isn’t valuable, and it won’t attract much attention at any car shows, so you’re free to modify it in any way you see fit when you’re the winning bidder. Personally, I would chop the top a couple inches, repaint everything but a square where the surf shop callouts are on the doors in a bright traditional Dutch orange—because flat paint is a dead trend—and pop a junkyard LS engine under the hood, then let it eat. This would make a great summertime daily driver, and you can tell everyone you’re driving the same car a two-time Indy 500 winner once owned. I’d keep the beer tap and the moon discs, though.
