SOMERS — Make no mistake about it, Somers resident John Cairo is a big fan of American Motors cars.

Cairo’s father, Albert, worked for the former Kenosha-based company for many years and always drove the latest AMC models. He and his son often would spend free time tinkering with them. And John also worked at AMC for about six months as a maintenance foreman in his first job after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

“You might say the American Motors’ blood kind of runs through my veins,” said Cairo, 47.

One AMC model that always caught Cairo’s fancy is the AMX, so much so that he has owned three of the muscle cars. The one now parked in his garage is a Big Bad Green-colored 1970 AMX, which he bought for $1,400 in December 1987. He has since paid about $5,000 to $6,000 to restore it to factory like-new specifications.

“To tell you the truth, when I first got the car I didn’t really care for the color but I wanted an AMX, so I just picked it up,” Cairo said of the psychedelic lime green shade. “But over the years, the color kind of grows on you. When you wash the car, you’ve got to kind of put sunglasses on because that color will blind you in the sun.

“Whenever I go driving it, everybody kind of turns around and looks at it because the color’s so unique. You don’t see it too often, and you can see it coming a mile away.”

Cairo said only 74 of the overall 4,116 AMX cars built in 1970 were painted Big Bad Green.

Technically, Cairo is the car’s second owner — the guy he bought it from never bothered to update the original title — and the story behind its purchase is an interesting one.

After getting laid off by AMC in late 1987 following the company’s purchase by Chrysler, Cairo was in the library one day scanning the newspaper for a potential job. He already owned a truck but wanted a project car to help pass time until he could go back to work.

While taking a break from his job search, Cairo discovered an ad for the AMX. When he went to the Neenah-Menasha area to look at it, he saw that it didn’t have a hood, a front grill, a bumper or a fender. But Cairo got in, started it up and drove the car for a bit. Then he paid the owner and told him he’d pick it up a week later.

Cairo got a new job at Dynamatic Corp. the next spring and had his AMX restored and back on the road by summer.

Over the 22 years since he made the purchase, Cairo only has put about 4,000 miles on its odometer — which now reads about 51,000 miles — and he takes it out for occasional rides in the summer and to local car shows, where he has won several awards.

“It’s a driver, it’s not a trailer car,” Cairo said. “I’ll drive it to wherever I need to go because that’s the most fun of all — to drive them. They’re a high-performance car. They’re designed to run, and it’s a pretty good, exhilarating feeling when you’re behind the wheel of that and you’ve got all that (325) horsepower ready to go.”

Cairo said he enjoys making minor improvements to the car each year and teaching his sons, Tyler, 13, and Nicholas, 7, about it. Its only drawback is that it doesn’t have a back seat, limiting the amount of turns his boys and wife, Caroline, can take coming along for rides.

Cairo also is in the process of restoring a 1970 AMC Mark Donohue Javelin, continuing his tradition of AMC car ownership, which began in high school with a 1976 Hornet in which he rebuilt the engine.

Despite being nearly 40 years old, Cairo’s AMX has given him few problems.

“It starts up every time,” he said, even after reinserting the battery following its winter storage.

Cairo’s biggest joy regarding his cars seems to be a sentimental one.

“It’s got that bond between me and my father,” he said. “Like I said, he worked for American Motors. He had American Motors cars. I remember driving in them with him.

“I wish he was still alive because then he could help me on some of these projects and whatnot. But at least I can hand down what I’ve learned from him to the boys. Then hopefully the boys will enjoy working on the car(s) because at the end of the day they’ll probably become theirs.”