I’ve always had a thing for the midsize ’70s Ford wagons: Gran Torino, Montego, LTD II and Cougar. The most likely reason is one of the first Matchbox cars I ever got was a metallic lime green ’77 Mercury Cougar Villager wagon, with opening tailgate.
image: ebay.com
It, along with my Pocket Cars Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham and Lincoln Mark IV, were almost always with me – in the car, outside, at the dinner table, etc. They are rough now, but all of them did survive my childhood.
This morning this ’76 Gran Torino Squire popped up on Marketplace, via the Finding Future Classic Cars fb group, and I had to check it out. You just don’t see these. Production was nothing compared to the LTD and LTD Country Squire wagons in the mid-’70s, likely due to the Torinos simply not having the interior room you’d expect for their size.
But I still like them. Not enough to buy this, but I enjoyed gawking at the photos of this survivor. I don’t recall ever seeing one, even in the mid ’80s when there were still Gran Torinos running about-albeit in increasingly Swiss-cheesed condition.
Though there were plenty of sedans and coupes-and related Rancheros. In recent times I’ve seen a few nice ones – a red and white ’75 Gran Torino coupe, brown ’76 Gran Torino Sport coupe (read about those two here), ’73 Gran Torino sedan (also in brown), blue base ’72 Torino coupe and an EXTREMELY rough ’72 Gran Torino sedan.
Per the ad: “This is a nice 43 year old wagon with just 75,000 miles. Very solid, a few dings, dents and scratches with nice interior, one tear in front seat. Runs and drives good with 351M engine. $5,000 OBO. Hard to find old wagons this nice. NOT PERFECT BUT NICE DRIVER.”
One thing’s for sure, you’d be the only one with one of these at the car show or cruise night!