'75 Ford Granada

CraigsList ad said: Very clean car. Drives great very dependable. Has brand new air shocks in back, new drive train, tires, and exhaust. Has a 250 straight 6 engine and its a 3 speed on the colomn (3 on a tree) it has 116k miles. Drove it 30 miles a day for a couple weeks in summer there and back with no problems. Super good gas mileage. Only thing it needs is a brake line. Broke when i moved it the other day. If your looking for an old school that wont brake your pockets this is the one. Have original title and dealer papers. Any question please text or call 7153023215. Serious inquires only. Price negotiable. Might trade for a newer car 99 and up. Let me know what you have if its not worth a mint 40 year old car please dont waste my time thank you. MUST SELL ASAP. Will trade for wheeler or

Not mine, yadayada. But i've been watching the price fall steadily... And in case you didn't count the number of pedals, I'll tell you: 3.

http://wausau.craigslist.org/cto/3640415998.html $1300 obo

Knew a guy with a 302/3spd on the floor Granada...except 2nd gear was out, so more like a 2spd on the floor...

Cool car.

I cannot believe that I want one of those. But I do.

Nice to know they came with manuals... I wonder how rare a 4-dr/manual combo is...

Now, here's where things get awkward: $1300 seems like a hell of a lot of money for a Granada. OTOH, there don't seem to be many around. Could it be that there's enough scarcity and just enough demand to make them worth more than scrap?

Waiting for a geographically convenient $300 example...

My second car was a 77 Granada. It was an unparalleled example of automotive awfulness. Mine was the 302 automatic, and it was so slow it could barely make it up steep hills, but yet still yielded less than 15mpg. The brakes were decent, but the steering was bloody awful, too. Why anyone would lust over one of these cars is completely beyond me.

Here's mine, photo taken some time during the winter of 1986/87:

In high school, my best friend had access to his dad's Granada ESS with a three speed stick. His daily driver was a '70 Bronco.

Woman next door to me had a nice blue model in automatic with plastic on the back seat. Her grumpy old Italian husband made her get rid of it because "it's old". He bought her an Escort. 8 years and 28,000 miles later, he made her get rid of it because "it's old".

Now, 30 years later she still misses her Granada. The only car I've seen with a trunk light on a 10 ft. spool so you change a tire a night.

Dan

I probably like them because I'm too young to have actually had one as my only car. They are cool because they are rear wheel drive, this one has a manual transmission, room for a V8, and is ugly enough to start getting cool again. The whole part that it's rwd, manual transmission, and (room for a) V8 are almost all mutually exclusive things in modern cars.

Dig up the article on that Fairmont track car, you'll put a check in the mail before tomorrow.

In reply to 914Driver:

I don't know whether you're being this specific, but it's the next-generation Granada that's on the Fox platform like the Fairmont.

This one's on the Maverick platform, I believe.

So, no Fox-body Mustang go-fast bits. OTOH, double A-arm front suspension. Wonder how Mavericks/Granadas/etc respond to the "Shelby drop" lowering of the upper A-arm's inner mount?

I confess I'm getting this at least in part from Wikipedia, which refers to this generation of Granada as the last of the Falcon platform.

I was speaking in generalities.

In reply to 914Driver:

In that case I agree wholeheartedly...

A VERY non-factory front end alignment did wonders for those cars.

ransom wrote: In reply to 914Driver: I don't know whether you're being this specific, but it's the next-generation Granada that's on the Fox platform like the Fairmont. This one's on the Maverick platform, I believe. So, no Fox-body Mustang go-fast bits. OTOH, double A-arm front suspension. Wonder how Mavericks/Granadas/etc respond to the "Shelby drop" lowering of the upper A-arm's inner mount? I confess I'm getting this at least in part from Wikipedia, which refers to this generation of Granada as the last of the Falcon platform.

A lot of vintage Mustang bits work on Granadas. I have Granada brakes on my Mustang - bolt right on.

ransom wrote: I confess I'm getting this at least in part from Wikipedia, which refers to this generation of Granada as the last of the Falcon platform.

Likely because the Falcon was the basis for the first generation mustang platform, I do believe...which morphed into lots of stuff.

Kind of like how the Fox Mustang is really the Fairmont platform...and they still used a lot of that up through (where my knowledge gets REAL fuzzy) at least the SN95 Mustangs.

I had one of these, except mine was a 3 speed on the floor. It was like shifting a truck. No power steering or power brakes either. Can't for the life of me remember why I wanted the damned thing.

The Ford Granada was my very first favorite car---- when I was 4-5 years old or so. I guess I just found the "face" to be friendly. Obviously I had no idea of what magnificent POS they were!

I'd kind of like to have one.....just as an around town beater.

sigh

In reply to DoctorBlade:

What I love about this place is that I honestly have no idea whatsoever whether that's a sigh of Granada longing or of exasperation because there's a thread with multiple people suggesting that they have any use for one besides stealing its knuckles and brakes for a Falcon...

These cars weren't that bad. My dad bought a '78 Monarch which was the Mercury version of the Granada. It was a 4dr with a 302 2bbl carb and the 3 speed auto. Being that is was the Falcon/Mustang platform it was a good car for what my dad wanted. Power was good for it's day and on the highway it would do 20+ mpg! With gas less then $1 back then that was good mileage. I did try to get my dad to buy the Fairmont as it was new that year but he was a big car guy and going from a '72 full size Ford to the Monarch was as small as he was going to go. In fact in '85 he replaced the Monarch with a Grand Marquis. Remember that Ford had the LTD, the Torino/ LTD II, the Granada, the Fairmont, and then the Pinto as part of their car line.