“It was my grandmother’s,” the fellow said as he unlocked the driver’s-side door. He was polite, but obviously in a hurry. “It was handed down to my mom, and now to me. I wish it were in better condition.”
“I think it’s perfect!” I called out as he got in.
The Mustang Grande was a higher-trim version of the “secretary special” coupe, the kind of car a young, single woman would drive then. Its $3,117 sticker price is equivalent to a shade under $18,000 today, putting it within that secretary’s reach.
You can’t touch a modern Mustang for less than $22,200, and given that its base V6 pushes 305 hp, it’s no secretary’s car anymore. Grandma’s Grande, if it packs the base six, runs at a much tamer 145 hp. The comparison is academic anyway. Modern secretaries prefer to be called administrative assistants, and prefer to drive cute little CUVs. Those CUVs are every bit as long as this Mustang, but a lot less of that length is in the snout.
The ’71 Mustang Grande has gotten the full CC treatment before; read it here. That this is the second to appear here is remarkable given that Ford made only 17,406 of them. 65,696 copies of the non-Grande coupe were made. But maybe those weren’t bought by eventual grandmothers who passed them down through the generations.
The vinyl top is in remarkably good condition for the slight rust and paint chipping on the rest of the car. I guess this is the right color to be considered a “pony” car. lol
Wow, I forgot what a snout this generation of Mustang had. The front overhang almost looks longer than the back.
Nice find, but I wouldn’t mind hearing about the SWB Land Rover in the background as well. I’m just sayin’.
Cool find. We don’t see many original Mustangs of that vintage here in salt country. This one has lived a very sheltered life. Is it just me, or are these starting to become more popular among the under 40 crowd (people too young to remember them when they were ordinary used cars)?
This car’s color combo looks to be pretty much identical to my father’s 72 Mark IV, though the vinyl roof was a different material and could have been a touch darker. Ford painted a lot of cars in that color in 1971-72.
I tried to talk my mother into one of these in 1972 to replace a 64 Cutlass. Hey, I was 13, lighten up. 🙂 I’m glad she didn’t bite. The 72 Cutlass Supreme was enough of a penalty box in the back seat, this thing would have been a torture chamber back there.
Who can turn the world on with a smile?
Besides the Mustang, there’s lots of interesting stuff in the background, the Land Rover and the Land Cruiser too.
First thing I thought, too, Carmine. Mary Richards, whose biggest problem according to her boss was that she had a lot of spunk!
Inline 6 (I6)…not V6 — that would come a few years later. And a very agrarian engine at best, but it does have a torque curve as flat as a football field. My ’62 Ranchero has a similar motor, and basically the first two gears get you across the intersection. Then it’s into 3rd gear, which is perfectly fine at 30 or 80 mph…
Yes…fixed it!
Nice find Jim. It looks to be all original. The 6 is probably rarer than the V8. If it has the 6 I believe it would be the 250 C.I.D. inline engine.
I can assure you, the likelihood of a six is low. This car almost certainly has a V8, most of them did, and the tinted glass implies AC, which clinches it.
Agree with Roger. By that time the mustangs of my memory were with “big” V8s and seldom driven by secretaries. I seem to recall the focus starting to change in about 67. One of my friends in 69 had one of these with a 428 or 429. They left common sense behind and tried to cleave to the go fast crowd.
Of course my memory is somewhat skewed and foggy. Who knows.
It has an almost 50/50 chance of it being either a 302 or 351. The 429 was theoretically available, I think there were a good 3 or 4 ’71 Grandes built that way.
I’m going to get flak for this but the 71s were a backward step style wise.Also the 71 Javelins.Thanks for a secretary’s special!
The 71-73 Mustang is a great example of prioritizing the way a car looks in top trim and not worrying about everything else. The Mach I with its fastback styling, color-keyed front bumper, fancier wheels, wider tires and dual exhaust outlets was a great looking car. I think it got even better looking with the longer bumper for ’73 which it wore well.
On top of that the Mach I had one of the most distinctive exhaust notes of any car from any era. For me that became “the sound” for the Ford small block V8.
The coupes were way too large for the amount of space inside and came off as poorly designed. The body looked too wide on most models because of the narrow track and tires. The ’69 pulled off the Grande concept much better and was a better looking car, better looking in fact than any non-Fastback Mustang.
The 71-73 coupes without sport mirrors looked like Mercury Montegos to me.
The Audi S5 is a good example of a modern car that looks fantastic with all the goodies but really plain in base trim.
It seems that Ford designers got into the habit of using preceding Shelby styling cues to design the following mainstream Mustangs. The 69 Mustangs(namely fastback) borrowed heavily on the aggressive prow, scoops and spoilers of the 67/68 Shelbys and the 71s borrowed heavily on the 69/70 Shelby’s entirely resculptured front end and NASA scoops. Of course, sans scoops, fastback styling and stripes it looks plain and bulgy.
I still think the Coupe styling is hampered by the tunneled rear window, same with the 71-73 Cougar cousins. It makes the back end look stubby
My memory of ’71-’73 Mach 1s is as beat up used cars in the hands of third or forth owners that didn’t wash them. That’s as diplomatic as I get. I don’t recall seeing them during the ’70s much at all, but there were a few of them rattling around in the early ’80s in my home town. Similarly, Chevelles, Nova SSs, Camaros, and Plymouth GTXs were being driven into the ground by people that cared enough not to drive 6-cylinder Mavericks, but didn’t care enough to take any care of them or modify them to run on available gas without sounding like school buses instead of the performance cars they once were. As car obsessed as I’ve always been, I didn’t have a clue why my college room mate bothered telling me about the Mach 1 project car he had back on the family farm. I couldn’t have been less excited if he was talking about trying to fix a totaled 5-year old Econoline van. I actually considered a Mach 1 to be less desirable than any other Mustang at the time. Maybe I still do, unless you include the V6 tanks they build now.
Another friend in college had a convertible from the giant Mustang years. He always had interesting cars. The first one was a Charger, either a ’68 or ’69. It was green, had a 318 V8, automatic, and 4 bucket seats divided by a full length center console. I think he had a Jeep CJ too. Then he went through a motorcycle and British sports car phase. He restored a Spitfire while driving a Midget. I think that he had soured on the whole concept before the Spitfire was done, but at least I got to drive one Spitfire that drove as nicely as it looked as a result. His next car was the gargantuan soft top Mustang. It had a very late ’80s aesthetic, in that it was black with big BBS black mesh, polished lip wheels. He’d built the 351 Cleveland engine, probably swapping on the latest MPFI system and roller rockers, knowing him. It had a 5-speed and a custom made, intergalactically tall rear axle, intended for saving gas on his commute to visit a girlfriend at another school that he’d broken up with by the time it was installed. My Mach 1 prejudices didn’t hold much sway over my appreciation for the convertible. It was pretty clean, while Mach 1s always looked like somebody threw a JC Whitney catalog at a less than graceful coupe.
I prefer the more toned down Mach 1 package from these years. Those just had the rocker stripes and fender script. No spoilers or
hokeyhockey stick stripes, no hood blackout. Just like the 71 in Diamonds Are Forever.The verts of this generation are surprisingly attractive to my eyes
There is a lot of hood on that car probably too much. Given the weak sales of the Mustangs probably sold to men 35-55 true believers. Disco and Bromance hadn’t quite arrived yet but this is a start. I think you could even get color keyed hubcaps on a Mustang! Considering sales quintupled for 1974 no doubt helped by OPEC I am sure a lot more secretaries bought the smaller car.
Having worked in a Mustang restoration shop, I can tell you that hood is SCARY! Why? Because it’s so long that you’re afraid it’s going to buckle on the way down. I’ve had the misfortune of that happening on one of my old Fords, and it’s kinda stomach-curdling when it happens. All you can do is push the kink back into place, but the hood is never quite the same again…
Jimmy Durante Mustang.
easy to see where Ford Oz got its styling cues from and its hubcaps those belong on a XC Fairmont.
For the love of God, someone needs to put whitewalls back on this thing! While they weren’t out-and-out screamers, nearly every Grande I’ve ever seen had at least a 302. A 6 cylinder secretary’s special of this vintage of Mustang is more likely to be a base coupe.
I rather like the Mustang Grande. It’s special, but not too special. Sometimes I prefer rides like these over the rolling cliche vintage Mustangs or 69 Camaro.
All I can see in that side profile is the poor leading the factory did on the c-pillar under the top! Interesting car though, and in pretty good shape for it’s age. I’m thinking it needs whitewalls or something, maybe just some custom rims to wake it up.
Man…gives one pause for thought. A 70-year-old grandmother today, would have been a twenty-eight year-old hot ticket back when this was new. Miniskirt…leather calf-high boots…a job working for power brokers. And this, the “style” ponycar…personal-luxury for those going up, but not yet there.
I remember those days. I remember this Mustang. A family-friend’s daughter, she’d have been 23…drove one, a 1973; it was her father’s car, but he’d all but abandoned it to her.
And yes, that girl with the long blonde hair and short hemlines…bubbly personality…wanted to give me pointers on how to get dates…she’s 61 this year.
She would have been a secretary to a guy that drove a black Electra 225 Limited.
The shortest of the 1971-1973 Mustangs was 187.5 inches long. That’s about 10 inches longer than a CUV such as a new Honda CR-V. This Mustang is a few hundred pounds lighter though.
Yeah, my CUV statement was a bit broad. CUV lengths vary. I did a little Internet sleuthing and found that (I think it was) the Nissan Rogue and whatever the Hyundai CUV is called are both about as long as this Stang.
You can see the seam line where the roof was mated to the quarter panel. On cars destined for a vinyl roof, a different process ( and one that was much cheaper and easier ) was used to fill the gap. Usually a combination of lead filler or Bondo and smoothed out. Metal roof cars had to be machined smooth which required more labor time.
What happens is that over time moisture gets in there and heat makes the material expand giving that appearance. Eventually the process was perfected and when vinyl tops declined in popularity it became less noticeable.
We used to call these the Torino Mustangs since, at least for 1971, especially with the Grande package like this it was hard to justify the difference between the two.
This vehicle is as far from it’s original winning design as the 1970 Thunderbird is as far from it’s original 1955 winning design.
Sometimes a model loses it’s way, and by this time, Mustang lost it’s way. Ford porked out their auto line. It is not an attractive era. The Torino became a pig. The Thunderbird became a whale. The Mustang – well – it looks like it was supposed to be some kind of a mini-Thunderbird.
You sat in this thing low to the street. The beltline was too high. The front end was too heavy. The rear end had no weight to it. Consequently it had poor traction. It spun out easily on any street that wasn’t dry. The front end got sloppy and lose with all that weight over the front tires. You couldn’t see very well over the dash and down that long hood. This era of Mustang was not a very good car.
It was such a sloppy thing, the Mustang II originally looked like an improvement. That’s how bad it was.
Sorry, but this through the ’73 completely validate the Mustang II. I love Mustangs, but these years reek. At least the II (which I’ve defended before) had similar interior measurements with a hell of a lot less exterior. And better sight lines, mpg, handling, etc.
Maybe not in the bragging rights area though….
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I just stumbled across this site while looking for parts. I am the owner of this Mustang. Sorry if I was in a hurry that day. I have since repaired the rear quarter and repainted the front fender where the paint cracked. In addition, I have redone the seats using tweed since the comfortweave is almost unobtainable. It is a 351 Cleveland with an FMX transmission. BTW, my grandmother was 63 when she bought the car as a dealer leftover in 1972 from Ford of Upland, CA.
Two current pics