These Ford pickups and vans from the 70s with their bold side graphics are getting mighty scarce. But not only did I find this F100 the other week, but two or three days later, I found the Econoline van counterpart. A double flashback.
Here’s the rear end of the pickup. It’s also still sporting its original wheels.
Here’s the van. It’s unusually rusty for these parts, so it must have come from salt country. Well, if you’re going to rust all over the outside, brown is the color to have. This still has its original wheel covers too, the kind that imitate Ford’s alloy wheel of the times. That design was just a wee bit bit overused, eh?
Say what you want about the 70’s, but I liked these kind of graphics. Hell of a lot more interesting than 50 shades of gray and beige.
I was just mentioning the other day to a friend too that you don’t see many pickups with elaborate custom paint jobs anymore. They were very common in the 80’s and early 90’s. Many would have scenes painted on them.
I can’t even find a picture of it now and don’t know what the style is called, but it wasn’t the kind that was done to look sporty or tough, though those was around too. It was more of an attempt at a classy look. They were tacky but I still kinda liked some of them.
Did Ford use those wheelcovers before 1980?
From the 1978 Fairmont Futura Brochure….
A small size of the alloy wheels appear as an option for the Fairmont in 1978. These were also an option for the Mercury Zephyr. Later they were used on the Mustang and Capri.
I seem to recall the 1978 LTD came with an optional wheel that looked like this only larger (5 lug like the van) rather than 4 lug like the foxes.
When I bought my 78 4dr LTD in 2003, the previous owner had used those wheel covers the van has. I thought they looked good. When I lost the car to fire (caused by my stupidity) I kept em. Still got em. Just currently don’t own anything they fit in with. They don’t look right on the 76 Grand Marquis.
Those also became a very popular “generic” hubcap after Ford stopped using the design. I remember seeing them at PepBoys etc in the 1990s.
I hate the 70’s cars (design wise), exclude the muscle cars, imports, and Cadillac division.
However, I did love the bold colors used in this era.
Like banana yellow interior / exterior colors, metallic brown & cooper, powder light blue, amazing colorful decals and logos. The crushed velvet & velour interior and cheesy special editions like the “Levi” edition Gremlin. Which had blue jean material throughout the interior.
Soon you’ll learn to love the Brougham as the rest of us have.
And yeah, I do miss the colours in cars of this era. Seeing every car is either white, gold, black, or grey with either a black or grey interior doesn’t inspire any sort of confidence in what the driving or passenger experience is going to be like. Versus, say, a 1976 LTD where it looks like you could fall asleep in the passenger seat.
I was always fascinated by the conversion van era. I loved looking at the results of the hard work put into both the interiors and exteriors.
As a child in the 70’s, I had quite a few picture books featuring conversion vans.
I also have a memory of my Dad installing colorful graphics on the side of his green pickup back in the day.
These are fun! That truck needs a couple of surfboards in the back. Glad to see someone enjoying the van to the fullest too. The vintage bikes on the back really complete the time warp effect.
Yes, we are working towards the complete collection of the Free Wheelin’ Ford Trucks from the late 70s.
We snagged the Bronco here. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/1978-ford-bronco-free-wheelin/
Beautiful truck. I also grew up in this era and still live it, as anybody who reads my posts know’s by now. I have the 78 Pinto version of these in that Silver Metallic with the multi-color stripes that go over the roof and hood. However my favorite vans are the 69-74 design which only got this kind of look if the owner did it. Which plenty did.
Yes, I had a ’74 E-100 van with airbrushed graphics outside, shag carpet and paneling inside. It also had those “bean shaped holes” aluminum wheels sporting 60-series “Pos-A-Traction Torque Twister” tires.
I love the period accurate Schwinn on the back of that van. I have a ’77 Varsity in that exact same color.
So you’re the guy that stole my Varsity off my apartment patio back in 1980!!
Nope… My Dad bought it for me for my 17th birthday in 1977 when I was getting too tall to ride my ’71 Stingray (of the same color, BTW)….
I know this thread is about trucks but wanted to share this anyway as it could be considered be the pinnacle of Ford graphics. My dad had one of these Cobra IIs for a very brief period when I was a little kid. They came also in white with the red and orange graphics and white with multi-shade blue graphics in the same design. It was a theft recovery at the insurance company he worked for at the time and they allowed some employees to use the recoveries until they went to auction. I truly thought at the time it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and almost cried when it had to go back but Dad said it was too small for his 6’2″ frame.
Ah, yes, the 70s, when horsepower went down the drain and all the car companies added “excitement” by way of decals and (fake) mag wheels. When some of the most powerful and fastest vehicles on the showroom floor came standard with a large empty bed or box behind the passenger compartment.
At least the 70’s stripes have held up better than the 90’s splashes, squiggles and splotches
I love the look of the West coast mirrors on the old trucks, even if this truck only has one.
The graphics on that Ford pickup qualifies as a Deadly Sin if you ask me 🙂
Friends of mine a F100 with stick on woodgrain it blistered off the bonnet from engine heat they got lucky as their ute was a galvanised Aussie built model it didnt rust like most of them it just drank fuel and steering cross links wide wheels on the front not recommended on less than perfect roads.
That cool looking Econoline has Indiana plates on it and I am surprised it is still around. I am not surprised the F100 is still around, but I am surprised at the lack of patina as well as how well the graphics have held up.
Didn’t Ford have a name for those tape stripe packages back in the late 70’s? Free-Wheeling, or something like that? Some were nice looking.
Yes Bob, the 1970’s “Free Wheelin’ ” packages. Were just mentioned. I recall a *Spring Wheels* drive to move the metal back then too. The 1979 Mustang Indy Pace Car had a companion silver F150 package. Don’t forget the Pinto, Maverick & Mustang II “Stallion” package. Cheers folks.
I’ve got the 77 and 78 Free Wheeling catalogs as well as the 77 “Spring Wheels” sales brochure. Those “Free Wheeling” packages were expensive. I have the 78 and 79 “Light Truck Buying Made Easier” guides and some of those packages cost over $400.
These Free Wheelin’ Fords also had unique interiors. Here is the pickup interior:
http://barnfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Free-Wheelin-Interior.jpg
They also made a 1979 Ford Indy Pace truck that was a similar package.
http://www.indytruck.net/index.html
For years I though my Dad’s ’79 Ford F-150 was a Free Wheelin’ Ford, but it turns out it actually may be a Pace Truck (it was repainted in the early 80’s before my dad bought it).
Pretty well kept interior, except for the usual floorpox. Any story about the sad quality of sheet metal in the 70s?
That interior was just from a google search. These Ford trucks held up pretty well, especially compared to the GM trucks of this era. My dad had his until about 1997 and it was still pretty solid, but it did have some body work done over the years.
I had one of the Indy 150s briefly in the early 00s. Rusty as heck and it leaked oil like a sieve. That 460 was a serious torque machine though.
My dad’s truck was a 460 too, ran very strong but my dad still curses the gas mileage to this day. I remember he had a hard time selling it because of the of the engine, nobody wanted the gas guzzler. He sold it for next to nothing. In hindsight I should have bought the truck then. I know today, if I’d buy it in a second if I came across the same truck.
It was the same thing here in Brazil. They started using giant decals on the 70s and only stopped on mid-90s if I recall correctly.
They were especially proud of their turbo diesel pickup trucks, as can be seen by the decals
A very strange marriage of ’60s and ’90s aesthetics on that F-1000.
The black one? Yeah, down here we have some strange things from time to time, and that F-1000 is just one of these cases. This 5th-gen F-Series was made here from 1971 all the way to MY1992, and this black one is one of these.
Ford jumped from the 5th-gen straight to the 8th-gen in 1992.
Here another picture of the MY1992
It wasn’t just the vehicles, either; in suburban Denver was a high-volume Ford dealership, Goodro Ford. Their signage wasn’t a standard blue oval; it was big black block letters on alternating vertically-staggered yellow and orange panels. The available pics (this one, this one, this one) allow one to discern that the livery was very much like that of the contemporaneous Doritos corn chips. The fun part: ever vehicle sold there had a sizeable decal rendition of the orange-and-yellow
D O R I T O SG O O D R O F O R D sign on the decklid or tailgate.I like these wheel covers. And the wire spokes great rims.
These Free Wheeling packages weren’t cheap though. This is from the 79 Ford Truck Buying Made Easier book.
Last one.