(first posted 9/22/2016) Motor Trend’s 1967 Buyers Guide was particularly comprehensive: in addition to covering all the car segments, MT also looked at Specialty and Utility vehicles. Plus they showcased the range of available options to dress up new cars, along with tables outlining major specifications and prices for the 1967 products. Read on to see the details.
Though many people think of Checker Marathons as taxis or airport shuttles, they did sell to civilians too. Roomy, tough, thrifty and old-fashioned, the Marathon was like getting an old-school, early-1950s-style car in 1967.
SUVs became an enormous sales phenomenon in the U.S., starting in the 1990s, but off-road-capable products had been on the market for decades prior, including this broad array of offerings from 1967. Though sales were low, these vehicles did attract loyal followers.
Each of the Big Three also fielded a selection of vans, which could be outfitted for passenger or work duty. All placed the driver’s and front-seat passenger’s footwells ahead of the front-wheels, right in the front crumple zone. Safety clearly was not yet a priority…
What was a priority for Detroit, however, were profit-laden options and accessories. Motor Trend devoted quite a lot of coverage to detailing all the ways buyers could personalize their cars “for just a few dollars more…”
Industry leaders must have loved this section of the new car issue. Beyond picking the car, buyers could get lost choosing from the dizzying array of profit-driving add-ons. Best was the quote: “True owner satisfaction seldom comes with a bare-bones car.” That “optional” mindset ultimately hurt Detroit, but in the short-term there was no better way to ring the cash registers.
These alphabetized tables summed up specs and prices for all the cars covered in the Buyer’s Guide Issue. Back at a time when lots of folks loved to dream about and talk about cars, this coverage was like the automotive equivalent of baseball or football statistics: great fodder for hours of discussions with friends.
The missed it on the Scout. They have the one page where they talk about the SportTop in hard or soft versions and then on the other page say that it is only available in 3 versions. I’d have to dig though brochures to be certain but I believe that they still had the soft top versions of the Cab and Travel tops in 1967 and they also had a panel truck top available in some years though again w/o checking I don’t know for certain whether that was on the regular options order list that year or if it was a true special order.
The other place where they really messed up is on the engines with the comment that since the Commanche 4 was a sliced in half V8 that the V8 will fit right in. It will not fit in because the 4 is tilted 15 degrees more upright to clear the body. When IF finally did offer the 304 in the early Scout they moved the engine and trans forward significantly relocated the core support several inches forward too so that the V8 would clear the firewall and changed the steering box.
I expect that everything you say is true, but for those of us interested in the less usual stuff, any mention of these in a mainstream carmag at all was a minor miracle. Expecting them to get the details right on vehicles this arcane back then was probably not really reasonable. 🙂
I agree that even mentioning the Scout, Bronco and Universal is shocking for the period. I highly suspect that they miffed some (or many) of the details on the mass market vehicles too, I just don’t have as extensive knowledge of those as I do the Scout…
I suggest you print your diatribe and mail it to MT!
Does the word “pedant” mean anything to you? 🙂
Wow I guess I need to reread my Scout history again. I thought the big change was in 1966 and International went from the 80 series to the 800 series. A new IP, fixed windshield and moving the engine forward. And I thought the 266 cu in V8 was available then too. A friend of my uncle had a 1968 Scout 800 with the “big four”. A 392 V8 with one bank of cylinders missing.
My uncle had 2 Scouts. The 1st a 1964 Scout 80 4WD and the 2nd a 1970 Scout 800A with a 304 V8 and 4WD. Both had 3 speed manual transmissions. The 800A was the one I learned to drive a stick shift in. That V8 had the most wonderful idle sound I ever heard for any V8.
I remember seeing a Scout with the Sport Top. I thought it looked wrong because the top was just short of the tailgate.
Could the Bronco review hold the genesis of the term “SUV”? The version with doors and a top is the “Sports Utility” (page 122). Interestingly, that option turns the Bronco into a pickup truck. I found a 1966 Bronco brochure online and Ford used the term that model year, too. Anyone aware of a use pre-dating that?
Yes Ford marketed the pickup version of the Bronco as the “Sports Utility” body style and no I’ve never been able to find any other reference to that term that pre-dates the Bronco marketing materials. Not saying it doesn’t exist just that I’ve not found it and I’ve pokes around the corners of the internet a bit looking for it.
The generally accepted and legal definition of such a vehicle until at least until the 70’s was MPV or Multi Purpose Vehicle. IE my early 70’s Scout II certification labels state they meet the federal regulations for MPVs.
“Rollin’ in MPVs, every week we made 40 G’s…” is now stuck in my head.
I’m fairly certain I got one ride in a Checker taxi a loooonnnng time ago. I seem to recall jump seats.
Anyway, reading the description of a high architecture vehicle with a mostly flat floor – Checker invented the jumbo CUV 50 years before Chevy introduced the Traverse.
In the end, Checker wins, not that the bragging rights do much for them.
“Mother-in-law seat, by Charger”
I’m assuming this is reference to the padded armrest between the buckets. I’ve never heard this term. Was this popular at one time?
No offense to mother-in-laws, but for many that would be a pretty narrow seat, and I sure wouldn’t want that between me and my sweetie!!!! 🙂
Clark Griswold had the right idea with Aunt Edna.
It probably flipped up to form something like a bench seat.
It was a relatively common option in bucket seat Mopars with column shift automatics, including 2 door luxury cars. It was a padded seat with a fold down back/arm rest.
They showed the wrong pic. Many Mopars had the option of either buckets with a console, as shown, or buckets with a padded center cushion and a column shift.
This latter mentioned one is the “Mother-in-Law” seat.
The expression “mother-in-law” seat is a very old one that pre-dated the Charger by decades. I recall the early days of cars had single accessory seats placed in odd locations. Possibly this was where the chauffeur would sit if the wealthy owner took the wheel. Some wag made a joke about his MIL and the nickname stuck.
Sportop = RAV4. Too bad IH couldn’t think of a way to make their cars “foreign” and cool!
Initially I misinterpreted the “Determine Your Needs” section under “Opting for Options” to be indicating that 81% of buyers were opting for automatic transmissions in 1967. I had to re-read that section 3 times before it made sense to me again. That would have been a staggeringly high percentage for the time if it were the case.
I’m only now coming to terms with the fact that I’m currently only driving the second vehicle I’ve ever owned with an automatic. I’m either a dinosaur or a slow learner, but just recently I’ve come to accept that I’d probably opt for an automatic if I were to buy something new today. I can’t decide whether to commend myself for finally understanding the appeal of not clutching and shifting, or to be ashamed of myself for having been “mainstreamed”.
I came to that conclusion several years ago when my only car was a stick shift and I came down the wrong way on my bottom step and heard my left ankle. I had to rent a car for a few days because it was too painful to drive mine due to having to constantly push the clutch pedal in and move that ankle.
3 weeks later I traded in that car for an automatic car and since then my primary car is a automatic. I do have a “fun” car/weekend car etc which is a stick but if something happened where I could not dive a stick for a while, I was not rushing around to get a car to get to work.
The table says 81.1% of 1966 buyers were selecting automatic transmission as an option. I’m not sure from the wording if that includes models on which an automatic was standard rather than optional (like Cadillac, which hadn’t offered stick shift since the early fifties). I’m guessing not, because even 9.0% sounds way too high for three-speed manual by 1966. (Note that take-up for four-speed manual is listed at 9.4% — were there any ’66 domestic cars that came standard with four-speed? I’m drawing a blank.)
Three-speed manual was probably most common on compacts, base-model pony cars, and low-end intermediates, where the extra cost of automatic or four-speed was a bigger chunk of the base price, but I assume that to get a three-speed stick on a full-size car by that point would probably have required a dedicated skinflint.
Manual transmission ended up having a resurgence as the popularity of imports grew, in part because imports’ manual gearboxes were often a lot more pleasant to use. A slick Toyota four-speed or five-speed manual was worlds away from the typical domestic three-on-the-tree.
Agree, that can’t be right. Maybe the author meant, “81.1% of all automatic buyers had to select it as an option…”. I.e., 19% of automatics sold came as standard equipment. Guessing, but seems more plausible to me.
It says 81.1% selected automatic as an option and 9.4% selected a four-speed manual; together, that’s 90.5%, which would mean 9.5% with whatever the standard-equipment transmission was for the model — and on some high-end cars (all Cadillacs and Lincolns, Riviera, Toronado, Thunderbird), automatic was standard, so maybe 5 or 6 percent had three-speed manual.
The Imperial’s executive suite is a sight to behold. I have a funny image of sitting in traffic and having an Imperial pull up in the left lane with a fancy executive sitting backwards looking right back at me with a scoff lol
That backwards facing seat was for the secretary to take dictation while the executive sat in the back.
Well that just makes my imagination run even more wild!
The Imperial’s ‘executive suite’ actually reappeared a few years ago in the Dodge Grand Caravan except, this time, they called it ‘Swivel ‘n Go’ for the kiddos in the back.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t executed very well. There wasn’t much room for the legs of even small children but, worse, was the sharp angle of the seats meant it was difficult for those same small children to reach the table. It turned out to be about as popular as the Imperial’s earlier version, lasting just slightly longer before being discontinued.
No doubt it was sacrificed (along with integrated booster seats and the AWD option) on the altar of Stow ‘N ‘Go.
Swiveling second-row captain’s chairs were a commonly offered option on full-size vans in the ’70s and 80s, and some VW Vanagon trim levels had fixed rear-facing second row seats with a removable table.
I wondered if VW had some input into the ‘Swivel ‘n Go’ seats since this seems like it was also around the time VW began selling a badge engineered version of the Grand Caravan called Routan.
I remember that! I thought it was kinda cool, but I knew that if I wasn’t facing forward, I’d surely be sick by the end of the trip.
I rather like Jeep referring to the CJ-5 (?) as the ‘Universal’, as well as the mention of the ‘Tuxedo Park’ model. I guess it was an attempt at a glossier, more chrome-laden urbane version but, from what I can gather, didn’t sell all that well. It’d be a good one to add to the ‘rare models’ CC series.
I wonder how a Jeep Universal Tuxedo Park would go over today.
It’s funny you mentioned the “Tuxedo Park” model. International also offered the Scout Aristocrat around 1969. These were efforts to bring luxury to the MPV or SUV type vehicles. But they were ahead of there time. The folks I knew and like my uncle, thought they were dumb and overpriced. They were looking for a rugged basic vehicle for hunting and fishing. They had the “good car” for other commuting.
When my uncle got his 1970 Scout new the “new car smell” was essentially cosmoline. But that quickly changed to “wet Labrador Retriever” when he owned it.
Grumman canoe on the Wagoneer. Another American classic 🙂
I see disc brakes were just coming into the picture. The Continental, Vette, Imperial & Thunderbird listed disc brakes as standard. The balance list them as an option.;-)
It is almost shocking to see only 2.2% opted for disc brakes. Either the buying public was uninformed, scared because they only came on those pesky, unreliable ‘furrin cars, or maybe just to dang expensive. Yet standard on just about every rig a mere ten years later.
Disc brakes were like optional engines back then. Most people were just happy with what they could get for the least money. Nowadays that’s definitely not the case.
Disc brakes were introduced as a specialty item, though they were accepted pretty quickly. Even Volkswagen didn’t make them standard in the 1975 Rabbit. There also were some limitations to availability. For example, pontiac’s 8 bolt wheels had integrated drums.
And how many American cars even offered optional discs in 1966? Incredibly few. Not a single GM car, to the best of my knowledge, except the Corvette. Discs only became available on many/most GM cars starting in 1967. Maybe on a handful of Chrysler and Ford cars.
Ford was single biggest proponent of discs, being the first after Studebaker to offer them, in ’65 (along with Corvette, on all 4 wheels) as standard on Lincoln and T-Bird, optional on Mustang.
In ’66 this was expanded to big Ford and Merc and in ’67 across the board.
A major leap forward occurred in ’68 when they made them standard if you ordered power brakes. They were able to do this by going to the much simpler , cheaper and more reliable single piston caliper. Previously, they used a Kelsey-Hayes 4 piston unit that required special wheels, adding further to the cost.
Chrysler was second after Ford in offering disc brakes on their cars. The problem with Chrysler, though, was the disc brake option was expensive. It was well over triple digits to get the disc brakes, then you had to get the power brake booster on top of that, bringing the total not too far from $200, a very princely sum back then.
The price did come down after a while and even some lower-level models started getting disc brakes as standard equipment. For example, it was one of the reasons the 1970 Dart Swinger 340 was more expensive than the similar Duster 340; the Swinger came standard with front disc brakes while they were extra cost on the Duster.
As has been mentioned in other CCs, GM really dropped the ball on disc brakes and, with the exception of the Corvette, were quite slow in offering them in even their most premium cars.
“A major leap forward occurred in ’68 when they made them standard if you ordered power brakes.” Chevy took the opposite approach, making non-power front discs standard for ’71 on pickups.
American Motors offered disc brakes as an option on various models in 1965, and they were standard on the 1965 Marlin. For 1966, in order to cut the base price, AMC made disc brakes optional on the Marlin.
I think that may have been the same Bendix system that Studebaker had introduced.
I remember discs being used with some frequency on big Fords by 1966. And I just had to look it up, and found that the Canadian Studes up through 66 continued to offer the Bendix system as optional. GM seemed to come later to the disc brake party than almost everyone else, particularly in seeing them widely adopted.
Studebaker offered the Dunlop licensed front power disc brakes starting with the 1963 model year, and were very popular on the GT Hawks, standard on the Avanti.
And I think if the buyer ordered a GT Hawk with any of the R type engines, the package included the power discs.
It’s possible any Studebaker model with an “R” package came with front disc brakes.
The tach is on a Chevelle, not a Comet.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen a forward control Ford or Chevy van that I forgot they made any, other than the Corvair based Greenbrier. Meanwhile, I still see Dodge A100s quite often. Was the A100 the better seller, or were they just that much better engineered or endearing to their owners?
Im positive that the A-100 was far outsold by the Econoline and Chevy Vans. Dodge outsold the GMC Handivan, but those were just a Chevy with different emblems.
Having owned an A-100 and A-108, as well as a later Econoline, Dodge had the crudest, most rugged product with bulletproof powertrains, including the 727 Torqueflite. Rust started to dissolve the Ford from the top down, while Dodge had not a trace. This is not a road salt environment, but warm coastal salt air.
Another factor is that the Dodge was still being made as late as 1970, where Ford had moved on to a more modern van. Perhaps the Dodge being available with a V8 also kept more of them alive longer, as they were more suitable for modern traffic.
Had Studebaker stayed in the market, selling only fleet, heavy-duty and taxi-spec’d sedans and wagons, it would have been detailed with these vehicles.
Nobody back then could have believed that the Jeep Wagoneer would soldier on until 1991 with not much more than a new grill, more chrome, wood paneled sides and a gussied up interior…..In 1991 it was using 1970’s technology in a 144 hp carbureted 360 V-8 with a 3 speed automatic without overdrive.
I wonder why they didn’t include the VW microbus ?
Because this guide was only for domestic vehicles.
In that case, they should have included the Chevy Suburban, and compared it to the International Travelall.
It’s possible that GM let the press know their trucks would be new for ’67 but hadn’t actually announced them or released pics at press time.
They also didn’t make note of the GMC Handi-Bus which was identical but for badges to the Chevy Sportvan.
Interesting about the disc brakes being optional, they were standard fitment on allmost everything we could buy back then,
I subscribed to MT from 1964 through the early 1990’s. As a young, college age 19 year old, I remember the introduction of the 1967 cars. I was, even then, leaning towards the “sport utility” vehicles and vans of the era. Our family purchased a new Scout 80 4X4 in 1964. To me, this trumped the Mustang 10 fold.
I believe in 1967 IH introduced the 266 CID V8 for the Scout. To this day, the first generation Scout brings intense emotion to my soul.
It is curious that MT did not mention the Chevrolet Suburban within the ranks of Travelall, Wagoneer and Checker. Also, no mention of the Jeep “Jeepster” in the mix.