Despite the wide variety of vintage dealer brochures available on oldcarbrochures.com, I still buy the real deal, and indeed have several bankers boxes full of them. I recently was looking through my copy of the ’75 Ford Wagons brochure when I noticed a bit of marketing sleight-of-hand.
At first blush that back seat looks tolerable, if not outright comfy. But look at how far the front seats are pushed forward; the steering wheel appears to be about an inch away from the driver’s stomach. And he’s not even really sitting in the seat, more leaning alongside it–I bet his legs wouldn’t fit in the footwells. I am sure this was done to make the Munchkin-sized back seat look like it would fit someone who had graduated from third grade. Nope, those back seats were not fun for anyone over 5’2″, I’d guess.
And how about this picture showing the cargo “space?” I think they had to rip out the driver’s seat to take that picture. This probably did not do Ford any favors at the time, once new car buyers actually walked over to a Pinto wagon and tried to sit in the back seat! But I’m sure the salesman was more than happy to show said buyer a much roomier Maverick sedan or stripper Torino “for a few pennies more per month”–with Tru-Coat, no doubt.
I still like the looks of the Pinto wagons, but please don’t make me sit in the back…
If you want some great originals you should check out kijiji.ca, oakville, Ontario area. Nice originals from the ’30s
All you mentioned Tom and more. The blue wagon cutaway has the earlier style thin seats. The green and tan seats are the later thicker style. The lady is sitting on the side bolstering and is not centered in the seat. Look how high the knees of the guy in the plaid pants are relative to his butt. You even sat too close to the floor in the front. What Ford is really saying is If you really wanted room you should buy a full size Country Squire.
And even in this promo image, the driver looks rather peeved to have the steering wheel scraping his belt buckle.
Perhaps the photo’s real goal was to show how she might fit sideways.
Mr. Stripes and Plaid is about to suggest folding the seat down, to the chagrin of the fetching redhead.
Note how small the middle pop-out window is in the little league photo. In every other illustration it’s been shamelessly stretched.
At least Pinto wagon rear passengers got an opening rear window (even if it was a smallish flipper-style). Vega wagon rear passengers had to made do with a large, fixed, glass pane. The Vega looked better, but air flow would be diminished in comparison:
The Vega looked better? Bah. I always thought there was something awkward abot the Vega Kammback but I just can’t put my finger on it. It just looks, well, odd.
I couldn’t see the rear seat picture, I was temporarily blinded by the plaid pants on the rear seat passenger, though the girl in orange has a nice bloom and come hither look to her.
She’s looking at Mr. Plaid and saying “If there was any room at all back here, we would totally do it”
Then the 85lb driver slides in and says “Got room for one more?”
Wacka-shacka-wacka-schacka……..
Has anyone ever made a Pinto themed porno?
What would be a good name for it?
Pinto Sutra?
Lidoguilla?
Samuel L. Bronckowicz Presents:
Rear Impact
The last picture has more appropriate Pinto sized passengers, though its seems that they made the kids look deliberately smaller?
Great (?) minds think alike, though I defer to the master! 🙂
LOL +1
I thought the Citroen Mehari ads from a few weeks ago would have made a good porn premise…
“Horizontally Opposed Twins: The Citroen Scissor Sisters”
A friend of mine in high school had an aqua Pinto wagon. Sitting in the front was only slightly more roomy than sitting in the rear. I have memories of him driving with the steering column impaling his chest.
We had neighborhood friends whose mother would occasionally give us a ride home from various places in her Pinto wagon (brown, of course) and I can attest to the uncomfortable back seat, even at age 11 or so.
Even today, when I go to new-car auto shows I like to sit in the back seats of the cars on display to see what the accommodations are like.
My Dad, Stepmom, sister and I took a trip to Disney World in early 1972. The Pinto was still a novelty, and at the rental counter in Orlando, Stepmom says “Oooh, let’s get a Pinto.” Dad gets a Pinto. A white coupe with the trunk (not a hatchback “Runabout”) with that awful light yellow-green interior.
My sister and I would have been about 11 and 13. Four people and their luggage in a Pinto on a hot Orlando spring day. The car was a) painfully slow and b) painfully uncomfortable, especially for those of us in back who had luggage wedged on and around us.
In high school, I had two friends with Pintos, a blue 71 and a blue 72. I sat in back in those several times too. I could do it then, but don’t think I would like to try it now.
Sitting in the rear seat of a Pinto…was like sitting in a barrel; with the lid removed, of course. Your knees are jammed up around your face; your butt is groping for the bottom of the chasm. You’re not even THINKING about leg and foot room; that’s not an issue yet. You’re trying to get your knees out of your face and get your backside onto something solid!
It was done that way deliberately so that Lido could brag about “more legroom” in the Pinto. It’s okay for little kids, of course; but as you say…anyone adolescent or older, is best advised to avoid it.
FWIW, I found the FRONT seat of the Pinto…at least the driver’s seat, which had an adjustment track (the passenger seat did not) comfortable. I’m six-two.
The wagon’s back seat was more comfortable than the hatchback’s although it’s been over 30 years since I’ve been in either. A 4 door Chevette’s back seat was a limo by comparison.
All I can say is that the styles of the 1970’s REALLY stunk, and I was guilty, too, but not to the excess of the gentlemen in some of the photos. I was more of a blue jean/flannel shirt/chambray work shirt type.
As cheesy as those ads are, I miss the realistic color painting illustrations once used so commonly in LIFE and LOOK magazines, though I grew weary of them at the time, especially when color photography was advancing rapidly in the printing industry. Kind of like going to a movie and it was in B&W!
The back seat picture looks like a parallel universe version of ‘That 70’s Show’-what if Red Foreman had given Eric a Pinto wagon instead of the Vista Cruiser? Nice plaid pants, Kelso….
The Pinto back seat was halved by the transmission hump that intruded the middle of it by a good eight inches, creating what I used to call two “butt cups”. Each cup was barely wide enough to seat a pair of narrow glutes, maybe a foot sqare. Rear seat passengers sat low with their tailbones tilted down from their thighs, and being 6’3″ meant my legs were jackknived with my size 13 inch feet were under the passenger seat, and my knees as high as my chest. This is with a consciencious front seat passenger that had slided the front bucket seat forward.
I used to get into the rear seat by backing up to the space created when the front seat back tipped forward and then backing into the rear seat while both my feet were still on the ground, then folding my feet up and swinging my feet into the car. To get out of the rear seat meant I had to do the reverse and have someone help me climb back out while I pressed against the folded front seat back.
Mini skirt fashions meant that girls often didn’t sit in the rear seat of most small cars. It was understood that us guys were the ones to scramble into the rear seats.
Gremlins and Beetles had no space for your legs. Riding in the back seat meant that you had to fold up your legs across the rear seat. But they were also flat back seats, unlike the butt cups in the Pinto and the larger, slightly less deep butt cups in Mavericks, Camaros, Firebirds and Mustang IIs. Having a flat rear seat gave one more possibilities to be comfortable than the butt cup arrangement.
The rear seat was really rarely used in Gremlins and Pintos. With the hatch opening immediately above the rear cargo space, the rear seats were usually perpetually folded up and that space taken up with cargo items. They were really solo and two person vehicles.
The design of the first generation of domestic subcompact clearly demonstrates an entirely different type of design thinking than what was found in imports and today’s vehicles. Low and sporty, Vegas and Pintos were more a miniature Camaro and Mustang than a useful sedan vehicle design found in the contemporary Toyotas and Datsuns at that time.
I just remembered that on early Pintos the front passenger seat was bolted to the floor without any adjustment available. This was changed sometime during the 1972 model run.
I knew a girl in college who had one of those models. You just have to wonder how much Ford saved by not making the passenger seat adjustable.
VanillaDude:
That “butt cups” term is hilarious–and appropriate for the Pinto Wagons back seat. I unsuccessfully tried to not laugh while reading the comments with my Kindle. I may or may not have gotten a few odd looks from other library patrons…
Vanilla Dude captures the Pinto experience exactly. Friends had a wagon that we took cross-country from Columbus to Omaha for another friend’s wedding, as the fifth wheel on this trip I got the back seat. Fortunately, I was still skinny and only 5’6″ and we had a pillow that exactly fit the “butt cup” so I fit reasonable well back there-headroom was quite good-and had only to endure the noise. Pinto wagons did have a lot of room in back with the rear seat folded, a bike would have fit easily in there. The back seats in the American subcompacts of that era were so low, just a cushion bolted to the floor pan, truly the designers were trying to emulate the pony cars and not something people could actually fit in. But we were young, what did we care about comfort-we had our own wheels!
I spent quite a few hours in the backseat of a brown Pinto wagon, driving to various backpacking trips from the Philly area. As the shortest of my friends, I always drew the short straw. One memorable one was at North Fork Mountain trail, in central West Virginia. Beautiful trail, along a long limestone ridge, but no water available. We saw a “road” on the topo map leading to about the midpoint of the trail, so we decided to leave ourselves a cache of water. My head hit the ceiling in the back seat a few times, but the Pinto made it up and back just fine. A couple years later we added a fourth hiker, and decided that one Pinto was too small – so we took two. The second was a newer hatch, with the full glass hatch door. We called it the Pincat, since it came from the factory with one incorrect badge. I don’t recall if it was a Pinto with one Bobcat badge or vice versa, but I was amazed that it made it all the way to the consumer without anyone fixing it.
A few years after that just two of us took a Chevette from DC to the UP of Michicgan, and honestly, I’m not sure the back of a Pinto was much worse than the front of a Chevette.
Hey at least these are real pictures, even if they are staged to make the interior look as large as possible, unlike the drawings used in 60’s brochures where they depicted the people at 2/3 or maybe 3/4 scale to make the interiors look cavernous.
The search for small people must have taken time though in fairness to Ford this car was meant to take sales from the VW beetle itself a cramped noisy POS Ford obviously thought anyone who could suffer a VW would feel right at home in a half sized tin can with no passenger space, then again the competition from Japan was equally poorly designed for full size humans, Ford NA could have simply assembled Cortinas and had a much better car.
Cortinas better? You’ve never seen what a N.E. Ohio winter can do to a Cortina… as bad as Pintos rusted Cortinas fared far worse in our climate. A Pinto would take roughly 7-8 years to become totally undrivable whereas a Cortina might make it to its fifth birthday. Mechanically Pintos were pretty reliable cars,
When I was a kid in Montreal, there were quite a few Brits who still bought cars from Ye Olde Countree and this included the Cortina. I am not sure if our friends in the South ever got them, but let’s hope they didn’t. No car rusted faster than a Cortina. Three years and they were a pile of red holes. Ford marketed them as an upmarket car in Canada.
The Cortina was sold in the US, but most of the dealers that carried them were dealers that sold British cars only. Not to many regular Ford dealers dealt in them. Note the names of many of these dealers for 56 and that stayed the norm, until they all pretty much went away with the Capri and Pinto being offered at full line L-M and Ford dealers.
I don’t have evidence, but my memory tells me that by the Cortina’s time it was being sold primarily in Ford dealerships. I know that was the case in Towson, where I used to see them.
I suspect that in 1956 Ford dealers were just barely waking up to the import boom and reluctant to be bothered to deal with an import, but by the sixties they were undoubtedly eager to have a VW competitor.
I’ve seen stuff, like copies of dealer ads, or matchbooks, that do indicate by the late 60’s more full-line dealers started carrying the Cortina but I’ve also seen a few of those dealers that sold just about any British car they could get their hands on were still carrying the English Fords.
Here is the US intro brochure.
They were not uncommon, even on the East Coast. A very nice car for the times, especially the GT version. But I can’t speak for its rust-resistance.
I also love the family in the Pinto Squire talking to Mr. Short Shorts Tennis Pro..
“Stop staring at his crotch Janet! “
The guy was kicked out of the blue one, so he was asking for a new ride.
Successfully, apparently. See how Janet puts his bike in the back ??
Or is he begging a ride coz his wagon broke down.
I’ll bet that Janet likes putting his bike in the back…….
Oh pleasepleaseplease give me that white ’77-’78 Squire PLEASE!!! That car with an Ecoboost 2.0L would be a hoot!
Stuff like this in car brochures is actually one of the key reasons that made me decide to pursue a career in marketing. Gotta love “positive spins” like this.
We saw some of the hype on these cars in print advertising but not the cars, the news that they catch fire if rear ended was prominent here just in case Ford thought they could palm this junk off down under a major redesign was needed to meet ADR standards. Aside from that there is no way known these cars could withstand being driven here, Watch Jeremy Clarkson try to drive on NZ roads at the speed limit here in a NZ market Corolla, the roads were worse in the Pinto’s day. and something this poorly made wouldnt survive the warranty.
Sorry but the Pinto was built from the Ford parts bin so it’s front suspension is far overbuilt using the same ball joints, tie rod ends, and u-joints as full and mid size cars. There is a reason that the “Mustang II” front suspension is the hot rodder’s choice since they can handle holding up a full size car with ease and remain durable. I did lots of off-roading in some of my Pintos and they took it all in stride.
As far as it needing to be redesigned to meet ADR standards I don’t buy that for a second, the fact is that the Pinto was far less likely to catch fire when rear ended than a first generation Civic and fell right in the middle of the class according to statistics from the time. The least likely to catch fire was the B210 sedan, with it’s gas tank right behind the back seat, but the rest of the car would have crumpled around you which would not have happened in the far more substantial Pinto.
Its hard to believe that the Pinto was among the top 3 selling station wagons of the 70s. Minivan inventor, Hal Sprerlich, during his Ford days must have called shotgun a momant too late and gotten stuck in the back of one of these on a lunch run.
In 1973, my wife’s father was newly divorced and the owner of a new Pinto lift back. Each weekend he had my wife and her sister, and they travelled all over the Northeast in that car. God knows how they fit. My father-in-law is 6’3″ and even as kids my wife and her sister weren’t that short (my wife is 5’10” her sister is 5’9″ today). His then girlfriend (now my wife’s stepmom) is also 5’10”, and the whole gang would travel from New Jersey to Cape Cod in the Pinto. With a cooler, luggage (for girls = lots), fishing poles, etc. You gotta love the 1970s concept of safety, as the folded down the rear seat, and piled my wife, her sis and all the luggage right there. No belt, nothing. Just a pile of projectiles. My wife remembers riding backwards with her feet pushed under the bottom of the hatch for more room. A particularly traumatic trip occurred when they were rear-ended on the Merritt Parkway. Luckily, their Pinto did not burst into flames, but the rear glass popped out (didn’t shatter) and landed on my wife and sister-in-law in one big piece. They were all OK, but my wife claims to be scarred for life, given that she was facing backward and saw the huge car hurtling toward them which she knew couldn’t stop. Of course I have grilled her trying to determine the make and model of the car that hit them, but the best she could do was that it was “big, ugly and brown.” Follow-up research with my Father-in-law indicates it was a fuselage Dodge Monaco circa 1972. That shunt was the end of the Pinto and would up inflicting a Dodge curse on my Father-in-law, as his replacement car was a 1977 Dodge Aspen wagon, (which he liked, though it did rust prematurely).
It’s hilarious Ford had the nerve to show the young lady in the rear seat with her legs crossed.
You don’t see people in ads much these days but when you do they are always belted in. Not one shot of the Pinto interior shows even a belt buckle. I know that’s how things were and the belt systems were different, it’s just interesting how times have changed.