William Oliver wins the internet today, having found a genuine curbside Pinto Cruising Wagon. Do you all realize just how rare this is? This is a ’70s icon, a living reminder of just how strange that decade could be. What was this supposed to be? It’s not like it was suitable for anything useful, never mind sex, except under the most desperate of circumstances.
But then that applies to a fair number of things that were hot in the ’70s, like the Pet Rock. Come to think of it, the Pinto Cruising Wagon is the automotive Pet Rock: it seemed so cool at the time, despite its obvious shortcomings. And now of course, it’s way beyond cool.
The Pinto Cruising Wagon was the little kid brother to the Ford Cruising Van. Which maybe explains a few things, like it’s unsuitability for making whoopie in the back. Maybe I’m a bit too focused on that element, but having owned a van in ’70s with a big bed in the back, I can assure you that was a significant factor in their popularity.
According to this brochure shot, our featured PCW has the “special graphics”. I remember seeing a few of these in California, but only the “special graphics” version. The other one looks too tame. And how about the plexiglass porthole? Isn’t that just the shits?
This example looks a bit worse for wear. And it appears the driver’s fender was replaced at some point, as there’s a delightfully primitive attempt at replicating the “special graphics” on it. Yowza!
I’m practically speechless. If you didn’t experience the ’70s, it’s going to be a bit hard to explain certain artifacts of that decade. And this is definitely one of them.
when you look at vehicles like this you have to wonder how Ford survived
I guess back then Ford families bought their ware out of loyalty or something like inertia
Maybe this one will change your mind.
She has a 2.3 liter 4-banger with edlebrock intake, Holley four barrel, headman headers, and 3/4 race cam.
This is one of those things that’s so uncool that it becomes cool again.
I don’t know if it should be praised or condemned, but only that it should be appreciated for being at all.
You had to be there to appreciate. I was there living in sunny San Diego between 1968-1981 at the age of 15-28. It was cool and I have seen my fair share of them back then.
It’s hard to see now, but this was a brilliant move by Ford. Vanning was all the rage, but some people didn’t want a full-size van, or couldn’t afford one.
And the Cruising Wagon must have been cheap to implement. All there really was to it were blanking panels, inside and out, to cover where the glass used to be, and the tres chic porthole window. Even the wagon’s rear seat was left in place, although it must have been mighty claustrophobic to ride back there, if anyone actually did.
According to an article on oldcarsweekly.com, the Cruising Wagon wasn’t very successful, with 10,029 sold for ’77 and 5,329 for ’78 (the only years they were offered) so this is indeed a rare find!
Even better, the blanking panels were already there as Ford had been building the Pinto wagon as a panel delivery for a few years by then. A hole for the plexiglass porthole, and Bingo!
Ford still offered the Cruising Package on the ’79 and ’80 Pinto wagon:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Ford/1979_Ford/1979-Ford-Pinto-Brochure/slides/1979_Ford_Pinto-06-07.html
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Ford/1980_Ford/1980-Ford-Pinto-Brochure/slides/1980_Ford_Pinto-12-13.html
Huh. A resource on the Internet was wrong. Go figure 🙂
I was wondering about sales. While this looks perfectly normal if you look back at the ’70s, this was rather late in the decade and done on the 7th year of this basic design. There was definitely the risk that the package was a bit late in the game of funk in the ’70s, and could be seen as bridge too far or trying too hard (lame, for short) when you look at the many choices the young and young at heart had at the same time.
Pontiac moved 161,000 Trans Ams in those same years, and many thousands more Firebirds. And 140,000 Sunbirds, including over 8,000 wagons, in the compact econocar class for that matter. People that wanted vehicles for rockin’ (or the image anyway) usually wanted a taller profile.
And who was it for? Guys that were studs drove Trans Ams, and this might have been a rather edgy look for a girl.
Maybe I’ve noticed it before, but this profile shot emphasizes just how much rear overhang the Pinto wagon had.
I like the homemade attempt here on the replacement front fender to match the paint and stripes on the rest of the car. It looks, to me, much better than if that fender had been left the (presumably different) color of the donor car.
Wow – you must be the 1 in 100 who can look beyond The Stripes!
But now that you mention it, yes that’s a mighty chunk of overhang. The overhang effect may be visually reinforced by the chunky sides, because the regular windowed Pinto wagon doesn’t strike me nearly as dramatically in that regard.
Funny, because I was noticing how much FRONT overhang it has. I guess this is because Ford wanted to update the Pinto with a back-sloping front clip. All that mass, viewed from the side, makes it look a FWD car.
I’m reminded of some of the bumper stickers I used to see on vans:
“If this van’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.”
“Don’t laugh, your daughter may be in here.”
“Gas, grass, or ass–nobody rides free.”
Always loved that third one. Or Truckin’ mudflaps or floor mats.
Poor Pinto. Send it my way, I’ll give her a good home.
My recollection of Pinto wagons is that they were not very plentiful back in their day, with or without the stripes. The hatchbacks seemed to be a bit more numerous to my recollection.
Your comparison with a van seems appropriate. FoMoCo may have been trying to expand the market a wee bit by referencing off the van with this Pinto. I had a friend who painted the Starship Enterprise on the side of his van. Perhaps the Pinto could have been the Shuttlecraft.
The wagon was actually the best selling body style from 1973-77, sometimes by a fairly wide margin.
I love the tackiness of this thing. I just watched a documentary on Netflix called Vannin, about a small group of people who keep the 70’s custom van craze alive. Seems like this Pinto was a way to have a little of the custom van craze on a smaller budget.
The cruising wagon drew attention at the lower end of the scale and this was at the opposite end.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1978-ford-county-squire/?utm_source=dailymail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-03-17
This is an excellent find. I used to do a lot of car spotting as a kid when these were introduced, and the gaudiest tape and decal packages were pretty rare. At least in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. My parents used to drive the 401 a lot back then, one of the busiest freeways in North America, and the wildest factory graphic packages were very hard to find. The late 70s screaming chicken Trans Am was definitely the most popular. I did see a few Monza Spyder and H body graphic packages. Never saw the Aspen/Volare Super Coupes or the Street Kit versions. Even as visitors from the US. The wilder bodywork was mostly custom done by owners.
I remember seeing the ads for these when I was a teenager in the late ‘70’s, though I never saw one in the iron. Ontario’s well-salted roads would have taken care of the Pinto in short order. The design didn’t look too bad on the full-sized van, but on a Pinto? Anybody showing up in one of these at my high school would have been laughed out of the parking lot. Still, the fact that one of these is still on the road after all this time would make me stop and check it out. Any Pinto still around today is a rare sight.
Ford had an entire thing going with their “Free Wheeling” editions that ran through several of their truck lines. And I guess they thought of their Pinto panel delivery as one of the trucks, so, yeah. The “Cruising Vans” were part of the Free Wheeling offerings.
So does this definitively end the discussion on what was the first minivan? 🙂
This was one of the better ‘lifestyle’ ad campaigns of the late 70s. That watercolour illustration is beautifully done. Along with the inset drawings. You don’t always see an artist’s signature retained in ads, but in this case they well earned the credit.
I think that artist did a lot of ads for quite a few cars, at the time. At least for Ford, anyway.
I think someone’s living in this one. It’s a survivor for sure but if it were a garaged survivor and in perfect shape it’d be the star of Radwoods or whatever whenever it showed up.
Not that it matters a whit, but I think that’s not an attempt to repaint the stripes but more a failure of the existing stripes, they are peeling off in an odd 40yr weatherbeaten way. At least it looks more like that when enlarged looking at the edges and the red one looks exactly the same as the part of it at just aft of the porthole. The starboard side of the stickers on the front fender are changing colors too, it looks like the yellow sticker has a white baselayer and the orange one has a yellow baselayer. Unimportant though compared to just seeing one of these in person.
With a second look this morning, I’m inclined to agree on those being failed stripes rather than hand painted replacements.
Ford could have significantly improved the ‘custom van’ theme of these if they marketed the Cruising Wagon exclusively with slotted mag wheels, and a slight forward rake. The styled steel wheels they used in promotional pics looked very European/English, and many already associated their look and feel with the Capri, or other Pintos.
Interesting observation; I hadn’t noticed that in the first promo photo. I bought some of those wheels with used 185/70-13 tires to run on my Fiesta on the street, saving my shaved OEM sized 155-12’s on stock rims for Showroom Stock racing, as required. But the Capri wheel/tire setup rubbed badly and exacerbated the Fiesta’s torque steer and poor wet traction, so I sold them to a guy who put them in his Pinto wagon (brown, stick shift, definitely NOT a Cruising Wagon. So to me those wheels didn’t look out of place. By the way, this guy used his Pinto to tow his racecar, admittedly a fairly light Formula Ford, but those were the days when it wasn’t assumed you needed a 3/4 ton diesel just to tow.
There was one of these parked by the “Rat” bar at my northern New York college in the early 80s.
The whole shaggin wagon thing was huge in the 70s, to the point that there were plastic models of them for presumably innocent 10 year old boys. I had this one:
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02O7qxfLmWiFL36XyKDpBykDiXyPA:1584806056972&q=monogram+vandal&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=ms-android-google&fir=tefdE0Ez2O_wKM%253A%252C496kvtUnQg_RSM%252C_%253ByWeu_N41knUq2M%253A%252C7-Rw6SUFW3_gdM%252C_%253BDwIBEjZxaoZT5M%253A%252CrfhbrVtLJ8WL2M%252C_%253BuACtWWPiLd1aZM%253A%252CIaAv3ADpdsd5UM%252C_%253BQ4MYne6zhRUxuM%253A%252CNWtRdBVTozrTdM%252C_%253BW7Xgw8O0uMbBBM%253A%252CIibRK7VYTYIK1M%252C_%253BjyEiAEORtTlaiM%253A%252C3MgJ7vlyheSosM%252C_%253BvkMfBarLCu8AYM%253A%252CaIGmzTXBc_GJfM%252C_%253B8XID9WhAwK5baM%253A%252CZU4QCvl-ILythM%252C_%257Cmini%2520bike%253Bvintage%2520monogram%253Btom%2520daniel%253Bstyled%253Bvan%253Bmodel%2520kit%253Bscale%2520model%253Bmodel%2520cars%253Bplastic%2520model&usg=AI4_-kT0EQxNoWT9ABHeEYFNBMi_SAJQvQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjY2MDQ9qvoAhWXrJ4KHfyWDMUQ7Al6BAgHECc&cshid=1584806197898&biw=393&bih=680&dpr=2.75
How is this NOT cool???
Considering the supposed lack of room in the back, why didn’t Ford do a Torino Squire Cruising Wagon? It wouldn’t have been any less cool than the Pinto. Hopefully this Pinto has the V-6?
Part of that odd tape-stripe, special-edition, plaid and houndstooth upholstery thing, that lasted for a few years in the mid-late ’70s. For most car people, it’s interesting that it existed at all, but owning one now, in the metal flesh, takes a special affinity for one or another of the cars.
Speaking as an owner of a three-fer, a Mazda RX3SP, a unicorn which gets the tape stripes/louvers/fiberglass add-ons, plaid seat inserts, and a rotary engine.
Love it. My family had a Pinto wagon when I was a kid; yellow with fake wood. It was a terrible car, as I remember.
But this example is delightful in its level of deterioration; how the bumpers, grill, and tailgate have slipped out of place. And that awful aftermarket wheel cover on the front driver side. And of course it being a Cruising edition. This car made my day.
There is an analogous vehicle to this – done better by GM in Australia.
It is the Holden Sandman. And, for those interested in more van-like activities, the Sandman roof has conveniently been raised.
I didn’t realize what it actually was but turns out that’s the one I was thinking of too. I think it’s what Mad Max drove at the beginning of the movie with his family in it when they went for a picnic or something (or perhaps it was a memory sequence scene, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it). Either way, I believe that was the wagon.
Sandman was a stripekit on the regular Holden panel van and ute Ford had the Sundowner triplets in Transit Falcon and Escort and Chrysler had the Valiant drifter panel vans all the Aussie vans had a raised roof, I had quite a few of the Holdens and a XB Falcon but regular grade great fror travelling and better than the full size Transit and Bedford vans in OZ they made a mess of those and Aussies simply did not understand their sedan based mechanicals to gear them up for better cruising speeds, Kiwis do as we had the cars that have those better ratio diff centres
As to the “unsuitability of making whoopie in the back”. As a hormonal teenager in the paleo days, parking my car in the shadows late at night with the girlfriend, since when did “unsuitability” inhibit such activity amongst the determined and the able?
Really back then the ticket for that kind of thing would have been an old Rambler wagon with reclining seats – the entire inside of the car could be turned into a flat surface. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.)
While the Cruising Wagon was arguably the most flamboyant late 70s domestic graphics package, I would give the Plymouth Road Runner graphics an honourable mention. With this later Road Runner design being one of the most outrageous interiors of the era. Looking reminiscent of the ArmorAll packaging from that era.
As much of a rare sight the Pinto is the big brother Econoline has to be much rarer to find, I don’t think I have ever seen one ever.
I like the 70s for stuff like this, it was the last time the auto industry didn’t take itself too seriously and would market cars to adult buyers that are akin to hot wheels toys aesthetically. I don’t see why better engineering and technology had to make aesthetics so serious and “grown up”. I mean to me if you’re going to buy a boring silver car, how could you not buy a package with burnt red/yellow/orange stripes? Seems natural to me! But as a child of the 90s the dusty artifacts of the 70s were still plentiful, so maybe it’s just a nostalgic bond I have.
Jeff Dunham has one of each, but his van is a replica.
In Europe, they just would have called this a van. Many brands offered versions based on small hatchbacks and wagons, although I don’t recall seeing them marketed for lifestyle purposes.
I think it’s bitchin’ – a really sweet retro wagon in all its 70s glory. Paul’s tone suggests that he’s not being facetious; This is a neat wagon that is a total time capsule. It would have been delightfully retro even in the ’90s when I came of age. If you had one today, it would be all the more the unicorn.
Groovy, man !
Never mind sex! Well maybe not for you at 6’4″ but at 5’8″ one could do quite well. Not saying me as I am 6’1″. Besides by the time this came out I was 24 and living in a condo on my own…
Pinto wagons had a fairly long, carpeted, perfectly flat floor when the rear seat was folded down. Plenty of room for me and one of those cheerleaders…
Even at the time these did seem a little gaudy to this Ford guy. Interesting to see (late 1976) how price compares with some other offerings on the lot—I see a new Thunderbird for only 10% more:
At the time, everything was gaudy, trashy, and in questionable taste. This car was just a little bit further out on the spectrum than most.
Wow. Don’t get me wrong, the Pinto Cruising Wagon is a cool period piece, but it really comes across hard as a marketing miss here. Maybe it bit too suggestive on one level, and a way over priced Pinto on another.
Based on my high school and college parking lots, the Thunderbird and Elite are the hot tickets here, and the Maverick if on a budget. Even the Granada is at least quite a bit more modern. And, Mustang II it may be, but it’s sold!
All those two doors. The world has certainly changed.
The hot selling Thunderbird is probably a relative stripper at this price. I looked at an Elite or two back in the day, and the black Elite with the red interior, AC and more is very tempting here – I’d pull a few extra shifts for the $329 difference…
I was a poor grad student then, buying well-used cars in the $500-$650 range. If I’d instead been a newbie teacher making about $10K–and determined to buy My First New Car–I’d likely have gone with the Maverick!
Reading the advertisement, it seems like that particular Pinto Cruising Wagon is loaded with dealer augmentations, like how some new pickup dealers sell trucks with aftermarket lift-kits, lights, and big wheels and tires.
Also, a stripped Pinto Pony probably had a heater and 2-speed wipers. Everything else including carpeting would have been optional. It wasn’t uncommon for cars to be optioned to 40% over base price and still not have power windows. Inflation was starting to become significant too, making last year’s leftover demos seems like bargains.
American cars weren’t considered to have long useful lives, so selling a 1976 that a bunch of people had driven hard in 1977 would have taken a serious discount. When you put it all together, a new Pinto Cruising Wagon with an upgraded interior and rolling stock against loss leader strippers and used cars might make the Pinto Cruising Wagon seem like a worse deal than it would have appeared to a buyer.
I don’t recall any Cruising Wagons, but there were some moms in my world who were driving regular Pinto wagons with lots of expensive options compared to a Pinto Pony Sedan. Any Pinto Wagon with A/C and an automatic transmission, would have been more than a thousand dollars over the price of the Pinto Pony sedan in the listing.
“American cars weren’t considered to have long useful lives, so selling a 1976 that a bunch of people had driven hard in 1977 would have taken a serious discount. ”
That may be a bit pessimistic. Based on the holly berries in the ad, this is December 1976, and the entire ad seems to be likely for new cars, the Elite is neither listed as a demo or used. This is year-end clearance time, and the Elite was overshadowed by the new for ’77 Thunderbird that took its place in the Ford line-up. So, the Elite was a depreciation bomb, accordingly a great value for the long term owner. Even if slightly used, it is hardly worn out.
And, while modern cars last longer, I’d give the typical American V-8 car of the ’70s about a 10 year life, with the first 5-6 years being mostly very good ones, the remaining with creeping decrepitude.
My Dad replaced a good running but rusting ’68 Impala with a new ’76 LTD four-door new and sold that in pretty good shape in ’84 as he was ready for something lighter and different, and bought an ’84 Pontiac Grand Prix. Our ’78 Caprice was sort of a next generation of cars and it lasted 16 years through three teen drivers and was sold as a running used car. My high school ride was a ’76 Cutlass bought in ’82 and driven until ’86. It did start to get rusty the last year or so, driving its sale.
Living in salt country, rust was a greater enemy than age, and our ’76 LTD and especially the ’78 Caprice were cars that represented the next generation in rust proofing, and performed much better than their predecessors.
The manager of the restaurant I worked at in the summer of ’85 had one of these, and it got plenty of…ahem…use. More room back there than you might think. 🙂
There are a few of us that still have these, and love them. They were just as dependable as any of the other cars made in that era. They did rust out fast if you lived in the salt belt like me, but what didn’t? Run very well for what they are, and have plenty of room in the back for supplies or doin the nasty. But as far as putting passengers in the back seat, I just wouldn’t do it (no side glass). Here mine today. 31k
Now Ford mostly sells “lifestyle” vehicles. Buy a lumbering f150 to haul two bags of mulch from home depot twice a year and your a poser redneck. Why people want to emulate rednecks is beyond me.
I remember, i almost lost it when i first saw that same magazine ad, trying to pass off a Pinto wagon as a mini customized van. Customized vans were cool in the late ’70s, but a Pinto would never be cool – well never until decades later.
I’ve never seen either a Pinto Cruising Wagon or a Cruising Van. Factory pre-customized vans went over as well with ’70s vanners as the Plymouth Prowler went over with hot rodders decades later.
As if driving a Pinto wasn’t scary enough already, the one in the brochure is riding on Firestone 500 tires…
So much love for the folks at WyoTech for building this Transit:
A neighbor of my brother in law had a few old pintos parked out back, one hatch back was made into a god awful looking trailer…. never saw it move though.
My dad had a baby blue hatchback back in the early 70s
I remember it quite well I was mowing the yard and a rock hit that huge piece of back glass ( no metal frame just hinges ) an boom it exploded! Thought he was going to kill me. But he just loomed at it and said insurance would fix it. He made into a. Sleeper it would run over what speedo said. Put a header on it a hush thrush muffler about 5 Stewart Warner gauges and bunch of other aftermarket items. That car would surprise people cause it would move pretty quick.
This one spotted in Canada last year.
I had a 78, albeit in plain white without the groovy seventies graphics. At the time I appreciated it had a very tepid cool factor, but was an awful car to drive — bog-slow and with a passenger side blind spot that could hide all of Texas. Never reliable, it died at about 60k miles in the late 80s.