posted by William Oliver
Why do I struggle so much with these mid-70s Fords and Mercurys? Is it their overwrought but underachieving styling? Their sodden handling? Their limp engines?
No. I could live with all of that, in the right package. It’s because I have an obsession with packaging and space efficiency, as well as just efficiency period. I don’t know if there’s an objective metric that we could create to measure it against, but these have to be about the most space-squandering family wagons ever.
Admittedly, I have Ramblers on the brain. But for a good reason, as this composite photo shows. These three are all to scale. The ’56 and ’63 Rambler wagons are both 191″ long; the Montego 215.4″ long. Check out where that over two feet of additional length went: All in its absurdly long hood. And the Montego weighs almost a full thousand pounds more.
You think the Montego has any more real usable room inside? Maybe a couple of inches of hip room; maybe. But since it’s lower too, I suspect I’d feel a lot more comfortable behind the wheel or in the back seat of either of the Ramblers.
I’m sorry, but I find this obscene. But that’s just me. You know what they say about the first years of one’s life being the most formative ones. I must have missed out on something, while Americans happily drove these absurd caricatures of family station wagons around, getting some 12 or 14 mpg. Never mind; let’s turn on the nostalgia for the good old days…
Sorry for being such a killbuzz. Please don’t let me stop you from your veneration. Far be it from me…
The best shot, of what’s really important. Now if it only actually housed something worth all that space and pretension.
Not to change the subject a bit, but it’s that last shot, of the front of the car. It looks as if the junior stylist, fresh on the job, could hardly be bothered to phone in his work. Some sort of “connect the dots” going on, blending the existing Mercury version of the Bunkie Beak, the required big ol’ front bumper, and all of the tired Ford styling details of prior years. And let’s be sure we don’t spend more than fifty cents to manufacture and assemble all of that. At least the pedestrians these cars run down won’t be poked by anything…
I’m a Ford/Mercury loyalist, but can’t argue against the observed wasted space. She looks a little more appealing in her brochure shoot, though the photo sure isn’t trying to *minimize* the hood length, and the 5mph bumper doesn’t help. Still, you could apparently get even the 429 in these, so before gas prices shot up, it would have been a spirited hauler, I suppose…
Front end happier in 1972, without the bumper extension. Brochure says the 429 weighed 464 more pounds than the 250-six that’s standard; so surely the front springs were different…
The 250 6 weighs around 385lbs, the 429 is heavy but not 850lbs heavy
I think it’s pretty safe to assume the 429 didn’t come with the standard three-speed manual, and it probably included a number of other HD parts and/or required equipment. Bigger brakes? Bigger wheels and tires? Heavier axles? etc… It all starts to add up.
Good point, I hadn’t taken into account these had a basic 3 speed manual standard
Paul is correct, in that Ford had other components that were beefed up on the 429 cars. The 429 cars had the larger rear axle (9″ vs 8″), required power brakes, required the heavy C6 transmission, had larger wheels and tires, among other things. I also knew someone who had a base Torino wagon with a six and a three on-the-tree and a loaded Squire with a 429. He said that the Squire felt and drove like it weight 1000 lbs heavier.
I agree with you. I’m close to you in age and thought these were ridiculous at the time, and I still do. At some point in the early 1970’s US car styling went from the sublime to the ridiculous almost overnight. Maybe they stretched cars to hide the 5 mph bumpers?
Whatever the reason, they hurt my eyes.
People used that obscenely long hood to justify not wearing seatbelts back then. No I’m not kidding, they really did.
Those are ones who did not take a class in Physics 101.
Your scale comparison is highly instructive. The steep slant at both ends on the Mercury cuts down the usable space even more. The Mercury roof is 20% shorter than the ’56 Rambler roof. 20% less length for tall things like furniture and people.
About the only good thing I can say about the Mercury roof is that at least it’s not bent at the C pillar…
And yet the tailgate is shockingly upright. That was definitely a Ford thing. Much preferred the slope of the Chrysler B-Body wagons, which had more cargo room to boot.
Let’s see, is there something positive I can say? How about, they were setting us up to wowed by the Fairmont/Zephyr wagons five years later?
A while back, Edmunds had allowed just any old rando to access their site’s API and fiddle with the results.
I tried really hard to piece together a jumbo list of stats, so I could build out a huge Excel sheet of all of their dimensions, etc. I really wanted to dig up things like:
Highest and lowest wheelbase/length ratios!
Passenger seats per length!
Fuel use per seat!
Payload capacity as a percentage of curb weight!
Payload capacity per dollar!
Sadly, I am not a good programmer, and the opportunity has closed.
Last time I checked, someone offers such a database for sale, but based on the UK market.
(I imagine that the winners and losers would be the same for almost all categories: extended vans and exotic cars)
Hi, professional programmer here. If you (or anyone else) are aware of any such datasets, I would love to get access to them.
A few months back, I took the can opener to the New York Vehicle registration database for my Vehicle Color Article. Only instead of Excel, I used Google Big Query, a modern data warehouse solution.
I briefly owned a ’72 Torino wagon, the virtual twin. And although these were remarkably space inefficient, they made the one metric that seemed to matter – you could still fit 4×8 sheet goods inside with the seat folded down.
As for the big nose, remember that this was designed before anyone ever heard of OPEC. They were leaving room for the forthcoming V-12 engines. I meant that as a joke, but who really knows?
At least your ’72 was not afflicted with the protruding 5-mph bumpers. Although none of the automakers did a very good job with these bumpers in the early years, Ford’s were among the worst.
I think my biggest problem with these is the extreme tumblehome from the wide beltline to the relatively narrow roof. That design theme did not just affect these, but these seemed to suffer one of the worst cases of it. Or perhaps the styling just made it look that way, with those fat hips and the oddly small rear side windows. I have traditionally considered the wagon as one of the most attractive versions of many given models (like, say, the 1960 Ford) but here the wagon was my least favorite of all of them, and still is.
Even as a kid, when these were new, I thought these were porky. Every time I rode in a Torino or its brethren I was shocked at how tight they were inside. Dreadful cars.
I detest space efficiency and other efficiencies that screw up styling of cars and believe Americans should be allowed to drive whatever they want, BUT even I must agree that these wagons were obscene and extra dumpy looking in an era of some overwrought barges. The long hood and coke bottle hips were supposed to be sexy styling features, but all they do for the wagon is make it look like a baroque worm. These 70s Ford intermediates clearly were never designed to be anything but coupes. For all the flack GM Collonades catch the 4 door and and wagons were stellar designs by comparison, neither look like converted coupes.
The 71-78 Chrysler B body wagons suffered too with the coke bottle shape, but their proportions are still better than Fords
When Ford started making LTD II and Mercury Cougar sedans in 1977, they advertised them as alternatives to the shrunken GM B bodies of that year. Ford gives you a choice! A new, downsized big car like the new Caprice or the old-style huge full-size cars like we made last year! And at first, the sedans did seem to have the same efficient, crisply folded appearance as the new GM cars. But somehow the old Torino/Montego somehow peeked through the disguise – the hood was too long, the windows too small, the interior too similar. Then I saw the LTD II and Cougar wagons and I knew Ford was handing me a line. They looked almost exactly like the 1973 car here.
I loathed them when new and still loathe them today.
Respectfully, I can’t think of ONE redeeming quality that places these FoMoCos over their GM/ChryCo counterparts…ok, they were less ugly than the mid-70s AMC Matador 4-door counterparts. (The 2-doors were polarizing but I liked them.)
But these cars weren’t built to be driven, instead they were basically flotation devices on wheels.
Hard to believe this came from the same company that later gave us the Fox and Panther platforms…AND the game-changing 1986 Taurus/Sable.
This platform really did produce some of the most ridiculous cars to roll off Ford’s assembly lines. A 1977 T-Bird and a 1977 Coupe deVille are about the same length, yet the Bird has far less trunk space and its rear seat is just about useless, whereas the Caddy has a pretty decent rear seat for a coupe. And the Ranchero of this generation is silly, with a hood almost as long as the bed and the driver’s seating position appearing to be behind the front-to-rear centerline of the vehicle.
About the best you can say for them is they basically made the sales pitch for the Granada and Monarch. It’s curious that Ford didn’t build a Granada/Monarch wagon starting in ’75. Chrysler sold a huge number of Aspen/Volare wagons, and Ford was playing catch-up when it introduced the Fairmont wagon in ’78. Yes, a ’75 Granada wagon would have cannibalized sales from the Torino wagon, but the Granada sedans were already pulling some customers away from the bloated Torino.
AMC pointed out these design and space inefficiencies in their advertising, and specifically targeted Ford.
It didn’t matter to millions of Ford buyers who preferred inefficient space use and long-hood dramatic styling.
I own three big 70s Fords and love the look as examples of cool retro style. But I wouldn’t have bought one as a daily driver.
They make the Pacer look like a paragon of space efficiency, which it wasn’t. It did feel roomy up front though due to its width and large windows. Interesting, though, that they sold it on practicality and didn’t even mention its unusual looks.
So do I, and I’m not sorry a bit.
Isn’t.
…at 55 mph on the cruise control, downhill, with a tailwind, maybe. Started up from cold and driven to the store for a pack of cigarettes, maybe 10 mpg—maybe.
But aside from the gross inefficiency, there’s also the gross design malpractice. There is no excuse—none!—for that nauseating beltline from the squinched-up wagon glass to the drunken downslope of the rear door. Speaking of which, Ford’s exterior doorhandles of that time looked as though stuck on with chewing gum. Just…ugh. There is nothing redeemable here.
I’ve read that Henry Ford II deserves a lot of the blame here. He ruled Ford as an emperor in the early 70s, and his personal whims regularly filtered through as corporate policy. He loved long hoods, prominent grilles and bladed fenders. The stylists made designs with an eye to pleasing the boss. He also slashed R&D in the mid 70s, delaying the needed downsizing program by two years.
Also blame the consumer who continued to buy these things when more efficient choices were available across the street at the local GM dealer
And Henry II was going through a whole lot of personal stuff, what with his infatuation with Cristina wearing off and starting a long-term affair with Kathleen DuRoss, and the long-simmering conflict with Lee Iacocca. It’s a wonder Ford was able to get anything done in the 1970s.
Americans paid for their cars by the pound, mostly, so the biggest, longest, widest thing you could put out was considered a better buy. Who cared about efficiency, they wanted the ‘most’. And as you noted, the design just added length where it did the least good, choosing overhangs over longer wheelbase or moving the wheels outboard on all 4 corners like most cars today. Wheelbases stayed relatively constant at about 115 inches, give or take, but the added overhangs – or lack thereof – could change the overall length with ease. A 1955 Bel Air and a 2020 Fusion both were close in wheelbase (115 vs 112.2) and most cars were not far off one way or another.
TBH I liked the 1973 to 1976 front end of the Montego’s a lot better than the Gran Torino’s, I always wish this generation of the Mercury Montego’s came out during the high compression years instead of the smog era years.
to many Europeans, all that is wrong with American cars in 215 inches.
Fairly or unfairly, much of this attitude persists with respect to more modern products
Who can blame them? Not I!
Yet it’s the Europeans that are snapping up all of the old American barges here, and at big prices. I guess they like what’s wrong, eh?
I’ve always considered this the era where styling at Ford went off the rails; becoming the polyester leisure suit of the automotive world. For years I never understood how they ended up on this tangent but finally came to the conclusion that it all started off as a basically decent theme that was carried well past its logical conclusion. I submit here what I suspect these atrocities evolved from:
The ’69 Maurauder X-100 –
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Mercury/1969%20Mercury/1969_Mercury_Full_Size_Brochure/1969%20Mercury%20Full%20Size-16-17.jpg
Then the same theme taken up a notch for the Cyclone/Montego of the following year –
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Mercury/1970%20Mercury/album_001/70Mercury-Cyclone-Montego-03.jpg
Then it was all downhill from here.
Mercury pretty much adopted a cartoonish version of the W shaped 66 Buick Riviera front end and uglified and watered it down as the 70s wore on.
And I thought I was the only one who hated Ford styling back then. I guess it sold cars profitably, but slathering the sides of its wagons with DI-NOC just made things worse. We had one of those ’63 Rambler Cross Country wagons when new. Just look at how clean the styling was. It replaced a unique, but quickly aging in looks, ’59 Chevy wagon.
Being a car guy like most everyone else I agree these cars are hideous. However we can also lay some of the blame off on consumer and insurance company complaints about cost of repairs and “planned obsolescence”. The bumper requirements peaked around the early 80’s requiring no body damage in 5 mph impact. You can read up about it if there are points you want to discuss. Then the requirements start to slide backwards and we now are almost back to where we started.
My wife’s poor ’98 Avalon got hit two separate times. Once in the front and once in the rear. Neither required any body panel replacements. The front damage was $4200 to fix. The offender who didn’t even get a ticket for an illegal turn. He wanted to pay for it rather than filing a claim but when he saw the bill he changed his mind.
His insurance company was questioning the accident details when I suggested he read the police report, especially the detail about the illegal turn. OK then, ah, what body shop has your car?
I beg to differ. These cars were designed before the bumper regs were ever written, which is why the first year (1972) versions don’t have them. So yes, they were a few inches shorter and a hundred or so pounds lighter, but all the rest of its egregious packaging, size, weight and other issues were already built in.
The Fairmont that arrived in 1977 showed how to do it properly; it was created in the Rambler mold, because consumers would put up with these gas guzzlers anymore. The Fairmont had vastly better space utilization, and was probably as roomy or more so, and much easier to live with.
By the early-mid 80s, manufacturers had mostly learned how to make the bumpers less obtrusive, ugly and heavy. Many new cars that came out then had much better integrated bumpers, like GM’s X Body cars.
The Reagan administration relaxed the 5mph regulation to 2.5mph. So the post-1980 bumpers only needed to absorb 1/4 of the energy. Changes didn’t happen right away, took years to phase in. Same thing happened with the Carter-era 85mph speedometer. They stuck around long after the regulation was eliminated.
The bumper requirements peaked right away with 5mph in 1974, by the early 80s they were reduced back to 2.5. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those early beam like bumpers were good to even greater speeds given how bulky they are compared to many other cars by the end of the decade like F bodies(which are basically like modern cars with their body colored endura covers and inner crash bumper system). But yes, I’d estimate based on measurement stats between 72-74 cars there’s probably 8-10” in total length added with the 5mph bumpers vs the 0mph bumpers.
Modern cars are at the 2.5mph standard, but as we discussed a while back Canada kept the 5mph requirement for some time after 1982(maybe still, I can’t recall?) and it’s possible for production efficiency many modern cars are likely still compliant to 5mph. The original pitch was to save consumers money on minor accident damage, but the public safety angle was about protecting the lighting systems from damage so the vehicle can be driven safely after a minor fender bender, modern bumpers are still designed in that way, even if it means a four figure bill from a bodyshop that needs to replace and/or repaint the sacrificial front facia.
About 20 years ago my sister crashed her ’92 Mustang. It was a clean car. I had picked it out for her. She had a lot of single car accidents; driving really isn’t her thing. So anyway, she let me have it but I had to pay all the impound and storage fees.
The lot where it was also was an auto salvage yard.
So for only a couple of hundred extra dollars the yard towed the ’92 and an ’87 junker to my house so I could take whatever I wanted off it to make the ’92 whole-ish again. (When I was done they towed what was left away for free as well) My point to all this is that the ’87 had a more robust bumper system by far. It had the telescoping/collapsible posts with steel frames. The ’92 had only fixed posts and that yellow foam stuff underneath. I was surprised by the difference. Anyway, for the ’92 I had a steel pipe welded in place to serve as the underneath bumper.
The rigging I did looked passable from the outside.
I glued the blown airbag wheel back together. It was some months later when I got tired of the flashing airbag light that I discovered what happens when you attempt to remove the bulb. Oy!
With regard to the bumpers probably being good for more than 5 MPH, let’s just say that the demo derby crowd loves them.
The long hood makes these cars so hard to drive. I take care of a 1979 MkV and maneuvering it in any kind of urban environment is very, very difficult.
This site gives the evolution of the “5 mph” bumper requirements. If this is accurate it 80-82 were when the most stringent requirements were put in place. While safety was part of the issue by protecting the lighting limiting the allowable amount of damage to even the bumpers would seem to be primarily to reduce costs of a minor bump.
https://itstillruns.com/car-bumpers-made-of-6717239.html
https://www.carid.com/articles/chrome-bumpers-good-old-days-when-bumpers-were-metal.html
I had two minor bumper hits in my driving. Hit a Chevette with my 78 Fairmont Futura, Chevette’s bumper was toast, only damage to the Futura was paint popped of the plastic “gap” panel behind the bumper on the right fender. The Futura had aluminum bumpers and it took the hit fine. The other hit was my 91 Probe. I got punted in the rear in a miserably below zero snow blowing night. Neither car sustained damage. There was a spot on my bumper that needed some buffing and that was it. The slippery conditions probably help.
We used to use the aluminum bumpers from the ’75-’76 Camaros, along with the telescopic shock absorbers from various sources, on our circle track cars. We endured the “rubbing and bumping” much better than the fixed bumpers the other guys ran with. They had a lot of trouble pushing us out of their way, and it was a whole lot easier on our backs and necks, too. Those bumpers weren’t indestructible, but they took a ton of abuse without much damage.
In my teenage and college years (late 70s to mid 80s) I had a few jobs pumping gas, and there were some of these things on the road, especially in the early days. Back then, cars used more oil, so I opened a lot of hoods. I remember these cars for the difficulty of opening the hood. It required reaching in a bit because of the bumpers and that additional piece forward of the hood. Also, if the hood didn’t “pop” properly, it was difficult to find a leverage point to give it the extra encouragement it needed. Though I gave little explicit thought to the details of automobile styling back then, I recall feeling some disdain for these cars because Ford made something difficult that should have been easy.
Not much love for these, understandably. In addition to the manifest design flaws being discussed, they also rusted early and often. The silver lining for this design was its‘ ability to withstand substantial front-end collisions and still be drive-able, if not presentable. Ask me how I know… How many of these were used in demotion derbies? I think this contributed to their being very thin on the ground by the mid 80’s.
We lived next to a steep hill in the ’70’s, I always knew when one of these Fords were laboring up the hill by the moan of the carburetor intake and the exhaust hissing like a broken compressed air hose. For all the noise they were not moving very fast up the hill.
It’s fine. I’ll take it. Front end is way too nice for a demo derby.
I was in college when the ’72 Torino and its Mercury sibling came out, and a year later when the GM Colonnade intermediates came out. I wasn’t enamored with any of them, between Ford’s excessive overhang and GM’s rotting adhesives and plastic trim (yes, it happened that fast in Arizona’s vicious summer sun). And it only got worse as the bumpers grew and cars’ appetite for fuel grew even as the power developed shrank. Living through the malaise era wasn’t fun, and these Ford products deserved all the ridicule they got.
Makes the Austin Montego look good!
Nothing is sadder than a base trim level Mercury of this era. If anything the last Montereys looked even more poverty-stricken.
How can a station wagon be this big on the outside but so small on the inside?
I am not a big fan of these station wagons, despite me owning a car that share the platform. I think Matt XR7 said it best that these cars were designed to look good as 2-doors, and the styling cues did not translate well to the sedans but was far worse on the wagons.
That said, there are numerous things being said among the commentary that are not quite accurate. While these station wagons were not space efficient by any stretch, they weren’t as bad as many purported here. According to the 1974 Torino Station wagon brochure, there was 84.9 cubic feet of space in these wagons. Compare that to about 87 cubic feet on a 1977 Impala wagon, which was about 215″ long and 79″ wide (some Buick and Olds wagons from this generation were 220″ long with the same cargo space). And like some else mentioned, these midsized Fords could carry a 4×8 sheet, something that the smaller and less roomy Colonnade wagons could not do.
In comparison to the Fairmont, even the much loved B-Body wagons were terrible in space efficiency. The Fairmonts were very good for space and the cargo capacity wasn’t far off the bigger wagons with all seats folded. However, with the second seat up, there space behind was significantly less than the bigger wagons. Further, growing up in a family of six that went from a Fairmont to a GM B-body wagon, the GM wagon may have been less space efficient, but it had significantly more passenger space and cargo room. I can tell you the extra space was significant when your are jammed in there all day next to two siblings.
Rather than base the discussion on our (poorly) remembered dimensions or assumptions, why not use real numbers. I completed a detailed comparison on the oversized intermediate wagons to the more space efficient smaller downsized Malibu, Fairmont and Volare in one of my articles. I outlined the dimensions in various charts in this post:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-review-popular-science-tests-chevrolet-malibu-mercury-zephyr-and-plymouth-volare-station-wagons-size-confusion/
Will we someday look at the huge full-sized pickup trucks with useless minuscule truck beds, and be having the same discussions about efficiency?
A lot of inefficiently packaged station wagons were sold back in the day, along with a bunch of inefficiently packaged pickup trucks today.
No. They’re actually quite space-efficient. Where’s the wasted space? The beds can be used very effectively and extended, and the hoods are not really very long either. An F150 crew cab w/short bed is only 5″ longer than this wagon, and offers massively more interior seating/storage room, as well as a bed, which could be covered with a cab. There’s no comparison in terms of space efficiency.
I am mistaking unversatile for inefficient. The new short bed, long cab trucks are efficient packaging of space (everything useable to all the perimeters). But the beds are not long enough to carry the lumber and plywood, or much of the mulch, junk, and yard waste that pickup trucks often get used for. On the other side of the bulkhead behind the seats, it works like a sedan, and all the seats are all the seats, and that’s it. Wagons and SUVs can expand seating room, and also can carry large but light, clean loads (but not really the unbagged mulch, junk, or yard waste). But not both at the same time. I have seen painters and handymen use the ’70s wagons, with the second and third seats either folded down or ripped out, for tools and supplies, and the long roof can easily accomodate a rack of ladders. Every vehicle is a compromise. Those old wagons are inefficient but more versatile. The new long cab short bed trucks are not as versatile but are more efficient. Hopefully I am making more sense with this idea on my second try.
“But the beds are not long enough to carry the lumber and plywood, or much of the mulch, junk, and yard waste that pickup trucks often get used for.”
That’s not really something modern pickup trucks are used for. Even HD pickups are more likely to have a 6.5′ bed and tow everything on a gooseneck, and a gooseneck doesn’t care how long or short your bed is. I can’t remember the last time we put 8′ building materials on our F-350’s flatbed.
Chevy did try to make the best of both worlds with the Avalanche’s midgate, allowing it to be both a crew cab/5′ and a regular cab/8′, but customers overwhelmingly preferred the traditional separate cab and bed arrangement once it was introduced in 2004.
None of those 1972-’79 Torino/Montego platform cars were designed for space efficiency, only pretension. Plus, having a had one or two, I can confirm they were just lousy cars all the way around. Some of the worst ’70’s junk that FoMoCo had the nerve to peddle. If anyone in Dearborn suddenly had an epiphany at the end of the decade and realized why the imports were seriously eating their lunch, it would have been rooted in these wrecks. These were cars I was glad to see in the junkyards!
Agree with you 100%, Paul. If Ford and Mercury relied on the CC commentariat for sales back then, they’d have gone under.
Worst car of the seventies?
These cars sold well the first three years but sales collapsed starting in 1975 when the Granada debuted. The LTD II was outdated before it even debuted. The Falcon derived 1962 to 1971 mid-sized cars were relatively space efficient, but I guess moving the mid-size cars to a derivative of the full-size platform wasn’t the best idea. The Fairmont was more space efficient but it did not offer an 8 passenger option. Also the Fairmont was rather austere, a problem not solved until the 1982 Granada and better with the 1983 LTD derivatives. It would be interesting to know more about the development of the cars, and I wish information were publicly available as was provided for the outstanding article on the 1962 Dodge/Plymouths.
To think they used to call them ‘intermediates’. I pretty-much detested all the versions of these by the mid ’70s, especially the Gran-Torino/Elite coupes.
I’d take a nice ’63 Rambler Classic wagon any day. Even the 70s 4-door AMC Matadors and Ambassadors were way better proportioned, at least until AMC’s hideous 1974 nose-job!
Happy Motoring, Mark
Even when young, I saw these road whales as awful cars. So I was relieved to see the new Fairmont, which demonstrated that Ford was finally turning to a modern design again.
Even when new, even as a coupe, driving these cars was like looking over a ping pong table with a hood ornament on the horizon.
The 71 Torino and the 72 Chevelle were well proportioned cars. Ford went off the rails in 72. GM followed in 73. These cars were far inferior to their immediate predecessors.
Might have driven, but at least rode in one of these as a Cougar wagon sometime between 1977 and 1978 when I worked as a transporter for Hertz.
They were a good transporter to take us to our one-way rental pickups…one guy got to drive us to each destination then back home; though our home location was South Burlington and distances weren’t vast, the various places he had to drive were not as the crow flys…..plus natural obstacles like Lake Champlain made the actual distance driven greater than you might think.
At this time my parents had an even larger (1973 Ranch Wagon) so this seemed normal sized at the time. The Ranch Wagon lacked the DI-NOC paneling as does this one..can’t see what everyone is complaining about.. Also popular SUVs are hardly very space efficient compared to mini-vans (4WD hardware takes space and raises their ride height). People take these as dinosaurs but what if they had engines with efficiency of today? Even smaller cars didn’t get stellar gas mileage with older engines, unless they were really small cars like original Civic or Fiat 128. These cars weren’t great, but don’t think they were horrible either; I wish we could still buy station wagons nowdays, they were useful vehicles for their time. Likewise I’m likely being directed into buying an SUV to replace my current Golf as hatchbacks are disappearing, though I don’t really need one and don’t want complexity of AWD/4WD, nor do I want the space inefficiency of one designed for it but lacking the components (i.e. 2WD) which to me seems like a compromise as well.
My first car was a 1973 Montego MX Villager wagon. It was the same baby blue as the one pictured. Why was it my first car? Uh well dear ole dad said at $900 it was a good deal. Never mind that the 351-2v Cleveland ticked like a bomb ready to go off, or that the front cross member of the frame was pushed so far back that alignment would never be possible, or even that the previous owner had towed an Airstream trailer with it but failed to change the motor oil, it was still “a lot of steel for the money!”
Well after six months of me telling him I hated it, especially when my friends were driving cool cars (a 72 Thunderbird for one, a few Camaros) and that I was ready to part with it. He must have got the message as he made a deal behind my back for a 3 year old Cutlass Supreme Brougham sedan!! He had the owner bring it by so I could see it. And it was nice, even with 98750 miles! And that was a deal- $1500 because no one wanted high miles!!
He also sold my ridiculous Montego for an amazing $500!!!