There were Chevy Monte Carlos aplenty on the streets of Flint, Michigan when I was a kid. Our neighbors next door to the first house I had lived in had a beautiful ’74 in factory Bright Green that was a thing of beauty. I loved those neighbors, and the pristine condition in which they kept their Monte, Ford LTD Country Squire, and homestead seemed to reinforce my image of them as a really nice, well-to-do, all-American family. The sight of any ’74 Monte Carlo will probably always remind me of those neighbors, whether the car is on the road, at a show, or featured on a rerun of a seventies show like CHiPs or The Rockford Files. The Monte Carlo had established itself in my young mind as the archetype of its ilk, which I would later come to identify as the personal luxury coupe.
In this same neighborhood from which I had moved when I was still young but old enough to ride a bike without training wheels, there was at least one Ford Elite running around. In fact, I seem to recall there being quite a few of these on the streets, but this faded memory could be skewed by the possibility that one might have been garaged only a stone’s throw away from our house. Regardless, and long before I knew what it was called, I thought the Elite looked sharp. I can see one in my mind’s eye through a sepia filter… with shiny, chrome, deep-dish wheels, sun glinting off the paint, lightning strips trailing from the rear bumper, rolling past our driveway with the slow, steady thump of smooth, late-’70s R&B emanating out of the open windows.
Reading and writing in cursive didn’t come until I was in the second grade, so I’d ask my mom or dad what the Elite was called as I strained to make out the nameplate on the rear fuel-filler door. First came the identification of the car itself by sight, then learning its name, and at long last, learning the definition of that word. This was a car for the fancy people. Flint was still very much a GM-centric town in the late ’70s and would remain that way (though in steadily decreasing force as the years went on) fairly strongly through the early ’90s, I’d argue. Products from Ford and Chrysler were simply not as common in Flint as they were in other parts of the country. Maybe this is why it hadn’t quite registered in my young mind that the Elite was Ford’s stab at making a car that was similar to the Monte Carlo.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the Elite (born as the Gran Torino Elite for ’74) is one of the more interesting Ford products from its era, and there is certainly a lot of Thunderbird in its execution, down to the shape of its hood, protruding grille, thick A-pillars and roof area, and opera windows, just to name some of the commonalities that jump out at me. Where the comparison with the Monte Carlo was lost with me was that the Chevy had its own, unique, unmistakable styling that was shared with zero other vehicles. The Pontiac Grand Prix was a similar type of car in concept and execution, but there was no way any exterior body panels from the MC or GP were interchangeable with those of their lesser, mid-sized stablemates. Full stop.
The Elite, on the other hand, looked like a mere trim level of what could be termed “Midsize Ford Corporate Two-Door”. There was the standard-issue Ford Torino and Gran Torino and the Mercury Montego and Cougar XR-7, not to mention the Ford Ranchero coupe utility that shared the Torino’s front clip and basic superstructure. These cars all had different styling, but for my money, it was not nearly as differentiated as, say, the Chevelle Malibu and the Monte Carlo. The Elite didn’t look like a semi-custom job that came from the factory, as did the Grand Prix.
It looked like a very, very nice Cougar XR-7 with a different front clip and few other, not-altogether-significant details changes, like the bezels surrounding the taillamps and an altered opera window treatment. (I am a fan of the “twindows”, for the record.) I thought the Elite’s smoother rear quarter panels were an improvement over the oddly scalloped sculpturing on the rear fenders of the garden variety Torinos, so basing it on the Cougar was a good aesthetic choice.
1978 Ford Thunderbird. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, October 27, 2019.
I have read that the Elite was Ford’s test run at offering a downsized Thunderbird. We all know how the results of that experiment turned out, with the smaller seventh-generation T-Bird which was produced between 1977 and ’79 (and based on the same platform as the Elite) holding the all-time sales records for that storied model. So, what to make of the Elite as taken on its own merits? It sold well enough. The first-year ’74 models racked up sales of over 96,600 out of the gate, becoming the single, most popular individual model in the Torino line. This was a mere 31% of the 312,200 Monte Carlos sold for ’74, but this number was right in there with the Grand Prix’s 99,800 units. Elite sales steadily rose, to 123,400 cars for ’75, to 146,500 for ’76. After it was refashioned as the crisper-looking ’77 Thunderbird, sales more than doubled to 318,100.
One could get a large 460 V8 in one of these Elites for all three model years, with power ratings just over 200 horsepower in each year. A curb weight of about 4,200 pounds was substantial for a mid-’70s car, and from what I’ve read, this generation was thirsty. Big, heavy, soft, luxurious cruising was where these cars were at. The picture above illustrates how much buyer tastes in midsized cars had changed from sport to luxury within a short time. There are just four or five model years separating the sporty, blue ’71 Cutlass fastback and our featured car. (I admit that I cannot tell if the Elite is a ’75 or a ’76 model, but I went with the former year for this article since it was the first year for it as a stand-alone model.)
I have just one last observation about this car, which is its model name. “Elite” certainly has upper-class connotations, but they aren’t uniformly positive to me. The idea of elitism doesn’t seem like something that all consumers would want to be associated with. I’m sure many buyers of luxury vehicles want to project the image of affluence and apparent success to those they hope will notice, but that whole idea seems to lose something if one must explicitly make an announcement: “I’m part of the elite.” If I was bourgie, I would probably just hope that people would recognize my superior tastes and elevated status without me having to say it, including in the model name of the car I drive.
It has already been eleven summers (!) since that inescapable hit song “Fancy” by Australian rap artist and musician Iggy Azalea had saturated airwaves back in the summer of 2014. That song ended up winning me over by its sheer ubiquity probably as much as anything else. The “I’m so fan-sayyy… You already know…” chorus, as sung by guest artist Charli XCX, helped turn that song into a lasting earworm. Ford seems to have had a similar intent with using the “Elite” name on its midsized personal luxury coupe of the mid-’70s, with idea that by mere association, people would come to associate their slightly rebodied, Ford-branded Cougar XR-7 as the chariot of choice for the fancy people. A Monte Carlo it wasn’t, but I do like the disco-dressed Elite. I only wish it had been called something a little more aspirationally modest.
Otisville, Michigan.
Saturday, May 24, 2025.
The brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
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