The cars I have described previously (Studebaker Larks,Ford Cortina GT and Ford Mustang) were my personal vehicle and as such required more than just my interest. They necessitated having an after school job. For the most part my job consisted of working in or for (more on that later) a series of pharmacies in my home town as a drug clerk and delivery driver. One of these pharmacies was located in a very small storefront with about six parking spaces.
The two pharmacists who bought this fairly old establishment were pretty good businessmen (and pharmacists; one even identified the mistake I made in organic chemistry class by the smell I brought into work one day) and decided to overcome the parking deficiency by offering all day delivery at no extra charge.Thus-when the $1995 Ford Maverick came out they were among the first to line up to buy what everyone thought would be the next Ford Falcon (i.e. cheap reliable and rugged).
The automatic transmission was probably added in acknowledgment of the fact that all three delivery drivers were males under the age of 20(clutches being what they are) and the AM radio for the resale value.The anticipated margin between our hourly pay and the actual costs of running the car and the prescription/merchandise markup would then be a large part of the profit without the extra location costs.
Frankly the adventure was keeping the car going consistently to move the stuff out the door. As Ford advertised, a lot of the components were probably designed for a much more robust vehicle. Unfortunately the parts that kept malfunctioning were not among those.The base model 170 CID six had a weird habit of either disabling its own distributor or having the choke stick in either a full open or full shut position.The choke problem had three under-twenty-year-old males applying what ever shade tree remedies were around each time the thing stopped working or ran badly. I was partial to paper clips but the end of a pencil or pen served for most of us. The transmission had a difficult life for the same reason, and the fairly lightweight, non power steering had enough turns lock to lock to discourage us from hot rodding too much.
image: Jim Cavenaugh
Two years in and the next trial was a 1972 AMC Hornet with a 232 CID I6 with similar equipment. Obviously the store maintained delivery service because it was a net profit, but neither owner wanted to continue working out the teething problems of Ford’s new Maverick (too bad in a way, friends assured me they got a lot better). The Hornet worked better for its intended purpose (admittedly a low bar to clear at that point) and survived the same three drivers another 2 years.
The slightly higher seat height helped a little with street and house number identification,the repairs didn’t tax the local garage any more than the Maverick in terms of complexity (and there were fewer of them).
Finally in 1974 they decided (for reasons unknown to me) on a two door Duster (the “successor” to the Dart or Valiant-really more a variant on the same) with nearly identical equipment. It proved to be a solid vehicle; the repair record was probably enhanced (well, correlation does not equal causation) by the fact that all three drivers (myself and two other sub-21 males) all moved on to different work. Anyway the business model for that pharmacy in particular (and possibly pharmacy in general) changed, and the whole process ceased a few years after I entered graduate school.
In retrospect, this is a sort of comparison test of 3/4 of the American-made entry level vehicles by someone who was a long way from an automotive professional (in fact I didn’t even like to drive that much). First, the fact that the Hornet was reasonably competent and reliable, and proved to be the longest running (and perhaps most versatile) platform of the three left very little impression on me as a driver.
The Maverick should have been more competent as a vehicle but was doing what my father stoutly maintained for years “working the bugs out on the consumer”(I believe we now call it Beta testing). The non power steering on all of them was too slow (the phrase winding up an eight day clock comes to mind) with only the somewhat heavier Duster probably needing that reduction of effort. They were all fast enough for the time, but the engine characteristics and high rear end ratios made driving a lot more sedate than the horsepower and weight would indicate.
The Duster made quite a bit more mechanical noise which actually made it a little more fun to drive since it usually felt you were going faster than you actually were. And last having three males under 20 as your primary drivers might be a great way to test a vehicles longevity and reliability, but its not a great way to enhance those things.
When I worked at LAX we had a fleet of 1974 Mavericks , they were sturdy and 1,000 % reliable if dull as dishwater .
As much as I’m a GM fanboi , I think the Slant 6 Duster would have been my favorite as I like MoPar A Bodies .
-Nate
And you get the funky screeching Mopar Hummingbird sound whenever you crank the ignition – as a bonus!
Honda likewise has a characteristic starter sound. Don’t know why these seem to stay the same while everything else changes.
The Honda starter is actually made by DENSO (nee Nippon Denso), but Honda seems to stick with a particular type that makes a very distinctive noise. After having several Hondas, I could immediately recognize a Honda engine starting.
Thanks, I suspected something like that. As they say in singles ads, probably a LTR (Long-Term Relationship) going on there.
Remember Mabuchi motors in slot cars? I wonder if they do a lot of the smaller accessory motors?
I agree on the distinctive Honda starter sound. Not only that, they all sound sluggish, as though they’re laboring to start the engine and there’s something wrong with the electrical system.
In contrast, swapping a Denso “mini starter” onto a big block Mopar is an upgrade because it weighs a lot less and spins the engine over like a top compared to the stock starter. Unfortunately you lose the distinctive Chrysler starter sound.
Thanks for the perspective. Do you have any recollection of the fuel economy of the three in local delivery duty? Also how much mileage was being racked up before they were traded?
Thanks for a great writeup! Not the original seats in that Hornet, these look fairly new. The original seat was probably that awful split bench that AMC continued to use in the base hornet models even after Concord came in (I should know, I had an ’80 Concord with the same awful bench). It was the most shapeless, unsupportive seat imaginable. The optional buckets from 1973 onward were better. I have an old MT magazine from 1973 in which they tested a Hornet, a Dart and a Nova, all hatchbacks.
Indeed, a 1975 Nova with 250/auto would have been the final element of this fine drive-off.
Today’s players would likely all hail from Asian manufactures, for Spark, Fiesta, and Dart don’t occupy the low end of the market—that is now occupied by KIA Rio, Hyundai Accent, and Nissan Versa. I note however that Prius is becoming a very common fleet car–at least here in CA.
I’m okay with the US manufacturers ceding the cheap, low profit segment to Asians….no need to work so hard for nothing. US labor costs render small, cheap cars losers.
I’m not ok with it.
Who cares about labor costs when we have robotic welding, self driving fork lifts, computerized conveyors, and robotic CNC cells?
Your three Big 3 competitors aren’t from the same class though. Spark most definitely does occupy the low end of the market–it’s one of the cheapest cars for sale in this country, I believe, and probably one of the smallest. It competes at the very bottom of the market with things like the Mitsubishi Mirage and the Versa. Rio and Accent are kind of a half-step up, in the same bracket as the Fiesta, Sonic, Versa Note, Fit, Mazda 2, and Yaris. Dart is a bracket above there, in with the Focus, Cruze, Civic, Corolla, Elantra, Forte, Sentra, 3, Golf, etc.
The Prius probably belongs with the Focus/Cruze/Civic/Corolla etc. size-wise but has developed something of its own market niche. The fuel efficiency is a point in its favor as a fleet car.
How is it that after a decade of inflation, Ford could still offer a $2K MSRP for their cheapest compact? Was it production efficiency? Marketing psychology regardless of cost?
The Maverick was conceived as a “Bug Killer” and initially marketed the same way that the Rambler American was in its final years – a lot more car for just a little more than a Beetle. The problem was that the Maverick was designed and built to a price. Ford sought every way possible to cheapen the materials and the assembly process and it showed.
Despite the ’70 Maverick’s huge success, it still failed in its initial mission as US Beetle sales peaked in 1970 with 569,000 units sold.
I know the rationale, but was the Falcon any different? Ford was aiming at the Beetle during its development as well, I believe. Tipoff: their advertising emphasized its front engine. I doubt they had the Dauphine in mind.
No doubt that McNamara had the Beetle in mind. Perhaps the Beetle’s greatest attribute was that it was cheap, but not so cheap that it was poorly built or unreliable. In the end Falcons weren’t built any better than any other Ford of that era, but they did prove to be quite tough and reliable, not to mention cheap to fix when they did break.
The Maverick was designed to a $1995 benchmark set by Lee Iacocca. That price was to be achieved by any means necessary.
I believe the advertising of the front engine was aimed at the Corvair more than the Beetle. The Falcon ads of the time also touted removable front fenders for ease of repair, which the Corvair did not have.
That makes sense. No doubt Ford was more concerned about Chevrolet and, to a lesser extent, Rambler and Plymouth, than it was about VW.
Unlike Chevrolet, where the Corvair configuration was basically dictated by the desires of Ed Cole to do a rear-engine car, Ford actually surveyed potential buyers of small cars. It found that having the engine located in the rear was not a selling point for them. What mattered was a low purchase price, ease of maintenance and low operating costs.
The Falcon delivered on those counts, and easily creamed the Corvair and Valiant in the sales race, although it also stole sales from the low-end full-size Ford.
The failure of the Maverick as a Bug-Killer was more of a self-inflicted wound along the the lines of how Chrysler managed to constantly shoot themselves in the foot. With Ford, the Pinto (released just a couple years after the Maverick) was what did it in as the Pinto became Ford’s Bug-Killer instead of the Maverick. The Maverick had to move up the price scale when the Pinto took over as Ford’s low-price car and, frankly, the Maverick, with its cheapness, just wasn’t much of a deal, anymore, no matter how Ford tried to disguise it. It was possible to overlook the low quality at $1995, but when the price grew, sales correspondingly took a dive.
Ironically, the beneficiary of all this was none other than Chrysler. Without a legitimate subcompact (the poorly built English Cricket, aka Hillman Avenger, didn’t last long, and the Dodge (Mitsubishi) Colt wasn’t widely advertised or sold at Plymouth dealers), the Duster got to keep its low price and Chrysler did a masterful job of showing how much more car you could get for just a few more sheckels than what a Pinto, Vega, or Beetle cost (not to mention how much it undercut the Maverick and Nova, in both price and equipment). The cheap, reliable, good-looking Duster with a slant-six and Torqueflite sold like ice on a hot day.
Of course, these sales losses didn’t exactly mean a whole lot to GM or Ford. They understood, all too well, that profit margins were slim on the small cars and, instead, concentrated their efforts on the much more profitable larger cars, where they cleaned up against Chrysler’s weak offerings in those classes.
I’ve always wondered what the developmental relationship was between the Maverick and the Pinto, given that they were introduced just a year and a half apart. Was the Maverick conceived as a “Bug Killer” first, then it was decided that a smaller four-cylinder car was needed for that role, so the Pinto was put into development? Or was the Pinto on the drawing board first, then Ford decided it couldn’t wait for an all-new car to be developed, but needed a stopgap thrown together from the existing parts bin in the meantime, and that was the Maverick? Was it was always contemplated that, down the road, the Maverick’s lineup would expand and it would replace the Falcon? Or was that a decision Ford made on the fly?
Oh yes – the Mav (and the Comet) were absolutely Spartan in their interior trimmings even by the standards of the day. Even the dressed up ones with the Luxury Decor Option (LDO) couldn’t disguise the cheapo dashboard.
Yet the Maverick was still built well (doesn’t mean it worked well) I had a ’70 Maverick. Ignition switch in a beautiful cast aluminum pod on the shelf below the dash. Real glass for the license plate light lens. Aluminum interior trim, not plastic. The list goes on…
The Maverick was cheap dreck. So absolutely cheap it had no glove box – just some crappy shelf. It was a shortened Falcon w/ pony “styling”. Slow and cramped.
Junk. I remember my Aunt had a Maverick (new) and the steering wheel wasn’t even properly centered, it actually was canted off to the right. Her husband’s 1970 Valiant was superior in every way, except maybe “styling”.
the canted steering wheel was normal on cars before about 1971
And the US Beetle sales, beginned to slowly decline after that. I guess the increasing popularity of the Toyota Corolla and Datsun 510 had played a factor in this.
Inflation was low in the 60’s, nothing like the 70s through now. Gas was cheap this era, also.
Seeing how the Mavericks in the story had issues, Ford surely cut quality to make up for the 10 years. Plus this was the same basic Falcon chassis, so tooling was paid.
That Maverick dash has to be one of the cheapest ever used in an American automobile. I don’t think that the early cars even had a glove compartment, but just a little shelf underneath the dash (where some of the space was taken by the optional radio). That plastic, two-spoke steering wheel is pretty basic, too. The whole interior is positively VW-like in its austerity. Of course, that could have been intentional since the Maverick was originally Ford’s VW fighter until the Pinto arrived.
Still, as lame as the Maverick might have been, Ford sold over 579k of them that first year. That’s technically better than the record-setting Mustang since the first year for that car was actually a year and half.
In fact, does anyone have sales figures for the best selling Fords in a single year? I think the list would be 1965 Mustang, 1960 Falcon, 1974 Mustang II, and 1970 Maverick.
And 1978 Fairmont.
The Fairmont dash wasn’t bad, except maybe for having cheap plastic & a rather small glove box. At any rate, it was deemed good enough for the more fashionable Fox Mustang, which merely added more std. gauges.
I think he meant that the ’78 Fairmont was an epic seller for Ford. I don’t have figures off hand but I remember Ford boasting at the time that it had broken the Mustang’s first year record.
Ford sold 460,981 1978 Fairmonts according to the Standard Catalog of Ford 1903-1990
I think it would be a list of the F150s of the 2000s. If you mean cars, I think the 1963 Galaxy’s 648,010 sales would put it on the list. The Mustang’s elongated ’64-’65 ‘model year’ yielded 686,000 sales, but many people now consider it to have been two model years, especially considering that the car was changed considerably at the normal new model introduction time for 1965, the previous cars having the feeble running gear of the Falcon rather than the Fairlane’s axles and brakes as found in the ’65-produced cars.
Didn’t know the ’63 Galaxie sold so well. Is it the winner for single-year sales of a full-size car? I’m certain that was a result of the 1962 Chrysler downsizing debacle which pretty much handed almost all of their sales over to GM and Ford.
Didn’t really mean trucks, though I knew that Ford trucks had some really banner years that bring their sales up to the best car sales years.
And it’s good that most auto historians now divide initial Mustang sales into two years. They really were two different cars between the first 64.5 cars, then the 1965 cars, to the point that it’s not particularly difficult to tell the difference between a 64.5 car and one that’s a ‘true’ 1965 Mustang. It was very close to a ‘mini’ model changeover with numerous changes done all at once. In fact, they should stop calling them ’64 and a half’ cars and just call them 1964 cars.
Out of curiosity, did GM have any similar big numbers for single year car sales?
Those big cars always sold in HUGE numbers during the ’60s, but for some reason the proportion of Galaxie trim level cars was high in 1963. Sales of Ford full-sized cars peaked at 1,034,930 in 1966, but the proportion of Galaxies was much lower than in 1963, with sales of the Custom sedans and three different wagon models bringing the increase in overall sales from ’63’s 774,382 total sales.
I believe Chevrolet’s full sized cars sold in even greater numbers most years, but they were broken up into Brookwoods, Biscaynes, Bel Airs, Kingwoods, Impalas and Caprices. In 1969, the only year I have good numbers for, Chevrolet sold 777,000 Impalas, 166,000 Caprices and Kingswood Estate wagons, 68,700 Biscaynes and Brookwood wagons, and 155,700 Bel Airs and Townsman wagons. That’s 1,167,400 cars of one type and model year in my book.
Note that, like the Mustang, the Maverick’s 1970 production figure was for an extended model year. The Maverick was introduced as an early 1970 model in April 1969, timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Mustang’s introduction.
The Galaxie was just part of the big Ford line; actually, ’63 big Ford sales were quite weak, at 789k compared to 1573k big Chevys. The reason so many ’63 were Galaxies is because there was no Custom/500, just a base stripper 300. The regular Galaxie was a Bel Air trim level car, and the Galaxie 500 was the Impala-level series. And Chevy sold well over a million Bel Airs and Impalas in ’63.
The early-mid sixties were very weak years for the full sized Fords, selling some years at about 50% of the level of full size Chevys.
The Falcon, Fairlane and Mustang all cannibalized the big Fords, which carried a bigger profit margin. Those years were actually not very good ones for Ford.
In 1964, Chevy sold 1.7 million full-sized cars. That’s a high water mark. And in 1965, they sold well over a million Impala/Impala SS’s alone.
If Chevy sold well over a million Impalas and Bel Airs, it must’ve been together and not separately, because the best model year for the Impala nameplate was 1965, not 1963.
In 1965 the new body style won old and new Impala fans. The 1965 Impala is Chevrolet’s best selling model, even to this day.
The Super Sport model, took home the glory of the Impala lineup… More than 239,000 SSs found new homes in 1965.
Chevrolet never separated the sales of station wagons from all their full-size cars, but if you to count those Impala wagons, those final sales figures would only increase.
The 1965 Impala was the “brand champion” for Chevy in the groovy 60s.
According to my Encyclopedia of American Cars, 1.694 million full sized Chevies were sold in MY 1964, and 1.649 in 1965.
I’ve heard it said that 1965 was the peak year for full-size Chevrolet production, but perhaps that was a calendar year figure. Both MY and Calendar Year numbers are tossed around. I like to stick to MY only.
As we’ve discussed in the past, there are often conflicting sets of production figures floating around, and Chevrolet in the 1958-70 period seems to be one of the worst in this regard. But I feel confident in saying that fullsize Chevy production was well over one million every year of the ’60s, whether you go by model year or calendar year.
I have the Standard Catalog figures handy, and they show model year production of approximately 1.574 million in ’64 and approximately 1.647 in ’65. Another source that I have notes from, John Gunnell’s American Cars of the ’60s, has exact production totals for each year which are consistent with those numbers for ’64 and ’65. I don’t have the Encyclopedia of American Cars handy at the moment, but I’ll check later to see if it has anything different. According to the Gunnell book cited above, ’65 was the peak year of the ’60s for fullsize Chevy production, with ’64 in second place, followed by ’63 and ’66.
The Standard Catalog has a section in the back with year-by-year calendar year production, and I believe that ’65 is shown as over 1.8 million, also the highest fullsize total of the ’60s, and approximately the same as Chevy’s total production in its peak year of the ’50s, 1955.
During this era, Chevrolet did not publish exact body style-by-body style figures. They only published series-by-series figures, and as Sarcasmo alluded to above, they always kept wagon totals as a separate series. This makes it impossible to determine how many Impalas were built from year to year including wagons. A further complicating factor is that the 1965-67 Impala SS was technically considered to be a distinct model. Impala production was definitely over a million in 1965, however, if you include the SS (803K regular Impalas plus 243K Impala SS’s, and that’s not even including wagons). It may have also been over a million in ’64, depending on exactly how many Impala wagons were built (889K not including wagons; it is very plausible that 111K of the 192K fullsize wagons built that year could have been Impalas).
The only way the Impala numbers for ’63 reach a million is if the Impala accounted for 85% of wagon production at a time when it only accounted for about 60% of total production. Every other year, there weren’t enough wagons built to bring the Impala to a million even if every single wagon built was an Impala.
The 1964 figures in the Encyclopedia match those in the Standard Catalog. I think the source of the confusion is this: the Encyclopedia provides exact body style-by-body style figures for the Impala SS, even breaking them into Six versus V8 (these are obviously from a different source/data set than the usual fullsize Chevy figures from this era). The total is about 119K. While the Encyclopedia doesn’t say so explicitly, I believe that these cars are included in, not in addition to, the main Impala figure.
The whole interior is positively VW-like in its austerity.
The VW interior may have been “austere” in some aspects of the word, but it wasn’t cheap. VW back then used only very high equability materials, in the interior too. Every review of it made note of that. It was one the qualities that made it attractive. It was small and cheap to buy, but the interior didn’t scream “cheap” like the Maverick and other low-end American compacts/sub compacts.
Good point about the higher quality of VW interiors relative to the domestics which were being thrown up as competitors. VWs might have been spartan, but they used decent grade materials (at least for the interiors). It’s a good example of how domestic manufacturers misread how American consumers were catching onto how much better imports were becoming (particularly the Japanese).
It was just another example of how the domestics gave away the market. In a very cynical move, they figured no one would notice the cheapness until after the vehicle had been purchased and began, almost immediately, falling apart. That sort of thing went a long way to eventually turning off a large part of the American car-buying public to domestic cars, and they have been paying for it ever since.
Mercedes used to be more Stoical at the time as well, at least in their entry-level models. Sales literature emphasized engineering (like pics of orange-hot disc brakes in stops from 135mph) more than luxury appointments.
Indeed. Most today, do not realize what a high quality car the VW was by the mid-60s. Many Journalists compared them to Mercedes in terms of build quality.
I do not see a Beetle as a viable car in temperatures below zero F or above 95 degrees F…probably better suited to climates where the temps never stray outside 25 to 85 degrees F
I ran Beetles and Type 3’s in hot Southern California without problems as long as the cooling systems (thermostats, intake bellows) were kept in good order. The Type 2 (Bus) was probably more reliable (and comfortable) in the temp range you state, above 90 they get really hot on long uphill climbs and that big interior is hard to heat. I used to pull the curtain over the top of the 3 passenger front seat, it would help a lot to keep the front area warm and windshield clear.
RE : air cooled VW’s ~
Pops bought a ’54 Kombi in ’55 , hauled all six of us squalling brats around Rural New England in it on crappy bias ply tires and it was fine ~ it went 55 ~ 654 MPH loaded and with that many people in it was comfy warm .
Lots of Beetles back then too , Mom bought a new ’67 Typ III Squareback and ran it hard for years , no problems , nice and warm .
I moved to Sunny So. Cal. in the Fall of 1970’s and immediately bought a 1960 Beetle with the tiny 1100 C.C. 36hp engine , it was fine and I ran it mostly flat out year ’round .
35 MPG’s was nice when gas was .32 CENTS the gallon .
Air Cooled VW’s were fine *if* you took any sort of care of them , most Americans are too lazy/cheap then they blamed the car for having troubles .
Yes they were noisy and not terribly fast but as fast as the other low cost cars out there if not faster .
I’ve survived several major collisions in old VW’s , the car crushed to protect the passenger compartment as it was designed to do .
-Nate
the 1984 Ford Tempo. Ford sold 402,214 of them (107,065 coupes and 295149 sedans)
Folks like to malign the Tempo but in its 10 years of production Ford sold over 2 million of them and even in its abbreviated last year (1994) they still sold 110,389 of them.
And none are left on the road.
Believe it or not, Tempos are some of the most common late 1980s and early 1990s cars still on the road in this area (Harrisburg, Pa.).
Everything from 1984 has vanished from the roads around here.
“That’s technically better than the record-setting Mustang since the first year for that car was actually a year and half.”
Actually, it’s not, since the 1970 Maverick was also produced for a year and a half. It was introduced in April 1969, on the fifth anniversary of the Mustang’s introduction. One online source I found claims that about 127K were built during the 1969 model year and about 451K during the 1970 model year proper.
Though Fords and Mercurys are my favourite American cars I have a soft spot for A body Mopars and would have the Duster.I never took to the Maverick unlike the Falcon,I don’t know why
Agree, I think Chrysler had the best compacts. I never warmed to the Maverick, it was a Falcon with a fastback body style I suspect was necessary to close the gap with Mustang sales.
Ford were careful not to make a Mustang fighter from the Falcon,the sporty Falcon vanished when the Mustang became a best seller. Mopar shot themselves in the foot with the the Duster & Demon outselling the new E bodies.By contrast the SS Novas and Camaro seemed to do OK together.
Put it to GM’s and in particular Chevrolet’s then-massive market share.
Out here they did the opposite the Falcon got souped up by the factory for racing and the Mustang was kept off the market though around here youd never know the Ford pony has been a popular used import since forever and since they can stay LHD its hard not to see at least one on every trip into town.
I’ve been an Australian Falcon fan since seeing Mad Max in the late 70s. A car for my lottery wining garage
I had some experience with all of these cars, but by the time I was driving legally they were all old beaters, the Duster having left production a decade earlier. My Scamp was 15 years old when it became mine, but it seemed far older than any decent 2000 model car does today, which is odd when you consider that the Valiants were basically the most durable cars this country ever produced.
In my experience, the front suspension of the Valiant was head and shoulders better than that of the Maverick or Nova. Even with a ball joint about to separate, a Valiant’s front end was less creaky and more reassuring than that of a 50,000 mile Ford or Chevy compact. The automatic in a Plymouth was also streets better than a Ford’s. GM was closer in feel, if not durability. From ’72 on, the Hornet benefited from being a TorqueFlite client. It also had a suspension that aged better than that of the Nova or Maverick. Engine wise, the slant-6 just seemed like a generation superior to the others. Maybe having a long-runner intake manifold made the difference. OTOH, the other brands were at least as good at hot starting. The Hornet had issues with body durability, things like hinges that weren’t up to the task and latches that ceased to latch.
Perhaps familiarity played a role, but I remember always being surprised by the shoddiness of competitors to the Valiant the first time I was exposed to them.
I’ve driven all of these at some point, though just short in-town stints, and I still recall the few miles behind the wheel of a 2-door Maverick with 3-speed as being among the least pleasant minutes of my life. And that was in 1974 or ’75 so not judged by recent automotive standards. The Pinto was a sports car by comparison, Darts/Valiants/Hornets etc were reasonable transportation, and the Pacer I drove briefly once was at least fun to be seen in.
I’ll bet driving a Pacer these days would garner a lot of attention!
My friend’s parents replaced their slant six Dart with the Pacer and gave him the Dart. I think he drove the Dart longer than they keep the AMC. Other than the six turn lock-to-lock manual steering, the Dart was quite pleasant to drive. Adequate power (225) good ride, and decent fuel economy by the standards of the time. BTW, aside from being somewhat fun at least as a novelty, the Pacer did have decent outward visibility. By contrast, the Maverick felt like driving from deep inside a (cramped) cave.
Yes, my uncle had a ’75 or ’76 Maverick 2-dr in the late ’80s and I remember riding in the back seat a couple of times – was darker back there than the Black Hole of Calcutta!
Would love to have that Maverick in the ad. Body colored wheels. Dog dish hubcaps. With a Boss 302 and 4 speed…can you say sleeper? Might cost a bit more than $1995…
The Maverick was touted as being a simple machine. It [and the Pinto] came with a “How To” guide , a very basic repair manual.
The dashboard was novelty in itself with just a few screws to remove the instrument cluster and fewer parts and trim that could be poorly installed.The package shelf under the dash was to mimic imports that had them.
That they were so simple, it made them easier to build. There was purpose in the cost cutting: ease of repair and assembly. The whole concept was very appealing to me.
Spartan, yes, but neatly built. Something you couldn’t say about the Hornet and Gremlin with their multi piece dashes whose pieces never quite lined up properly, or were warped even when new.
Parents had a 71 Gremlin and a 72 Ambassador, both ends of the AMC price spectrum and they were shamefully assembled. Even at the dealerships you could find brand new cars with dash trim pieces that had fallen on the floor
I’d love to see a dash like the Maverick today rather than the blasteroo effect of the Focus and Fiesta. Or the nonsensical Sonic dash with digital speedo [didn’t we leave that gimmicky junk back in the 80s? ] and no temperature gauge.
Granny’s bright yellow 70 Maverick Grabber was well built and ran for years without problems. Sometimes less is more, not “cheap”.
My parents had a 1973 AMC Gremlin that was bought as a used car when it was a year old. I remember reading the introductory blurb in the owner’s manual. It stated that AMC was dedicated to building high-quality cars with the best materials possible (or something to that effect).
Even as a young pup, I read that blurb, and looked at that multi-piece instrument panel and thought..WHAT?!
>>The package shelf under the dash was to mimic imports that had them.<<
If so, Ford took this cheap trick one step lower – the air vents when opened blew everything off the shelf! A better idea!
Ford is the all-time champ – marketing geniuses – in selling dreck. The Falcon, Maverick, Pinto, Granada, Mustang II were all bottom drawer but sold like crazy.
Engineering mediocrities all, but sold by huckstering pros. When reading about automobiles and engineering excellence, the name Ford is rarely mentioned thanks to successful products like the Maverick.
If there is one thing Americans do well, its marketing “dreck”. I still can’t figure out how “they” manage to sell bottled water when you can get as much as you want for free from a drinking fountain.
I have to disagree with you there…Ford patronized ‘safety’ in the mid-late 50’s. and had a few innovations up their sleeve like the magic tailgate of the station wagons, adaptation of McPherson struts, etc.
Not saying they were all cutting edge and such, but they kept the flame alive…
Having owned a ’73 Hornet hatchback (awesome car), I’d do a do-over with a Scamp. I always thought those were pretty sharp in my formative years. I even had a classmate’s father price one out for my dad (green inside and out, of course) in hopes he’d spring for one. But he went with a 4-door Dart instead…
GM peddled clunky 1950s air suspensions, Vegas, X-cars, 1981 Cadillacs with variable-displacement engines, downsized intermediates and full-size cars with too-small automatics, self-destructing Oldsmobile diesels, fragile Cadillac HT4100 V-8s and troublesome Northstar V-8s.
Even some of the stuff we laud today, such as the Buick aluminum V-8, proved to be quite problematic in real-world operation.
I’m not sure that Ford deserves to be singled out for selling “dreck.”
I would not have picked any of those three for the purpose they were used. I would have picked a Plymouth Valiant assuming the year this all started was in the early 1970s.
I’ve owned two of the three and even as a “Ford guy”, draw the same conclusions…..
The Maverick I had was a 77 with the 250 six – it continually ran poorly, and required numerous new parts.
The Valiant was a 67 but was absolutely indestructable (Slant 6/Torqueflight) – regular maintenance and it just ran forever.
Neither car was one you would develop an affection for but I admired the heck out of the Valiant……..
WRT the Maverick, the option list is everything with these. My parents had a ’72 Comet 4 door LDO with all the boxes checked, 302, Power steering, AC, etc. The LDO option included ER70-14 radial tires and an improved suspension. In this guise it was a very comfortable car that was reasonably quiet and economical, and handled reasonably well. The brakes were a weak spot, as discs were not yet available. Forget about the sixes in these, they were crap.
This is a great article. It’s enjoyable to read about people’s actual experiences with cars when they were new.
Given that the Maverick was basically a rebodied Falcon, I’m not so sure that one can attribute its troubles to teething problems. Most of the mechanical bits had been in production for several years by that point. Perhaps the car’s problems were more rooted in the typically uneven Detroit quality control of that period?
As for the ambiance of the interior – friends and relatives owned and drove Mavericks, Hornets and Valiants/Darts from these years. The Maverick actually acquitted itself reasonably well in interior quality, even if it did lack a glove box.
My father’s 1973 AMC Gremlin (which shared a dashboard, door panels and front seat with the Hornet) had a glove box with a door, and the door was so flimsy and ill-fitting that it would have been better if AMC had simply not bothered. But then, “flimsy and ill-fitting” pretty much described the entire interior. The fit of the dashboard’s various components would have embarrassed any self-respecting high-school auto body class.
The Valiants and Darts were the most robust mechanically. I remember people seeking out Valiants and Darts as used cars during the 1970s, primarily because of the reputation gained by the Slant Six and Torqueflite.
Re. the Falcon and Maverick. I may be one of the few who spent time in both a late Falcon and multiple early Mavericks. The final Falcons remained in production through the end of calendar 1969, well after the start of Maverick production, so I believe that the Maverick started production in a different plant, which may have contributed to early quality ills.
To my memory, the Falcon and Maverick felt like very different cars. The Falcon, while cheap, had a much more solid “60s car” feel about it, while everything about the Maverick felt thinner and cheaper. The late Falcon felt very much like the early Mustang (which came from it). But the Maverick always felt more closely related with the Pinto. Of course, cars developed by the same company around the same time generally always have a similar subjective feel to them.
I’ll bet that achieving the $1,995 base price involved the removal of a fair amount of sound deadening material, and the use of cheaper interior materials. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the restyled body also featured fewer welds, braces, etc., as compared to the Falcon. That shouldn’t have affected the running gear, which I believe was carried over unchanged from the Falcon.
The Maverick was initially advertised as “The first car of the 1970s, at 1960s prices” Given that, in 1969, the Japanese hadn’t yet shown Detroit how to cut costs without cheapening the product , I wouldn’t be surprised if that 1960s price was achieved by skimping on quality.
Even the Fairmont inherited the Falcon’s six & V8, though it used the Bordeaux C3 automatic, less durable than the older, heavier C4.
Not so, the C3 was pinto. The C4 and C5 (locking tourque converter) and AOD are what Fairmont slushboxes consisted of.
I distinctly remember the unique droning exhaust note of the six cylinder Mavericks. While other Ford products ran the same engines, for some reason the Mavericks sounded unique—uniquely uninspiring, even as a 8 year old, I could tell it was a boring car just from its sound.
–My paternal grandma had a broughmized 1975 V8 version coupe that never ran correctly—rough idle which felt like the 302 was bolted directly to the subframe. Did Ford forget to install the rubber mount?–it sure felt like it! My maternal grandparents drove a 4 door 1976 with a six for a few short months. I remember hearing lots of pinging when Papa drove up San Francisco’s hills. Papa wisely decided that car was just too krappy to drive, and traded for a 1978 V6 Malibu. I disliked riding in all of them…..bleh!
My father-in-law bought a 1977 Maverick as his first new car. Two tone copper & brown, I have to admit it was sharp for a Maverick. I think he grew tired of it fairly soon. My experience driving it was that it had the most vague steering I ever had seen. Of course I had a Pinto with rack and pinion steering.
I’m surprised nobody has yet to mention Mopar’s under-rated, quiet, smooth, torquey 318 V8 engine/TorqueFlite automatic powertrain combo in the Valiant/Duster.
Driven gently, the 318 gave only a mile or two less per gallon in “Real World” driving conditions, yet had more than enough ooommppppphhhhh to embarrass more than a few muscle cars. This engine did not need the regular valve adjustments the slant 6 did or have the all-too-frequent carb issues of the slant 6.
One of the auto magazines of the time mentioned that the 318/TorqueFlite combo was Mopar’s lowest warranty claim powertrain….ever.
Had experience with a ’72 Mercury Comet and a ’74 total strippo Duster purchased brand new (around $2500.00). But the Comet was a 25 years old (302 auto ps) base model when we got it ($500.00) so it’s hard to make a fair judgement. The Duster was stone reliable and got about 25 mpg on the hwy. The cheapo tires it came with lasted about 12k miles. The Comet got around 15 mpg (carb was needing work) and the interior was falling apart everywhere. We only kept it for about a year due to the poor fuel mileage. It was pretty trouble free in that year considering it’s “beater status”. The slant 6 3 on tree drivetrain of the Duster was slow but durable. But a 302 C4 is also a pretty good drivetrain except for fuel mileage. Never owned or drove a Hornet.
Comparable cars today would be the Focus S, Dart SE, and Cruze LS [L?], base model compacts. But, most fleets now get mid level trim lines, for resale and bulk ordering. SE, SXT or LT.
Well apparently Maverick’s fit me just fine since I’ve owned 28 of them. I currently have 7 and a building full of parts. But my automotive prioritys are cheap to buy and cheap to fix, which even now almost 50 years after my 70 was built (Sept. 16, 1969) still holds true. And I do like the styling. And mine have been very reliable. I’ve owned my 76 since March of 99 and have only had one disabling breakdown, when the original Dura-Spark module died on me in 2012. And it happened after I had drove 113 miles back to Ft. Worth to my trucking company’s yard. When I next went to drive the car 3 months later it wouldn’t start. Guess who had a spare module in the trunk? 10 minutes later I was on the road. I own many cars besides my Mavericks, and love ’em all, but Mavericks are my sweet tooth.