Seeing an operable Granada in the wild should have been a cause for celebration. It’s not a frequent event. Instead, my opinions about things associated with the Granada overruled all else that moment.
I am old enough to remember these when new yet young enough to have been highly impressionable during their time on the market. It has taken a bit to articulate my thoughts about this less than ideal colored example of Ford’s North American Granada. These things happen.
The Granada, introduced two years after the 1973 oil embargo, did entice people into smaller, yet not austere, transportation.
There was a considerable dreariness quotient in Ford showrooms in 1974. Pinto, Mustang II, Maverick, Torino, and Galaxie/LTD…there wasn’t much to compel one to pony up and stride away in something aspirational because aspirational was something Ford wasn’t selling that year.
Except the Thunderbird, although that was more of a specialty vehicle.
Enter Granada, spawned by the incomparable Lee Iacocca.
The Granada was a frequently seen car in my childhood orbit. A cousin owned a nicely trimmed two-door example and a great-uncle owned a Monarch, the badge-engineered Mercury equivalent.
Both had small kids and their Granada / Monarch suited their situation in life. When compared to the brown, porky 1973 Ford Torino sedan my parents owned at the time, the Granada appeared more modern and desirable. The Granada seemed like a car purchased from want, unlike the Torino, purchased with expediency and apathy as my parents just needed a car.
Since forever, old ideas are recycled into new ideas; identical concept, different execution. The entertainment industry is an endless well of recycled ideas, so let’s peek at the music industry to illustrate this.
The year our Granada was introduced, country singer Ray Stevens covered Johnny Mathis in a much more compelling way. Making a few key revisions (and recording it in only two takes) utterly transformed Misty from something slow and monotonous into something much more upbeat and enjoyable. The idea obviously worked as Misty did well, even reaching Number 2 in the United Kingdom.
It was a good enough transformation to win Stevens a Grammy Award.
Crooner Paul Anka revised Van Halen’s Jump into something that might also appeal to those who would have shunned the original version.
Both are new takes on an old idea.
Which leads us back to Lee Iacocca. None of the critiques I have read of him ever refuted his craftiness. Iacocca has come the closest of anyone in Detroit to, as the old adage goes, making a silk purse from a sow’s ear. The Granada is proof of concept.
Nobody but Lee Iacocca could take their magic wand, tap the hood of a Falcon, and make a Granada appear.
One characteristic of an Iacocca created car is the amount of recycled content. The Granada has the basic suspension of a Falcon, numerous bits cabbaged from the corporate parts bin, and drivetrains recycled from other Ford lines. Power output, particularly the monumentally pathetic 72 horsepower from the 250 straight six in 1975, was recycling from the days of Ford’s Model A.
More powerful engines were available, but “powerful” was a relative term. Even the 351 cubic inch V8 available some years churned out less than 150 horsepower.
However, one option available on the Granada was a refreshing departure, although recycled from the full-size cars. One could obtain a Granada with rear disc brakes. For some makes, that was very heady stuff in the mid-1970s.
Another Iacocca trademark was sales. Sales of the Granada, like some of Iacocca’s other offerings at Ford, met with great initial success but quickly tapered off. Obviously Iacocca was able to realize momentum by this rinse and repeat method of car manufacturing, but the inevitable sales slide of his creations seems to encourage potential repeat customers to go shopping elsewhere.
The Fairmont undoubtedly helped hasten the demise of the Granada. Maybe this should have been the second generation Granada?
Oh wait. It kinda, sorta was. Doing so in 1978 would have eliminated yet another redundancy at Ford as a lightly revised Fairmont was the second generation Granada that came about in 1981 and sold alongside the Fairmont.
I digress.
None of these are the greatest sin associated with the Granada. The sin was thrust upon it, with the stigma of this sin perpetually tainting the Granada.
What was the sin? An obnoxious slurry of greed, stupidity, and whoring yourself. There is a lot of overlap among those three.
Here it is, in print.
That wasn’t a singular ad.
It was an entire ad campaign. For years.
Let’s not forget these ads were also on television.
All were cringeworthy and devoid of self-respect.
Ford, what were you thinking? Or, rather, were you thinking?
AMC initiated such comparison ads in the 1960s. It was solidly tongue-in-cheek with the premise being content comparison. The schtick was obvious. Nobody was cross shopping these two, yet it works to make a point. AMC even says it’s an unfair comparison.
The Granada ads? Let’s be honest…
In any job interview you must set yourself apart from the competition. Ford, these ads are your job interview – remember? Instead, you have the Granada proudly and loudly exclaiming “I look just like them!”. I somewhat see what you were trying to say, but there was too much earnestness. Any sarcasm, which should have been there, was lost. Instead, you painted a perception of the Granada as being a low cost clone of a car from a different price class. Did you really want customers having that takeaway?
The Granada ad campaign’s premise would be like saying author Elmore Leonard’s character of Raylan Givens is like Baron Munchausen because they both have a way with words. Both are terrific on their own merits, but any comparison is painfully forced. Ford, all you succeeded in doing was flushing your self-respect down the toilet.
Throwing away your self-respect wasn’t a good look in the 1970s and it has aged like fine, artisanal milk. Your ads have forever tainted the first generation Granada. The Granada may have been admirable for the time and intent, but that taint lingers like the stench of squandered opportunities and ambitions of covetousness.
The taint is so bad when I stumbled upon this Granada, my thoughts went straight to those asinine ads. You should have touted the fact you built a more attractive car than your Chrysler and GM competition and that your Granada met with immediate success. You were already outselling the dickens out of Mercedes, so why do you want to stoop to say your car looks like theirs?
Your customer base isn’t stupid; nobody was fooled.
Might these ridiculous ads have contributed to the steady drop in Granada sales? The phrase “screwing the pooch” comes to mind, Ford. You should have been telling us what makes your Granada unique, extolling its virtues, and how it is better than the competition, not how you cribbed the design of an upmarket competitor.
Rant over.
Seeing this Granada was a wonderful indication spring was imminent. Let’s hope this spring and summer continue to bring about more automotive findings, tainted or not.
Found March 2025 at the St. Louis Zoo’s north parking lot
The car Lee Iacocca is standing near has front vent windows that never made production.
The gas filler flap on ’78 to ’80 Granadas were all the charcoal color seen on this car, rather than a color that matched the vinyl roof and body side molding. This was significant, because these usually broke off within a few years, and Ford wouldn’t have to stock 7 different colors for spare parts.
The Granada looked nothing at all like a Mercedes or Cadillac. It did look like a reasonably handsome big Ford scaled down to a more manageable size, and was nicely proportioned. The interiors were considerably plusher than the competition – leather was optional, carpets were thick, and the door panels looked like they were from a luxury car. The LDO package interior was similar to what was later used for the Lincoln Versailles.
The only thing that felt “old” to me when we shopped these in 1976 was the inside door handles which looked more like window cranks. You pulled them toward you as if they were some sort of ejector-seat handle, which made the doors open with force. Chrysler ditched these in 1966.
The refreshed front on ’78 and later cars was unfortunate.
“It did look like a reasonably handsome big Ford scaled down…”
Exactly. What bugs me so much about how Ford handled Granada marketing was their inability/unwillingness/reluctance to claim the car as being unique, which it was. What Ford did just wasn’t a good look. As a child seeing these ads, I knew Ford did not have a better idea with their marketing of the Granada.
I always found this kind of comparative advertising refreshingly cheeky when browsing through US car magazines. Unfortunately, in my part of the world, it is illegal as so-called “unfair competition” – then and now.
Wow, you even found one with bucket seats and a console/floor shift! I saw a lot of Granadas back in the day, but I am not sure I ever saw one with this interior configuration.
The 1975-76 Granada was a true phenomenon. I knew so many people who bought one of them, and they were not a group of people who would typically own the same model. But these cars suffered from another common trait of Iacocca-mobiles – although they presented beautifully in showrooms, they did not age gracefully.
I have never heard either of the musical selections you featured. I actually like the Paul Anka version of Jump.
The buckets and console really surprised me, in a good way. I just wish my pictures of the interior had turned out better. Despite my railing on Ford with this piece, seeing this Granada was enjoyable. It really stood out in the crowd.
I also remember seeing Granadas (and Monarchs) all over the place back in the day. They are attractive cars but, like la673 said, they were obviously a Ford.
Mrs. Jason Jr put me onto the Paul Anka song. It really made me pause and breathe it in more than I do with most songs. Last fall we stopped while driving through Nashville to see Stevens perform at his Cab-A-Ray theatre. He told the story of Misty (it was an impulse to record it during a session for something else) and had his Grammy award in a display case in the lobby.
This was truly the “The beatings will continue until morale improves” era of automotive design. Appalling styling, appalling performance, appalling accomodations, appalling marketing, and even the colors are bilous. The Fairmont was still dreary, but it was at least a step up in basic competence.
Long ago I came across a stash of Motor Trend or Car & Driver magazines from the mid- to late-1970s. What they reported on was dreary and even the presentation within the magazine was dreary. There were some bright spots in the auto world back then, but not enough.
Interesting car the Granada.
Still, I liked the european Granada’s design much better.