Image by Eric Clem
That’s one of the basic axioms of business. My first boss told me the art of systems analysis was to convince the client that what he needed was what he wanted.
So, what are we to make of this attempt to postpone the Torino’s lease on life by adding a front clip strangely reminiscent of a Monte Carlo? It obviously didn’t do what the bean counters thought it would, as the Ranchero disappeared after the sedans it was based on were discontinued. The El Camino likewise died when its donor car reached the end of its life.
The market had changed. No longer would folks sign up for whatever came down a Big Three assembly line, no matter how wretched it was (my Family had a 1977 LTD II that soured my mother and father on Fords, so I have firsthand experience with a sister of this beast). And the small imported trucks did really resolve both the wants and needs of the target segment much more effectively, leaving the car-based pickup as an idea that gets dusted off from time to time, only to discover that while it may be what is needed by those who use their trucks for personal transport and not much more, it’s not what they want, and the majority of folks patrolling the dealer lot can’t make the lines cross.
That bumper would come in handy at my kid’s sports games. No need to haul around a lawn chair!
I don’t know what’s more hideous, the front end or the profile. the greenhouse looks like an awkward lump growing from the beltline, and that thing basically defines “lard-assed.”
The hindquarters are problematic. When designing the LTD II sedan and coupe variants, Ford sharpened up all the sheetmetal, and while the result couldn’t be described as pretty, at least it was cohesive. However, due to lack of money or institutional tightfisted-ness, the wagon and Ranchero versions kept the Torino rear sheetmetal, with only the severe side sculpturing removed. An odd marriage of styles, to be sure.
It was a no-brainer as far as the wagon was concerned, it was a one-year-only placeholder until the Fairmont wagon took over and the “smooth” rear quarters already existed (look at a ’72-76 Montego wagon). The ’77-79 Ranchero rear quarters had to be tooled up as part of the LTD II facelift.
The front end. It doesn’t match, and I’ve never found the double stacked rectangular headlights to be a good styling solution.
I’ll take it one further and say I’ve never seen a stacked-headlamp design I’ve liked.
I remember there being a double-stacker car posted on CC once where I thought “hmm, that doesn’t look so bad”, but I’ve been racking my brain for a solid 5 minutes here and can’t think of it. And that’s an “at best” scenario anyway, so yeah… I totally agree.
The LTD II’s were probably ‘locked in’ before the energy crisis, as as a Torino re-skin, then was renamed to say ‘We have a new small LTD!”.
Wagons and pickup box was carry over from 1972, to save tooling costs, already paid.
Anyway, seem like the only surviving LTD 2’s are the Rancheros.
I don’t know how far in advance Ford had been planning for what would happen to the Torino body post-1976, but I think the LTD II name was chosen to give these cars a fullsize-like image and present them as competitors to the downsized 1977 GM B-bodies. They were the only cars Ford had off the shelf with similar exterior dimensions to the Bs (though the Bs were probably a lot roomier on the inside, and far better and more modern cars by virtually any measure).
Although the Granada was conceived as a compact to replace the Maverick, Ford had been marketing it from day one as kind of a “new-sized intermediate” that offered the features one would expect in a larger car, but in a compact size. It had eaten into the Torino’s traditional market a lot in 1975-76. The LTD II was similar in concept; even though its design had originally been intended as an intermediate, it was being marketed as kind of a “new-sized fullsize”, to attract customers who felt that the LTD was too big and might otherwise buy a GM B-body.
I have seen one or two of these that I really liked, and am thinking particularly of a black one with red interior that a high school friend’s dad drove. This one, though in refrig white with all of the black tape – just awful.
If only the Ford Motor Company revived the Ranchero in 1979 with a new Panther Body & Chassis based from the Downsized Ford LTD 2 Door Coupe instead of those aftermarket Fairmont Futura based 2 Door Coupe.
Save for the nose, it was a nice facelift of the original 1972 design that did not wear its 5-mph bumpers well at all. But all Ford products of the time had that problem.
It is interesting how the US and Aussie product lines diverged after Ford dropped the Falcon stateside. Of course, the car-based ute remains popular in Oz, and they made even larger trucks off the car cab like this Holden One Tonner, complete with 3.6 liter V6 and 6-speed tranny. Wonder how many people would take this over a Silverado?
Were popular very popular but now with the Holden Colorado and new Ford Ranger as competition sales have tanked 4WD and turbo diesel engines are far more popular now than the traditional Aussie ute, having driven examples of the Thai trucks I can see why, and a friend recently traded his new XR6 ute for a Mondeo diesel car that goes and rides better he still has several utes in his fleet but he was a traditional buyer.
My neighbour has an XR6 turbo ute with a matching canopy. It spends most of its time ferrying one person to work and back. It looks cool though!
But I agree, serious business users seem to be going for the imported light trucks nowadays.
Yep, from my inner-urban perspective, the ‘styleside’ car/utes are the ones that rarely use their payload space. If I see tradies, its either a Hilux-type or a cab/dropside tray. I think this is reflected in the fact that HSV and FPV have a ute in their ranges. If its something bigger like an F-series or Silverado, its being used as a tow vehicle (generally speaking).
We had a ’77 Mercury Cougar Villager. Even with the back half (and the interior) coming straight out of a Torino, I liked it. It was only produced for 1 year (to be replaced by the Zephyr wagon in ’78 only to return as a Fox-based Cougar wagon later on).
I loved it because it wasn’t a Torino (I know now it basically “was”). As a manager at Ford, my father got a company car, so every 6 to 8 months our Torino wagon was replaced by another Torino wagon in a different color. This went on for 4 years until they finally stopped producing it.
Even with all that space between the grill and the front bumper, the plastic center part of the Cougar grill folded in on hinges if you pushed it at the bottom. If a frontal accident was big enough to get through that bumper and all that space between it and the front of the car, there really wasn’t a point in having that feature.
Ford definitely went full battering ram with their bumpers whereas Chrysler and even GM did a better job of integrating them.
I saw one of these yesterday in traffic, it was a GT no less. Sorry I didn’t have my camera with me but was on my regular route home so maybe I’ll get lucky soon. I found the GT to be humorous until I realized I was driving my Festiva. (yes I really do)
Personally I’d take a Ranchero with the LTDII front end over the 73-up Gran Torino front end any day. Plus the flanks on the LTDII version work much better with the T-bird front end swap which I like a lot.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was a “midsized” car.
“the Ranchero disappeared after the sedans it was based on were discontinued. The El Camino likewise died when its donor car reached the end of its life…the small imported trucks did really resolve both the wants and needs of the target segment much more effectively”.
The excerpts above identify the two things that killed off this type of vehicle in North America.
1) Compact pickups became mainstream, especially once the domestics entered the market, and were much more practical vehicles for someone who wanted a light pickup.
2) Even in their prime, these were niche models that sold in relatively small numbers. When the RWD midsize platforms they were built off of went away, replaced by smaller FWD platforms, there was no way to keep building them that made economic sense.
The El Camino was actually still selling pretty well in the late ’70s — IIRC from past discussion, ’79 was one of its best sales years ever — and even the Ranchero was generating enough business that Ford considered moving the concept to some other platform (like the Fairmont) once the LTD II went away.
The problem with a Fairmont-based Ranchero would have been load capacity, or lack thereof, I’d think. That was a smallish unibody car with a standard I-4, though the 5.0 V8 was also available. Similar in concept to the original Falcon-based Ranchero, yes, but not very similar to what the cars had become (though I think the Torino/LTD II was also unibody despite its heft). In my opinion a panther-based Ranchero would have made much more sense.
Over at GM, the new for ’78 A-body platform was still body-on-frame, a much better choice for something with a pickup bed. And the base engine was a 6, albeit not a very stout one (the 3.0 didn’t make much over 100 HP, though torque may have been OK). Also they technically outlasted their base car, as the Malibu was discontinued after ’83 but the Elky lasted until ’88 when the last of its RWD platform-mates (the Monte Carlo and the Olds Cutlass Classic) also were cancelled.
72-76 Torino and all LTD II’s were BOF designs.
A Panther Ranchero would have the same problem the Gran Torino/LTD II based one did – no fuel economy advantage over an F100.
Unless you are talking about the short lived and pretty rare 3.8 AOD powered F100s a Panther based Ranchero certainly would have had a MPG advantage over a F100. However MPG was not the point of the Ranchero once it moved away from the true Falcon chassis. You don’t offer 390’s and 460’s if you are trying to sell it on economy. The point of the later Ranchero was for someone who occasionally needed a bed but wanted something more comfortable and stylish than a regular pickup.
disagree with the ranchero dislike…I’ll give you the weak engines, tendency to rust and the ugly govt bumpers, but the fact of a vehicle that long and low to transport 2-3 people that isn’t priced for the rich is exactly what we’ve lost in America. love the earlier idea of a Panther Ranchero, I would be parking that next to my 99 Crown Vic XL coupe in my fantasy universe.
Hey, I recognize those buildings! It looks like Mr. Clem found that Ranchero in Ballard, one of the better areas in Seattle for car-spotting. I have an outtake scheduled for tomorrow on a car that I found in Ballard.
Hi Mike, This is Pike up on Capitol Hill.
How long was the bed on these? I saw one this weekend (CC effect) hauling a dirt bike with the tailgate up which means it was more than 6 ft – or it was a small-wheel 80 or 90cc bike.
These were always much rarer than El Caminos in my neck of the woods, and even today I see far more last-gen El Caminos on the road an in Craigslist than any kind of Ranchero. And in fact I think more Falcon Rancheros have survived as daily drivers than Fairlane/Torino/LTDII Rancheros.