Ford obviously took a page or ten from the then current Chevrolet Chevelle playbook when they baked up this 1971 Ford Torino 500 hardtop. Not a bad thing as this is the rarest of Fords even a dyed-in-the-pile-carpeting Chevy fan like me could love. This popped up on Facebook Marketplace for sale not far from the Old Triple Wide recently with an asking price of $35,000. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it also ain't cheap.
This black beauty is in fabulous shape and has just 45,000-miles on her 55-year-old ticker.
The poster of the ad doesn't say if this is an "Ohio car" or not, there's not a spec of rust on her so at the least, it's not from up here on the "North Coast" where old cars rust out just sitting in garages, storages facilities and barns.
Us car nerds will note that Ford didn't have a four-barrel version of their 302-cubi-inch V-8 for 1971. This is a harmless upgrade that could be easily undone although two more "venturis" would add some much-needed deep breathing. There are no details in the ad about what may have been done to the engine aside from a fresh coat of "Ford Engine Blue" and the four-barrel carburetor.
Ford "Magnum 500" rims where standard on Torino GT for 1971, they may have been available on these cars but definitely not these 15-inch versions; all 1971 had 14-inch rims. No points off here since the larger wheel and tire help beef up the look of the car. Improves handling too.
I'm generally not a fan of vinyl tops but it works well on this car. I've always thought it odd that most cars with vinyl tops had seams in them. They couldn't order sheets of vinyl wide enough to cover the roof in one sheet?
Ford doesn't get the credit it deserves for "inventing" the intermediate sized automobile when they introduced their "mid-sized" Fairlane in 1962, two-years before GM rolled-out a mid-sized car. From 1955 to 1961, a Ford Fairlane was a full-size car but for '62, it was a whopping 16-inches longer than a Falcon, 12-inches shorter than a Galaxie, "mid-sized", indeed. Problem was its styling was typical '60's Ford, meaning it was derivative, not that this isn't, but bland; miracle of miracles how Ford whipped up the Mustang in 1964. Ford revised styling in 1965, but it was the 1968 reboot of the line when things finally started getting interesting. In '68, "Torino" was introduced as a luxury-tinged subseries of the Fairlane that was so popular that in 1970, Fairlane became a subseries of Torino before being put to pasture. Another reboot for 1970 included our hardtop '71 here along with a fastback version they called the "Sportsroof".
Above is a 1970 Torino with the Sportsroof. Ford started calling their fastbacks such in 1969, a name change from the previous "Fastback 2+2". You'd think fastbacks wouldn't be that big of a deal to pull of successfully, I guess not. The sickly green on this car along with the puny tires and horrible wheel covers do nothing for this car. Even the lack of a vinyl top can't save it.
For 1971, Ford had a gaggle of Torino models from rental-car basic to screaming muscle car to a station wagon to the pseudo-luxury 500 like our Marketplace darling here. The Torino 500 sat at the top of Torino the ladder and was the plushest and cushiest.
Although, looking at this vinyl drenched, injection molded plastic interior, hard to believe this in any way was construed as a luxury car.
Ford redesigned the Torino for 1972 turning into a whale of what was supposedly a mid-size car. Things went really south in 1973 with the safety-bumpers, 1974 brought about the Starsky and Hutch Torino, a car that "car guy" Paul Michael Glazer, ("Starsky") led him to utter the immortal words, "Torino's suck".
Well, most of them do. Not this one, though.
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