"bad"'70s cars that...

[good-shepherd]

the legendary Slant Six motor

I had a slant six in Plymouth Duster purchased from a local junkyard for $300. Never changed the oil and ran so low once the engine locked up and stalled. So I topped off the oil, turned the engine over by hand with a breaker bar and she started right up. Drove it for another year after that..

Also had a 1976 Pontiac Catalina (paid $300 for it as well) 400ci engine, A/C worked great and was ice cold. Never changed the oil in that either and the front brake pads got so worn down they cut into the cooling fins on the rotors..

This was in the 80's and 90's when used beater cars were cheap. Easily affordable by broke teenagers and college students.

There were others such as another slant six Plymouth Volare wagon and a Cadillac with a 500ci engine that I had to sell after a month because the gas mileage was bankrupting me. All $300 or less.

 

[justjunque]

Bill,
Yup. Even with its problems, I'd take that Granada in a heartbeat! Although, I don't think I'd like the California carb.

Ken,
I had a 1977 LTD Landau four-door. I may have paid $350 for it. It was one of my favorite cars.

Douglas,
I had a slant six Duster too. I think it was a 1975. I loved the looks of them, and I always heard how bulletproof the engine was. Leave it to me, I must have gotten a Monday car or something. Isn't that what they used to call them? Mine never ran right. I eventually gave up on it and sold it to my brother. I don't know what he had done to it, but I believe he got it running better.

My teenage dream car was the mid '70s Monte Carlo. Over the years, I was fortunate enough to own three different ones. First was a 1976. My second one was a 1975. And my third and final one was a 1977.
The '76 was one-year-only color, that I want to say was lime green metallic with a white vinyl top and white vinyl interior. (Two-toned with sort of an avocado green.)
The '75 was dark blue metallic with a white landau vinyl top, and white vinyl swivel bucket seats.
The '77 was a sort of copper/orange metallic with a tan landau top, and tan cloth interior. I think that orange color was a one-year-only also.
All of mine had the "Corvette style" rally rims. The first two had whitewalls. The '77, I bought a set of white lettered radials for it.
I loved every one of them. The '76 was in the roughest condition. But, being my first Monte Carlo, I thought it was awesome.
The '77 had the least power/torque, as it was the only one of mine that had a 305. The other two had the 350.
I traded that one in, it must have been in 1987. I replaced it with a 1982 Buick Regal coupe that I bought to get the attention of a female co-worker. Her parents had a nearly identical car.

Barry

 

[circlew]

Pete, whatever the dealer body shop had to do didn't take long to correct. I'd have to ask Wanda to be certain, but it may have just been the nameplate that had to be switched. I don't know if any other side trim was different between the two models. Evidently someone at the factory didn't read the order right, or picked up the wrong parts. May have been at the time of a switchover on the assembly line. The car was ordered from the factory, not dealer stock. They kept it about 10 years.

 

[rp2813]

My dad bought a pre-owned 1969 Continental Mark III, literally in the dark.  He went to see it at night and bought it on the spot.  Don't ask me what he was thinking, but he clearly wanted a Mark III badly.  It was the classic color combo from the the full width magazine ads:  burgundy with a black vinyl top.  When he got it home, I immediately noticed it had a Thunderbird emblem on the steering wheel.  It also had eliminator pipes that did away with two of the four mufflers, and had wheel covers off of a '70 or '71 model, which were entirely different looking from the '69 covers.  One day we were out in the car and spotted a Mark IV on a small used car lot nearby.  It had '69 Mark III wheel covers, which looked hideous on it, so we stopped and proposed a trade.  The dealer didn't hesitate to make the switch on the spot.

 

That Mark III drove beautifully and rode like a cloud, but it was otherwise sketchy.  Once when it was parked on the driveway, which was fairly long, my dad started it and while it was sitting there running at a fast idle from the cold start, it popped out of Park and into reverse (automatically releasing the parking brake), backed down the driveway at a pretty good clip, started heading into an arc and barely missed the front of the house, proceeded across the front lawn and if not for a young Mulberry tree in the parking strip, which it hit with a loud cracking sound (the tree survived with a scar that remained for a several years), the car would have headed into the street to raise havoc and likely trigger some serious insurance claims by the neighbors.

 

There was no visible bumper damage.  My dad was working out of town frequently at that time, and he instructed me to sell the car.  Some guy came along and I got him to pay more than my dad did for the car.  Apparently he wanted a Mark III really badly too.  I wonder when, where and how that cycle finally ended.

 

[philcobendixduo]

Fords "popping" out of PARK

Yes, Ralph - Ford had a BIG issue with the late 1960's and early 1970's automatic transmission selectors (on the column) "popping" out of PARK when running.
My mom had a 1968 Falcon Futura Sports Coupe (bought new) and after a year or two, she had to hold the gear selector "up" into PARK when starting it. If not, the car "thought" it was in gear and would not crank.
Later, Ford issued labels to all known owners of the automatic column shifted cars of that era warning NOT to leave the car unattended when the engine was on.
Many others experienced the episode your dad did - sometimes with deadly or injurious results.
I'm sure many owners never bothered to stick that warning label on the dash.

 

[maytag85]

I’ve heard Fords from the 60’s and 70’s had a tendency to pop out of park as well. There’s a ‘66 Ford Galaxie 500 (similar to the LTD above but in the Galaxie 500 trim) that I want to try to get and if I do, I will for sure use the parking brake just to be safe. There’s even a neutral safety switch where it won’t start unless in neutral.

It’s interesting how Ford was the one to use Park Reverse Neutral Drive Low from the beginning with their automatics in the late 1940’s and very early 1950’s though it was only Park Reverse Neutral Drive, Low was added later on. GM in their infinite wisdom used all kinds of weird patterns for the gear shift in their cars in the 1950’s and early 1960’s before they went to the typical PRNDL, they probably got complaints from people who thought they were putting the car in reverse but ended up putting it in neutral or ended up putting into park while driving ruining the transmission.

 

[rp2813]

Yeah Bill, I remember the news stories about Ford's rogue reversals, so when it did happen it was for sure alarming, but I chalked it up to another statistic that fortunately didn't require reporting. 

 

The '60s Ford products with shifters on the column all had issues.  My dad's '65 Continental required holding the shift lever up to the top of the Park position in order to start it.  I followed instructions in the shop manual to adjust the switch at the bottom of the steering column, which was an exercise in contortion and was apparently written under the assumption that everybody had three hands to hold a contact post in place while sliding the entire switch assembly and tightening down two hard to reach screws.  No matter how many times I adjusted the switch mechanism and tightened it down, the problem would recur after a while.

 

The '69 Mark's shifter was a lot easier to adjust.  No screws involved.  Just zip a plastic tab on the switch assembly with your finger and allow it to snap back.  And the intervals between the adjustments were much longer.  Your mom's Falcon probably employed that same system.

 

[qsd-dan]

Most of GM's early automatic transmissions from 1939-1964 (Dual band Hydramatic, Dual coupling Hydramatic, Dynaflow, ect) had reverse at the bottom so one could easily shift from reverse to low gear in order to rock a vehicle out of the snow. They universally adopted the PRND21 with the TH400 in 1964 and soon after, the TH350 in 1969 although the Powerglide was using it way back in the early 50's.

 

[bradfordwhite]

71 duster

The crap we had back then.
No EFI. No air bags. AC was still an option. Catalytic converters didn't start until 1975. No real responsible child seats. No full head rest support. No compact fuel efficient cars. No rear brake lights and taillights in general were often dim or small. Ashtrays all over the inside. Poor fit and finish. Noise control was not a priority.

The smugness of Detroit's auto industry was palpable.

Thank-goodness for Ralph Nader.

I didn't start taking an interest in vehicles until 1982.
Things were better by then.

One thing we did have though which is missing today was an effort to isolate the car chassis from the road. We had cars that rode like a dream. It was so nice and cushy.

 

[sudsmaster]

This may be where the Torqueflite transmission has the edge. The controls are located on the left side of the dashboard. There's a big lever that you bring down to put it into park, and it has a detente to keep it there. I've never heard of a Torqueflite transmission popping out of park/neutral into a moving gear. Sounds like Ford screwed up big time.

 

 

[cfz2882]

malaise era poster boy...

..one of my high school buds had a '74 Vega automatic: car was actually very reliable and didn't use oil since engine had been rebuilt with iron cylinder sleeves,but it was slow-would not "squeal out"and another buds '83 Cutlass ciera with the 4.3 v6 diesel would leave the Vega in it's dust I had a '74 nova 4dr:2bbl 350,th350,2.56 rear gears

 

[stan]

This

Mid 70s GM has been very good to me over the years..I’ve tried to be good to her too..even with the smog control. Very smooth ride
I haven’t driven a car with better power steering.
(U turn with one finger)

 

[maytag85]

Reply #28

It’s all relative to the era. Cars back then didn’t have the safety features of today’s cars BUT had better outward visibility. I’ll take better outward visibility vs modern vehicles that have visibility that’s on par with late 1930’s and 1940’s cars. Having chunky a, b, and c pillars that conceal pedestrians and vehicles on the road at times is quite dangerous. That’s why I don’t feel comfortable driving modern vehicles, much rather have something like the ‘66 Ford LTD 4 door hardtop that has tons of visibility, even more so when all the windows are rolled down on a nice day.

 

[ea56]

Re: Reply#28

That is a ‘71 Dodge Demon, the sister ship of the ‘71 Plymouth Duster, you can tell by the tail lights. The Duster tail lights are 2 horizontal lenses on each side. I owned a ‘71 Demon with a 225 slant six and a torque flight 3 spd auto trans., which was an excellent auto trans. I bought it new in August ‘71. It was a good car, nothing fancy, but dependable, comfortable and well put together.

It got an average of 22 mpg and it had tail lights, directional signals, brake lights, just no center back light in the rear window, that didn’t become mandatory until ‘86.

Up until just a few years ago around here I was still seeing Dusters and Demons of that vintage all the time. They were durable and affordable cars in their day.

And I agree with Sean in reply #32, the older cars had MUCH better visibility than todays cars. We didn’t need a rear view camera to back up or park the car, you could always see all four corners.

And they had REAL steel chrome bumpers that actually protected the car and the driver. Not these plastic, low slung POS bumpers of today that if you pull up too far over a parking berm, than back-out and the whole GD bumper pulls off the car. Useless junk that cost a kings ransom to repair/replace.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 12/26/2022-23:49]

 

[davey7]

We had a second year Vega Kammback when I was a tot, which other than the rust was a good car. One of my uncles bought one based on our liking it and their engine melted down... When my grandfather died my grandmother wanted us to take his car, which was a Mark II Cortina (he only had a Ford because they lived in Dearborn - I don't think he owned an American car after moving here). We should have kept it.

 

[ea56]

In ‘72 I flew down to LA to visits some friends that lived in Eaglerock, off of the Pasadena Freeway. I arrived on Saturday night. My friends Jeff and Dennis had to work on Sunday.

They had a ‘71 Vega and loaned it to me to drive around and see the sights while they were at work. It was a 4 speed. I’d never driven in LA before, but I was an adventurous 21, so armed with a AAA map of LA I took off and had a ball.

That little Vega was easy to maneuver around LA and even with the traffic the 4 spd wasn’t a problem at all. I went to Universal Studios, Hollywood Blvd. and all over downtown LA. I never got lost once, I have a good sense of direction.

That Vega was a fun little car to drive.

Eddie

 

[wayupnorth]

I had a 72 Vega. Decent little car but the motor was garbage. Got rid of that for a 72 Celica which was a problem after a problem from Day 1.

 

[cfz2882]

under the hood of the Vega...

was very simple:iron head/aluminum block OHC 4 painted orange,big black plastic fan at front and an aluminum air filter that I think was sealed and you threw out and replaced the whole assembly when it got dirty

 

[bradfordwhite]

Pacer

Caught the imagination for a few minutes but...
It was terribly heavy which made it NOT a fuel efficient small car.
The engine wasn't reliable.
It was an after thought, like most small U.S. made cars in the 70s. Something thrown out there after the fuel embargos and rising gas prices, to appease to buying public.
It was like they were designing vehicles for the oil industry and wanted the vehicles to use as much gas as possible.

 

[bradfordwhite]

Of course the quality cars came from Japan, same as now.

Childhood friends parents had a first gen CVCC about 1975 in kermit the frog green