Junkyard Find: 1971 Ford F-100 Pickup
We saw a 1979 Ford F-series pickup in Denver a couple of months back, and now the very same yard has this ’71 as well. It’s eight years older, but appears to be from an entirely different era… which it was.
In 1971, emission-control hardware was starting to make some inroads on engine performance, but compression ratios were still reasonably high. Nobody imagined that the Arabs would jack up oil prices in just a couple of years, either.
Pickups weren’t intended for use as daily-driven, amenity-crammed suburban commuters, as they are today, but someone went to the trouble of installing seats out of a conversion van into this one.
Designer Craft!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I like the styling of the dash, it looks better than their later two-cluster thing that they applied to EVERY ford product from 74-88. Just look at the imprinted FORD on the chrome strip, and how it tapers at either end, surrounded by the nice oval. Looks cool!
Own a 73 F-250 Ranger XLT Camper Special, Texas truck originally, so very little rust and factory paint is still in remarkable condition. Great truck that will haul a real load, only complaint is the 10-12 MPG from the 390 that keeps it from being my DD. Still a suprising number of these old Ford trucks on the road from this era.