Junkyard Find: 1977 Ford Pinto
Ford sold more than three million Pintos during the 1971-1980 period, though most of those were 1974 and earlier models. By 1977, Corollas and Civics and Rabbits had taken a big bite out of Pinto sales, so these later cars are even more uncommon in junkyards than their older brethren. Not that Pintos are easy to find in your local U-Wrench-It yard; most of these cars were crushed long before the end of the 1990s.
Here’s a ’77 I spotted a few days ago in a Denver self-service yard.
Before today’s Junkyard Find, we’d seen this ’72 Pinto wagon and this ’74 hatchback, and that’s it. Pinto-based Mustang IIs are easier to find these days, in fact.
This one was reasonably well-optioned, with Whorehouse Red vinyl interior and automatic transmission.
Speaking of Pintos with automatics, my ’68 Mercury Cyclone had a Pinto floor shifter just like this one (retrofitted after the column shifter mechanism failed and couldn’t be fixed with easy-to-find junkyard parts).
Power came from an 89-horsepower 2.3-liter engine. In 2.5-liter form, this engine was used in Ford Rangers into our current century.
The Mother Jones story Pinto Madness made the car the butt of a million “exploding rear-ended Pinto” jokes. The story was in the September 1977 issue, just in time for the new owner of today’s Junkyard Find to witness the start of the car’s even-more-rapid-than-expected value depreciation.
The ’77 Pinto was able to beat the Corolla and B210 in a hillclimb test. Which isn’t surprising, as those cars were even more miserably underpowered than the little Ford.
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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Saw this on the U-Pull-&-Pay website last night. Someone snagged that left fender because in their pic it's still there. They have a 1977 Granada at the moment too. Last time I was there, there was a '71 Thunderbird with no engine. I have the beak-face grille on my wall right now.
I learned to drive stick in a '71 with a 1.6L Kent. It was the sweetest handling car I ever drove, and bone reliable. A friend had a '76 with the 2.8L Cologne, a hand crank moonroof, and Craigers. We would all pile in and take the girls to the Dairy Dell for fancy ice cream cones. It was fun.