Can I interest you in a 1961 Falcon with 50% more weight, 25% less power, and 100% more fluff?
(first posted 12/27/2017) I admit to having had an obsession for years with finding the specific car that most fully embodies the worst traits of the Brougham-Malaise Era. During this time, performance, efficiency, handling, space utilization and essentially all practical or objective qualities were thrown out the executive suite window in favor of padded tops, opera windows, tufted velour, plastiwood, stand-up hood ornaments and other tacky accouterments. That’s where the development money all went, and as a consequence, performance and efficiency went to hell in a…Granada.
I’ve harbored a long-held suspicion that the worst of the worst would have a blue oval on it, as Ford in the 70s under Lee Iaccoca was all about the show and most decidedly not about the go. But it took no less then three previous posts here to hunt it down, although I should have really known all along. But here it is, the winner of all four of CC’s Dunce Cap Award categories, the 1975 Granada with the 250 (4.2L) six:
- lowest hp per cubic inch: 0.28 hp per cubic inch.
- lowest rpm at max. power : 2800rpm
- worst power-to weight ratio 48.46 lbs per hp
- slowest 0-60 time: 23.15 seconds
All hail the victor, a triumph of fluff, feebleness and imitation style over substance, engineering and performance. And it’s not just me; Popular Science compared a 250 six Granada to a 250 six Nova, and the results were predictable.
The 1975 Granada optional (std. on Ghia) 250 (4.2 L) six was rated at 70 net hp, at 2800 rpm, in CA emission configuration, or 28hp per cu.in. The 49 state version made a whopping 72 hp at 2900 rpm. These are truly astounding figures, right from the late 1920s, especially compared to what the Japanese and European competitors were able to muster, never mind the American competition. Even the lowly Chevrolet 250 six was rated at 105 hp in 1975, which is a whopping 50% (!) more.
And what’s even more astounding is that the base 200 cu.in six was rated at 75 hp. Adding almost a liter of displacement somehow knocked off several horsepower. Only a company dedicated to “Total Performance” could possibly have been able to figure out that trick. All of Ford’s huge investments in racing was finally paying off for the customer.
In a recent post where this engine was nominated by Vince/BillMitchell, some of you tried to make excuses (emission controls) as to why this engine was so particularly low in output. Well, I’m not buying it. of course emission controls were the reason, but other companies were able to master that problem quite well. As pointed out above, the Chevy 250 six made 50% more power. The 1975 Chrysler 225 slant six also made 105 hp. And AMC’s 258 six made 110 hp. What was Ford’s excuse again?
Never mind that the Mercedes diesels of the time even made more power, by a huge margin. The 240D made 62 hp from 147 cu. in, or 0.46 hp per cu.in. Guess which was faster?
and has the same performance as a 1961 VW Beetle?
The 1975 VW Rabbit in the ad made the same 70 hp, from a 1.5L four with a carburetor. That’s .77 hp per cu.in, or almost three times as much. No mention in the ad that the Granada had the same hp as the VW. Oh, yes, there were V8 options in 1977, but since this was coming right off the energy crisis, I can assure that six cylinder Granadas were the norm in 1975.
One commenter mentioned that the Falcon six cylinder head with its integral intake manifold was at fault. Pfft. How about a new and improved cylinder head? The Falcon 200 six was used right through 1983 (making a whopping 92 hp in its final year), and was built by the hundreds of thousands, so a better breathing head with a proper intake manifold wouldn’t exactly have been hard to come by, eh? Sorry, there’s just simply no excuse for 70hp from a 4.2 L six.
When we factor in the 3,392 lb base curb weight of the Granada Ghia, we come up with an astounding 48.46 lbs per hp. That’s worse than the old 1192cc 40hp (34 net hp) 1961-1965 VW Beetle (46 lbs per hp), whose last year in the US was a decade earlier. And it’s only slightly better than a 1928 Model A, which had 53 lbs per hp. I can’t think of an American car since the 1930s that had a worse ratio.
And the Granada’s 0-60 time proves that: 23.15 seconds, as per a Popular Science comparison test with a 250 powered Nova, which is right below. That’s slower than what a good-running 40 hp Beetle could do (22 seconds). And that applies to a Mercedes 240D too.
I could go on with the comparisons, but I think I’ve made my point, for now. And I’ll leave it to Popular Science to give a more objective comparison of the Granada to its main competitor, the Chevy Nova. But even I was surprised at how lop-sided that came out. I guess I’m not the only one who only saw only sizzle and no steak.
Because this review is from Google Books, I couldn’t copy larger-sized images. If it’s too small for you, even after clicking the images, here’s the original.
The summary gives it away: the Granada loses (or ties) every category, except for eking out a one point advantage in roominess. Well, the Granada did have a new body, even if it was sitting on ye olde Falcon platform. The Nova’s body from the cowl back was still based on the 1968 Chevy II, which was never a paragon of space efficiency.
The Nova got significantly better fuel economy, despite weighing more. PS speculates that the difference is because Ford calibrated this engine to meet 1976 emission standards. But that speculation is likely off-base, as the 1976 version was re-calibrated substantially again, and had a bump to 90 hp, which is a 25% or more increase. I’ll speculate that Ford had serious problems meeting even the 1975 standards, and had to resort to extreme measures that killed performance and fuel economy.
Regarding handling, here are the two key quotes: ” the Nova feels taut and firm” “The Granada..has excessive freedom to roll, pitch and bounce”.
There you have it. And Americans had a lot of it; the Granada, that is.
Like all of Iaccoca’s new cars, the Granada was a big hit, at least for the first few years. The Granada almost duplicated the first few years of the Falcon, coming just shy of the Falcon’s record 474k sales in 1961. An energy crisis will do that. And the Nova did well too, almost hitting its record of 376k 1963 in 1977. These were the second coming of the compact years, after their decline in the second half of the 60s and the first half of the 70s.
No one will ever accuse Lee Iaccoca of being overly concerned about what was under the hood. It was the grille in front of it and the ornament on top of it that really counted. And now we can officially add another title to him; in addition to the Father of the Brougham Epoch he was also the King of Malaise.
A two-door I came across a couple years ago.
Rear view
The reason that Ford didn’t spend money on a new head is that they knew the Falcon 6 was at the end of its economic life cycle. Low cost of production, and durability were the key design requirements, not emissions or specific power output.
There was no future in straight 6 engines. They suck for packaging so instead of spending money on improvements they spent money on V6s which was the future. Of course Ford AU saw it another way in that they could fix the faults of the Falcon 6 and retain some of their tooling vs the expense of tooling from scratch for a V6 and they couldn’t get away with importing the Cologne V6 even if it would have been suitable for the Falcon and affordable.
Meanwhile Ford was spending money on advanced technology, like the various iterations of the PROCO engines. Unfortunately the cost benefit trade off wasn’t there yet and those patents expired before technology and regulatory demands made it economically feasible. However today’s directed injected gasoline engines are based on the basic principles of the PROCO. While the direct injection didn’t become common until recently the crank triggered distributorless and dual spark plug concepts made it to market much sooner.
Granted, they had just cut the Falcon 6 down to make the Lima 2.3 four which would go on to the end of the Ranger pickup line.
Wrong. The Lima 2.3 is a completely different design. It’s OHC and was launched in 1974. The Tempo 2.3 is the cut down six. It’s a pushrod design and was launched in 1983.
What was it with Ford’s fetish for completely or substantially different engine designs that had identical displacement? Your example is the pair of 2.3s. I can also think of the two 3.8 V6s (both called Essex), the multiple 351s (Cleveland, Windsor and Modified) and I am probably missing at least one. I have never understood this.
And there’s the Ford Cologne 2.3 liter V6, introduced in 1967. That makes it a trio of 2.3s.
There was a 2.8 Essex V6, a Cologne 2.8 V6, a Cologne 2.9 V6, and a metric 3.0 V6 too.
What was it with Ford’s fetish for completely or substantially different engine designs that had identical displacement?
Utilization of existing tooling/transfer lines. The Lima 2.3, which was heavily based on the European 2.0 SOHC four, required new tooling and transfer lines. And it was designed for RWD north-south orientation. When the Tempo-Topaz were developed, there’s little doubt in my mind that Ford wanted to utilize the existing tooling/transfer lines of the Falcon six, which was capable of large volumes, rather than invest in additional capacity for the 2.3.
Note that the last year for the Falcon six (1983) was just before the first year of the the HSC 2.3 four, which was essentially a Falcon six minus two cylinders and a new head design. This allowed the extensive Falcon six capacity to be switched over at minimal expense.
The tooling, and especially the transfer lines of a given engine family is an enormous investment, and keeping that going as long as possible is paramount.
It’s no coincidence that the 4.380″ bore center of the Y Block was also used on the “Windsor” and “335” V8s; they used the same transfer lines. Same applies to the Lincoln/truck Y block, which shared the 4.630″ bore center of the FE/FT engines. And the MEL shared a 4.900″ bore center with the “385” V8s.
Transfer lines are the giant machining/milling/drilling facilities that prep the raw block castings, and are very expensive. So when Ford replaced an older engine family with a newer one they kept bore centers so that these transfer lines didn’t need to be replaced.
GM had similar issues, and explains why there were so many overlapping V8s in the latter days of the V8. As demand for different engine sizes fluctuated due to gas prices and such, rather than invest in new existing ones were reused. The goal is always to maximize the utilization of existing facilities.
This also explains the Windsor and Cleveland V8s, which were similar in some regards but different too. They were built in different facilities, at a time when Ford needed two large plants to build enough mid-sized V8 engines.
There was only one American Essex V6 (3.8,3.9,4.2 L) There was a British Essex V6, but that was never used in the US. The American Essex was built at the same Windsor plant where the small block V8 was built, but it had unique bore center, and was not a Windsor V8 minus two cylinders. It was essentially a copy of the Buick V6. It seems surprising that they didn’t use the same bore center as the Windsor, but that must have been because it was so similar to the Buick.
The funny thing is that all of the 351’s are actually 352s as they share the same bore and stroke as the old FE. However when Ford wanted to create a big inch small block they called it at 351 to avoid confusion, only to shortly there after create the 335 series engines and call them a 351 as well.
In addition to the Lima and Tempaz 2.3 they have revisited that displacement with the engine sold under the Duratec name as used in the Fusion and others and the Ecoboost version currently used in the Mustang and others.
And of course the 4.6 is 2 x 2.3 and they had originally considered making an inline 4 that shared many parts and key dimensions with the V8.
So yeah Ford seems to have a thing about certain displacements.
@ Paul, just because they reused some of the Falcon 6’s production equipment for the Tempaz 2.3 (and Taurble 2.5) doesn’t mean they needed a duplicate displacement. In fact if they had kept true to a Falcon 6 minus 2 cylinders I’d expect a displacement of 2.2l as 2/3 of the old 200 cu in version.
There is a reason for the three 351 engines. Ford rushed the 351W into production in the late 1960’s as it had nothing to compete in the increasing popular “350ish” CID midsized engines. The easiest way to do this quickly was to make a tall deck stroked 302 at the Windsor plant. The plan was that that the Cleveland plant would build these midsized engines to fill that role. While engineers started with a 351W as the basis, it was decided to do a number of upgrades to the design during development, which eventually resulted in the 351C. Ultimately, the plan was to drop the 351W but demand for the midsized engines was too much for the Cleveland plant, so the 351W remained in production to supplement the 351C.
By the mid 1970’s things had changed, and cost cutting was the name of the game. Ford dropped the 351C and made a new “tall deck” 351M from the 400’s taller engine block. This was done only to save money and increase parts interchangeability. Of course, this resulted in the 351M being a compromised design in comparison to the 351C. The 351W remained in production during these years again to keep up with demand.
Eventually by the early 1980’s, demand for mid-sized engines like the 351 was reduced to almost nothing. At this point it made more sense than to drop the 351M and keep the 351W which shared its architecture with the 302, which would become the main V8 of the 1980’s.
They didn’t have a crystal ball, but if they had done a new combustion chamber design for the 1973 regs they would have had 10 more years production!
Maybe the Granada was just a ploy to set the bar low, so that car guys would be really impressed with the Fox platform a few years later. A mid-sized car with four cylinder engine, floor shift manual transmission, and rack and pinion steering! How innovative and “European”! A Volvo from Detroit! I know I bought into that at the time; even my Lotus-driving buddy bought a Fairmont for his wife.
By the early 1970s, Ford upper management was firmly in the grip of the bean counters, led by the late Ed Lundy.
The popular perception today is that Iacocca ruled the roost at Ford before he was fired, but the reality is that he was operating off the norms set by Lundy and the Finance Department.
Iacocca, meanwhile, was the master at selling the same old wine in a new bottle. That was a formula that the Finance Department understood. Given that atmosphere, it’s no surprise that Ford trotted out the 1975 Granada/Monarch as an “all-new” vehicle. (Or that it would introduce a Granada with a Continental grille, fake spare tire hump and better upholstery as its answer to the Cadillac Seville a few years later.)
Work on the Fox and Panther platforms was started because market forces and impending government regulations basically left the company with no other choice.
This is a period of Ford history where I need to deepen my knowledge. What you say makes some sense. Iacocca’s time at Chrysler may have been the truest picture of “Lee turned loose” because Chrysler had always been a company mostly controlled by The Big Boss.
But Ford’s fall after the mid 60s has been confusing for me, and seemed to start with Knudsen’s failed presidency. And I can easily see Iacocca lacking political capital with Chairman HFII when compaired with Lundy, who was one of Henry’s own hires. The fact that Henry went outside when he hired Knudsen shows that there was nobody inside with the combination of skill and influence in the areas outside of finance.
How did Granada/Monarch sales stack up against all X platform models? Or at least against BOP versions equipped with 6 cylinder engines? Add all the Skylark, Omega and Phoenix sales in with the Nova’s and it probably meets or exceeds Ford’s Granada/Monarch figures. And as much as hindsight has made the rear drive X platform cars the “best” American cars of the later 70s – at least to hot rodders – I find the idea of owning a clean “baby brougham” Granada or Monarch appealing. Granted I am a bit weird…
I have to say, I don’t disagree with a lot of what has been said here, but I have always liked these cars, having driven a few back when they were new or slightly used. They were a good size for the times and not bulky and ponderous like so many other contemporary cars. Here in California, you didn’t see the sixes too often — only the 250 was offered here due to CA emissions regulations — so most were equipped with a 302 V-8. There were OK for their times. What I remember most about them is how cheap the plastic wood was — on the dash, and on the door caps of the Ghia models. Ugh.
A ’76 Granada Ghia LDO or Grand Monarch Ghia would certainly have a place in my garage, if one ever crossed my path.
This explains my parents’ choice of a Volvo 164. Our 1974 model with the battering ram bumpers and 3 speed automatic also weighed around 3000 lbs but the OHV 6 in the Volvo was still good for 140 horsepower thanks to EFI and well designed manifolds and ports. Plus the Volvo was shorter, and had better visibility and headroom.
I recall some pretty good parodies of Ford’s “precision size” advertising slogan for the Granada/Monarch, especially when they targeted the Mercedes 280E, a comparision even more ridiculous than a Cadillac Cimarron and a BMW E30.
Yep, my dad rocked a ’73 164. At the time, it was a heckuva value for what it was.
The Grenades were a lot tougher car than comparables from the competition.
Rugged bullet-proof powertrains and lacking an “Achilles’ heel” that would killed ’em off in droves, so Granada survived longer and in greater numbers.
In the rust belt the tin worm was the #1 reaper of most cars, with that:
Brand A had a cowl that would lose structural integrity, killing the car.
Brand P had a torsion-bar anchor/ crossmember that would commonly give way in a non-repairable way.
Brand C had a sub-frame that would become disconnected from the body structure in a non-repairable way.
Brand C also had a lot of problems with rear leaf springs and associated structure.
While not perfect, Granada didn’t have a particular weak point.
As to powertrains:
The Chevy 6 of the era was plagued with cylinder head and carburetor problems.
The Slant-6 of the day, as fondly as they’re recalled now, had a nasty habit of tossing #6 rod through the block; to boot, manifolds and induction were also troubled.
AMC 6 gobbled valvetrain components.
Meanwhile Granada soldiered on with the same ol’ tried and true Falcon reliability.
I’d say that automatic transmissions were equally good across the board. Standard shifts… not so much, with AMC and Chrysler arrangements the worst. GM transmission was okay, but bellhousing and linkage arrangements were a weak mess. Meanwhile Ford did a great job with its standard transmissions and their fitment.
So to me, of Detroit’s stopgap old technology cars that were carried forward beyond their time, Ford really did the best job.
Nope. Perhaps you’re magnifying an anecdote, or perhaps you’re just misremembering.
Having the 20/20 hindsight advantage of following these cars from showroom to graveyard, as I read the linked new-car-comparison I could tell that Granada was being unfairly slammed. But how could I bring the the bias argument to CC, in black and white, without sounding overly protective of Granada?
Then, when the comparison suggested that Granada spark plugs are difficult to access, I figured I had some beef to bring to the table. Because, every wrench-turner who ever gazed at a Falcon six knows that they had the most wide-open service access ever. And anyone who ever tuned an HEI Chey six knows that despite the engine’s overall clear access, two or three plugs may be buried.
Let’s look.
With the one-image-per-post rule let’s look first at a random stolen image of Granada spark plug access. How tough could that plug change be?
Next post we’ll look at Chevy six.
See next post…
(Please hold replies until I can make the second post up. Thanks)
…continued
And here’s a random image of an HEI equipped Chevrolet six.
There is more evidence of the comparison’s bias, but we don’t need it.
The point being, if the authors would go so far as to bend the truth about something so obvious as Granada’s wide-open plug access, while downplaying Nova’s cluttered access, their entire testimony should be disregarded.
King Paul, based on the obvious perjury it’s respectfully requested that Granada’s Malaise Award be rescinded; certainly there are more worthy recipients.
I had one I used as a taxi. It lasted 390000 miles when I junked it due to cracked head and just being worn out. Someone reserected it though it would have been cheaper to get something newer. I drove it 3 months on a cracked head and it went through 11 -14 quarts of drain oil a day before junking it. It lasted a long time and got plenty of miles out of it. I remember breaking a leaf spring driving an obease woman and having to put antifoulers on 4 of the 6 plugs. But for a 200$ car, I got over a year
Thanks for the trip down nightmare lane; what a turd!
When I was a little boy I loved all things Mercedes and was EXTREMELY gullible. Our local car dealer (Los Angeles CAL WORTHINGTON) would always say in his TV commercials how the Granada looks just like a Mercedes. I really believed him…but even I couldn’t see it. I thought it was me with the problem not that I hadn’t learned that car dealers told “fibs” and that Cal Worthington didn’t really have a dog named “Spot”
…
And it turns out he wasn’t actually saying “pussy cow”.
Had no idea Ford neutered the ’75 Granada’s 250 engine so ridiculously, at least they somewhat fixed it for ’76. Friend had a ’76 6 cyl 4 speed version that seemed to move out OK. It had come to SoCal around ’82 from a rust state and it was rusted out everywhere, being white didn’t help hide the rot. Think they paid all of $400 for it, replaced the clutch during the 2-3 years they owned it. I always thought it was a pretty well styled and roomy car for the times.
I wonder what if Ford had introduced the Fairmont 3 years earlier instead of the Granada?
Well, The 70s were a dark age not only for the American car building industry.
When I think of the high-end Mercedes-Benz products from this time frame, the first thing that comes to my mind is that you really cannot keep one on the road unless you have several “donor” cars to scavenge spare parts from. Because mechanical fuel injection, etc. etc. none of which is repairable – you have to replace old parts with other old parts and hope that it will work… somehow.
Those cars were also stupidly overly complicated, e.g. on a mid-70s 280SE the throttle linkage consists of something like five or six intricately curved solid links, hinged on everything in the engine bay and connected by ball joints. And unless every ball joint is properly lubricated, the gas pedal is stiff as hell. Herren, why couldn’t you just use a cable instead ?! And it’s essentially all built like that.
I really doubt that is the case with cars like this Granada.
The more “down-to-earth” Mercedeses built for the taxicab companies were durable & reliable like hammer and anvil, no doubt about that. But were they all that better than a Granada in terms of performance etc. ? I really doubt that, as well.
What it excelled at in 1970s, Mercedes-Benz achieved by using cutting-edge technology that at the time just could not be made reliable and durable enough, or cheap enough to be implemented in mass market cars like the Granada. Most innovations used on these cars were evolutionary dead-ends, like the wretched K-Jetronic continuous mechanical fuel injection (and the dead-end D-Jetronic transistorized electronic fuel injection, as well). Essentially these systems were just a sophisticated way to make the buyers pay for being test subjects in their development programs. Which didn’t produce serviceable results until much later.
When the American companies started to use fuel injection on a large scale in 1980s, they just employed the results of the European development process of the previous decade, mostly omitting the part of making people suffer from the overcomplicated, underdeveloped & overpriced earlier fuel injection systems. And as far as I understand it, at least in the late 1980s and early 1990s GM EFI was considered to be far superior to anything developed by Bosch or Siemens.
Until that, in the hindsight it looks like the safest option to stick with the old and relatively inefficient, but tried-and-true technologies that just work. Like the “Falcon platform”.
Of course, all that does not excuse in any way building engines with lower specific power than the low-compression flathead engines of late 1920s possessed.
The 1980s Volga engine with its 2.5 liters and 110 SAE hp suddenly starts to look really hot in comparison (and in stratified-charge, lean-burn configuration it also easily complied with the European emission regulations of the time).
I am with you on this.
In addition, I was very surprised at the high number of 1970’s Mercedes automatic transmission failures that would come into our shop.
Most around the 50,000 mile range.
What is wrong with K-Jetronic? Once you figure out how the system works, it is basically more simple than a carburetor. After like fifteen years, the air metering units would conk out but they were easy to rebuild.
Hats off to you sir.
Myself, I find CIS to be a nightmare system to troubleshoot, repair, and adjust. Unfortunately for customers when the system has problems they usually are in need of many things to get them back to running properly. Besides the fuel distributor issues, the injectors would leak down, corrosion of the electrical system including connectors and sensors, and the who can troubleshoot the brain except to plug & play a known good used one?
Had an ’87 VW Jetta with the CIS fuel injection – last model year for it and what a nightmare it was!
Exactly. Mostly mechanical in operation, simple to diagnose and repair. Durable and reliable. A lot of people were afraid to touch them back in the day, but you can’t blame the K-Jet system for lack of knowledge on the part of the repair technician.
This said, a lot of ’70’s K-Jet cars had steel gas tanks that would rust and cause major problems as the cars age, by the mid ’80’s plastic tanks and more corrosion resistant components for E10 fuel was a big improvement.
Haynes made a pretty good manual for the K Jetronic. Without that and the VW service manual fixing my Rabbit would have been much more difficult. Luckly the fuel filter caught most of the gunk and only one injector was clogged.
I checked the oil on a lot of early Granadas and Monarchs in both Toledo and Las Vegas and rarely saw one with anything but a 302. I had driven a coworker’s six cyl Granada in late ’75 and was shocked at how slow it was. He complained endlessly about how “weak” it was and about 2 years later, it was gone, replaced with a ’77 Trans Am that his son still owns. The twin boxes sold big in Vegas, I saw endless numbers of them and wondered what possessed them to buy one? Old people, young ones, they just seemed to be everywhere. By 1980, most were looking pretty sad, with the gas cap cover hanging diagonally and just looking tired. Honda, Toyota, and Datsun sold a lot of the replacement cars.
Ford sold a crap-ton of these cars because they were relatively cheap and somehow imparted to their buyers that they would be easier on fuel. Easier than what? A five ton?
The Granada was all how Detroit sold the sizzle and not the steak. They pumped a gazillion of them out the door and made money on every single one. There was still enough anti-Japanese and German sentiment around for these cars to actually sell. I wonder how many Granada owners bought another Ford? Well, the company was almost belly up by 1980.
Detroit still sells sizzle and not steak, so much so that it has basically given up on passenger cars. There is simply way more money in selling gargantuan rolling tough guy lounges than in econoboxes or small premium cars.
And of course gasoline will be cheap forever.
I got here via Mr. Jason Shafer’s Granada write-up of July 31, 2019.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/cc-capsule-first-generation-north-american-ford-granada-the-lido-shuffle/#more-321056
I never knew vent windows were an option for the Granada/Monarch line.
Ya learn something new every day.
The PS story is revealing in the way it shows not only how much unrealized potential the Granada had, but also how good a car the Nova, which was almost a 4-door Camaro, had become. The Granada, the 1977 GM B & C bodies and the 1976 Seville were, to my eyes, unusually handsome for boxy sedans, and a welcome relief from so many confused 1970s styling kludges like the 1977 LTD II, GM’s square-headlights-on-rounded-body mid-1970s A-bodies, the piggy ’71-78 Eldorado or just about any 1970s T-bird. While it couldn’t match the space efficiency of the Euro-Granada, with its independent rear suspension, it offered adequate space in a much lighter package than most mid-sized cars of that era, and at least from a distance, its interior, unlike that of its compact competitors, actually looked luxurious. Too bad Ford was stuck with mostly dreadful engine choices, especially in the pivotal first 2 years, and too bad that they had to sacrifice both the ride and handling quality in favor of a false veneer of smoothness on only the best roads. Ford dealers must have had to carefully plan out the test-drive route. On the other hand it was surprising to see that the Nova, despite its painfully cramped interior, made such good use of the improvements of the underpinnings it shared with the Camaro; for PS to call the ’75 Nova’s handling better than that of a ’71 Camaro was no faint praise. GM, for a change, made the best use of what they had on the Nova, while Ford squandered the what could have been a game-changer for them.
The information in the article was incorrect. The 250 was rated variously from 92-99 HP from 1975-1980 in the Granada and Monarch. All Ford and Chev 250s in there first Gross HP year were 155 HP gross. The biggest looser in the Malaise Era was the 1982 module year 351M truck engine in the last F150. Started as the 265 HP 351C 2V with 250 or 265 HP as a mid 1969 option in the Ranchero, ended up as a 148 HP at 3400 rpm 1975 replacement, and then died in June 1981 to June 1983 as a Feedback 136 HP net at 3400 rpm 50 states legal truck engine.
No, you are incorrect. The 1975 250 six was rated at 72 hp for 49 state version and 70 hp for the CA version.
Go up and look at the spec sheet in that review of the Granada and Nova in this post: it’s right there: 72 hp.
I’m quite prepared to be wrong.
Ford kept the same 250, 4.1 liter output for 5 years. It varied only if the fan clutch was engaged or not. 97 bhp or 72 kW @ 3200 rpm and 241 Nm or 180 lb-ft @ 1400 rpm. I have the figures from Ford, and the details Popular Science have used aren’t the same as Ford’s.
You are wrong. There’s plenty of other official sources that confirm the 70/72 hp rating.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-review-1975-ford-granada-the-perfect-car-for-mother-to-buy/
Road & Track’s test of the 1975 Granada mentions that they also drove a 72 horsepower 250/6 with a 3-speed manual. Automobile-catalog also lists the 72-horsepower engine, although their chart of its horsepower and torque curves looks like something that could only be achieved with electronic engine management and fudging, like the advertised torque plateaus for small displacement turbo engines, only in reverse.
Rhetorical question, but why did we not get the Ford Europe Granada? It had real wood interior, actual gauges (vs idiot lights), and looked like a Jag…..I mean maybe they just should have put a few on the lot and see what would happen (I suppose Mercury dealers were trying that with the German Capri…)
https://www.tradeclassics.com/auctions/ford/1977-ford-granada-ghia-2/
There was a Euro Granada concept done up with Lincoln trim and called Mark I. Maybe the Versailles would have sold better with more Euro. We will never know. Versailles failed because it had the same wheelbase, interior and exterior as the Granada/ Monarch. Seville was better with a longer wheelbase and more Cadillac styling both exterior and interior. Ford made a goof up here with the Lincoln.
I had a 250 six in my ’70 Mustang with an auto transmission. The performance was actually pretty good. It was rated at 155 hp. at 4,400 rpm, but what was better was 240 lbs/ft. of torque at a low 1,600 rpm. low speed and mid range acceleration was very good. It cruised easily at 75 mph, and I had it up to 95 mph. a couple of times. I had calibrated my speedo with a Navigation app on my Wife’s phone. My only real complaint was the poor fuel economy. I had 15” radial tires, a Mach One front spoiler, and a low restriction turbo muffler single exhaust. The best I could get on a hundred mile freeway test at 55 mph. was 15.5 mpg. Performance improving parts for this motor were scarce and expensive. With a 302 V8 I could get different carbs, manifolds and headers, which could provide more power with similar mileage.
It’s hard to believe that Ford took an engine that was a good solid performer, and had modified it into such a wheezer by 1975.
5 years later, Iaccoca made up for it with K-cars even if it was still late compared to the European like the French with their Citroen CX ( in the text above , review is from Google Book page 34 … scroll down to ” The view down the road ” just below the text on the Granada ) The Citroen CX win the ” Trophée européen de la voiture de l’année 1975 ” .
It always seemed to me that Iacocca’s strength (and weakness) was that he built the car(s) that he himself would be interested in purchasing. He wasn’t a “car guy”, and he felt that most of middle America wasn’t either. And figured that they cared about what he cared about, and in the 1970’s Iacocca basically wanted what all of America apparently wanted, which was something that was vaguely Chevy Monte Carlo, Chrysler Cordoba, or Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, none of which cars had any pretense to anything other than smoothness and middle-America wood-paneled-den luxury. Iacocca gave “the customers what they wanted”, but that was precicsely I think because that’s what he wanted, or imagined he would want if he was in the customer’s shoes. So he figured, heck, if they want a V-8, they can buy a V-8, but if they don’t, they don’t, they’re probably just tooling around Peoria anyhow and won’t know the difference or care particularly. The only place this didn’t really correlate was with the minivan, but I think Iacocca was able to place himself in the shoes of a young family and hence hit that target squarely on the nose as well. Iacocca probably didn’t really understand performance cars other than as “hot rods” like might be built in a shed by someone like Carroll Shelby, and marketed to the same, so that’s what he served up both at Ford and Chrysler. Iacocca’s sensibility served him well for many years, until the 1990’s came around and suddenly his value system didn’t correlate with the customers anymore.
Iacocca understood what many buyers of his generation wanted (along with those born about 10 years later, like my father). They wanted no-fuss mechanicals, a plush interior, effective air conditioning and a smooth ride. Which this Granada delivered – all in a package that was easier to park than an LTD Landau (an important point for many women buyers of that time).
Aside from the lethargic performance, the main complaint with the Granada is the handling, or lack thereof. But to drivers such as my father, “handling” meant that the car was easy to steer and park. If the road became twisty, the solution was simple…slow down. The fault wasn’t with the car for having a soggy suspension. The fault was with the driver who was driving too fast for conditions.
Of course, a generational change, as younger buyers moved to the forefront, also brought about a change in priorities, and what buyers expected in the way of chassis tuning and performance.
Lee Iacocca did what he was paid to do, sold cars for his employer. I don’t know if he was a car guy or not, but he build cars that sold. Mustang, check. Granada, check. K car, check. Minivan, check. Enzo Ferrari, no.
Granada/Falcon. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I might very well be wrong, but wasn’t the Granada larger in the interior than an Falcon? Especially in the back seat? What the Granada was, was an alternative to a 4500 pound LSD, er, LTD, that typically got sub 10MPG whatever the EPA tests suggested. Gas mileage tests today aren’t all that good, back in those days they were laughable, both up and down.
Lastly, I’ve never driven one, but knew people with them, and they liked them. Think Volvo 140/240. Look at the spec’s on paper, they’re crap. But people loved them. What counts more, spec’s on paper, or what people like to drive?
Seems like a ‘Best of/Worst of Iacocca’ would make for a good CC. The interesting thing about a few of the ‘Worst of’ is that they were actually big sellers for a while (Mustang II, Granada).
But, then, there were the losers that never sold well (Imperial coupe, Executive limousine, TC by Chrysler).
There was a Euro Granada concept done up with Lincoln trim and called Mark I. Maybe the Versailles would have sold better with more Euro. We will never know. Versailles failed because it had the same wheelbase, interior and exterior as the Granada/ Monarch. Seville was better with a longer wheelbase and more Cadillac styling both exterior and interior. Ford made a goof up here with the Lincoln.
“Well, the Granada did have a new body, even if it was sitting on ye olde Falcon platform.”
Here’s a 1st gen. Comet and a Granada. It’s easy to see the Falcon origins in the Comet, but the Granada seems to have nothing in common with Falcon or Comet. The Granada looks wider, for one thing. If I can’t see a similarity, then neither could John Q. Average, right? What was common? Inner parts of the unibody and the suspension? My ’60 Comet has fairly firm springing–it won’t bounce and roll like the Granada in the article.
As for the Falcon-based 6 cyl., yes, performance was weak, but this was 1975 and everybody was freaking out over gas mileage. If the 6 wasn’t powerful enough for you, just get the V-8; problem solved!
The first Mustang was a restyled Falcon–no one seemed to care.
While I agree that this car gets a bum rap in some ways – it was hardly a disaster on the order of the Vega, Pacer, Aspen/Volare and GM X-cars – critics do have a point when it comes to Ford did (or didn’t do) with the Falcon platform.
The problem wasn’t that Ford kept the platform in production for years. The problem was that it didn’t make any meaningful upgrades in handling and braking during that time. Many older buyers may not have cared, but, by the early 1970s, an increasing number of younger buyers did.
What was okay in 1965 was not competitive in 1975. GM, for example, did improve the dynamics of the Nova.
wow, i think this has become a “classic” cc article. as i posted back in 2017, i grew up in one of these and they weren’t as bad as this article makes out. despite the non-cali 250 six version only having 75hp, it could get to 40 mph in under 10 seconds due to 180 ft/lbs of torque. it sat five reasonably comfortably, had a big trunk and had roughly 400 miles of range at 20 mpg highway. it also cost less and arguably looked less plain jane than it’s main competition, the chevy nova.
was it a great car. no but it wasn’t a disaster either.
I bought a new 1977 Ford Granada Ghia 2 door with a 4-speed transmission, in 1982 when it had 102,000 + miles on it I thought I should consider replacement, I was working for an insurance co. claims dept. when I received a call from an insured as he had a claim with us. While talking he let me know he was an executive at Ford, he wondered if I owned a, I Ford, I advised him I did, a 77 Granada with around 102,000 miles on it, he replied ” it must be a standard transmission. I ask “why do you say that?”, his reply was ” we’ve found after about 85,000 miles there junk”, I assumed he meant. automatics. Shortly after manuals were no longer available.
Looks like this site has picked up a fan from Youtube. “Ed’s Auto Reviews” has referenced Curbside Classics twice that I saw so far. 1 was this article on the Granada, and another on “The Great Brougham Epoch.
I rented a room in 1980 from a lady who drove Ford compacts. She hated her 4-door Maverick with manual steering and an automatic, said it was like driving a truck, and it gave her plenty of trouble. She replaced it in ’75 with a 6-cyl Granada that she liked well enough, but at 5 years and 50k miles it had gone from slow to virtually undriveable as the carburetor and every vacuum line expired.
Her neighbor had a similar Granada with a 302. At 5 years old it had electrical gremlins and a failed rear differential.
Those Granadas and my girlfriend’s early Fairmont Futura 6-cyl that had transmission problems, cooling system issues and drivability issues at 3-4 years old badly soured me on Ford products for many years to come.
As for my landlady, I loaned her our ’75 Regal V6 when her Granada wasn’t working one day. It was much less sluggish despite a smaller engine a larger car, cornered better and was easier on fuel. The odd-fire v6 was coarse and sounded like a vacuum cleaner when revved, but was light years ahead of the ‘75 Ford 250.. When my parents sold it, my landlady snapped it up and was pleased as could be. I lost track of her long before she tired of it.
It seemed like most US brands’ quality was pretty random, though. A salesman neighbor nearing retirement had a ‘76 Granada 6-cyl company car with 50k trouble-free miles on it. Based on our experience with the Regal v6, he bought a leftover ‘78 Skylark rather than the company Granada for his retirement. He said it was by far the most troublesome car he ever had.
My friend Kevin bought a new Honda Civic in September 1976. Though the MSRP was c. C$3000, the dealership gussied it up with slotted mags, a black vinyl roof, and an aftermarket AM/FM cassette stereo, and I think he was out the door at $4K + sales taxes.
He phoned me up to offer a drive in the country in his new car. I loved the car, having been a big fan of the Civic, and small Japanese cars in general, since becoming car-aware a couple of years earlier.
During the drive we saw a new Granada, and I was quite put off. I had an irrational dislike of Fords, and always hated excessive ornamentation on any car. I was fairly appalled when Kevin said “That kind of car is called a Grandana (sic). It looks classy – I think I’ll buy one for my next car”.
I was quite appalled, but showing restraint told him I much preferred his Civic.
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A couple of years later the Fairmont (and its twin, the Zephyr) hit the road, and I didn’t like them much better, but was impressed with an article that said the Fairmont was by far the best car Ford had ever made.