(first posted 2/7/2012) CC Cohrt kutzos has posted some more interesting finds in Spain, including the black front end of the SEAT Bocanegro we saw the other day. But this Granada is what caught my eye. And it helps explain my perpetual challenges with the Great Brougham Era. This very clean and tasteful Mk II Granada (1977 – 1985) makes quite the contrast to the American Ford wearing that same name. Ironically, of course, the American Granada was crudely aping certain Euro design cues (Mercedes, mostly).
Just to show this Granada better, I’m going to augment with a shot of the two door from wiki. Is that tasty, especially for all you tudor sedan lovers?
Now we can’t let those nice lines go to Ford’s head, as of course the Granada was heavily inspired by Pininfarina’s very influential and award winning Fiat 130 Coupe of 1971.
And the Granada wasn’t the only one looking at the Fiat 130. The handsome Bitter SC coupe of 1978 certainly did, as well as quite a few others. It was a prominent design influence in Europe, while the Brougham Epoch was roaring away stateside.
But the Euro-Granada did share one feature with some of its American counterparts: those wheels.
They showed up in the Mustang as well as the Fairmont, which admittedly was a serious step in the right direction, if not quite far enough.
Wow, now that looks like a Mercedes (albeit one from the 90s)! Perhaps this time Ford influenced MB? (Psssssss… is the top one lowered BTW?)
Yeah that one is tucking tire at least in the front. It looks like the front bumper has been tucked too.
I was never a fan of the U.S. spec Granada. The Euro spec is almost stunning in comparison. Maybe I would have felt different if I were of car buying age in the mid to late 70s though.
For some reason I want to type Grenada instead of Granada too.
Granada, Grenada, Grenade. That’s what my office mate at the time always called his. His American Ford Granada that is.
These Fiat 130 influenced European cars are what I expected our cars of the Seventies to look like. What happened? Can I blame it on Disco?
@Mike: Yes. Yes you can.
Ford Aussie took the UK Granada body and did a cut and paste for the XD model Falcon in 79
Ford Australia even mimicked the wide hood/bonnet narrow fender/wing look of the German Granada, but when you pop the hood, you see the same narrow engine bay as the old Falcon/Mustang, since the “wide” hood overlaps most of the actual fenders.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50415738@N04/6055059867/
XD was based on the XC. They look similar but that’s all.
With the XD Falcon and Fairmont etc., Ford Australia achieved an even nicer result IMO by cutting the side windows down lower into the beltline than the Granada. At the time it was daring and fresh. In comparison the Granada looked rather dumpy. Now, as design fashion has gone back to slit windows, it’s the Falcon that looks dated.
I remember not being impressed with the North American version of the Granada. Another vanilla car trying to be something it wasn’t. I like the look of the European version, though. Much cleaner styling and hopefully it was a better car all around.
That Fairmont, was as I recall, a fairly straight copy of the contemporary Volvo. All of the Key dimensions were the same. Sadly, the Fairmount was made out of compressed rust.
I don’t know if Ford copied Volvo, but it was aimed at those who used to buy Falcons & Mavericks, & thus had to be cheap to build. The Euro Granada was for people who in America might buy Mercurys or Lincolns (and now buy Benzes). Volvos were middle-class cars, in Europe at least, and for fringe devotees in America, so probably not on Ford’s radar.
Here was my first encounter with the Euro Granada & Escort, outside a hotel in Yugoslavia, summer 1978:
Nice catch. With a good looking Escort Mk2 (second half of the seventies), the last one with RWD.
Thanks. Another scanned 35mm slide of assorted cars that summer, maybe somewhere in Österreich (lost my notes): VW bus, souped-up Capri, Fiesta, orange Ascona?:
The orange car is an Opel Rekord D.
Vauxhall Viva hidden behind the tree.
Thanks both of you, I was wondering about those.
The green van in front of the Opel Rekord D is probably a Mercedes-Benz 206D 1-tons (1,000 kg) van. Basically a Hanomag van, later Hanomag-Henschel and after the take-over by Mercedes-Benz it was just a simple rebadge job and it got the three-pointed star on the grille. It was much tougher than a VW T2, by the way.
Oh…and with a collection of pictures like that you should show them all here Neil, and write a contribution.
You can moan and groan all you want, but American consumers would have shunned the Euro Granada like it had herpes all the while buying as many domestic Granada Ghias as the could, different strokes for different folks. Its what buyers wanted and vice versa, a US Granada would have not gone over well on that side of the pond either.
I didn’t even know they made a European Granada coupe, to me i’ll always remember this vintage Granada as the car that crashes through the roof of the house while chasing Bonds Esprit in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved me, with Jaws comming out of the accident totally un-hurt of course.
We did get a little Fiat 130 influence over here too…..
Quite mostly true, except for a few of us. Merkur Scorpio, one generation earlier. Of course by that time, Ford had cars that liked much more international.
And yes, as usual, GM picked up on the latest Pininfarina suit de jour. And it didn’t exactly take either. Oh well.
Interest in big coupes and big cars in general started to soften towards the end of the 70’s, most people believed that even the downsized 77 GM big cars would be all gone by 1982, no way they would survive the upcomming $3.00 a gallon gas era of 1985-86.
I don’t know, Paul. I remember the 1978 Fairmount as being pretty radical for a compact Ford (or a compact domestic in general), with its low beltline, no-nonsense profile, restrained trim and much-improved ride-and-handling compromise. It sold quite well.
Remember, when the Fairmont debuted in the fall of 1977, GM was still selling the tired old-school NOVA compacts, Chrysler was flogging the rapidly aging Aspen/Volare and AMC was selling the doddering Concord, which was a facelifted Hornet with plush seats.
The Fairmont was quite a change from the usual domestic fare, at least to my 15-year-old eyes. And it was a huge sales success.
If anything, I think Ford’s mistake was not making the new 1981 Granada, which was based on the competent Fox platform, look more like its European counterpart instead of a downsized LTD. That Granada looked old and tired from the moment it debuted because Ford, still under the influence of the Great Brougham Epoch, tried to build another mini-LTD or Continental. It didn’t sell all that well, even though the car hidden underneath was good for the times.
Agree, at the time I also thought it pretty radical, and my reaction to the Fox Granada was “Oh no, here they go again.” What the Fairmont probably did most for Ford was good CAFE statistics, with its Pinto base motor. Too bad they lacked anything like the Buick 231, that would’ve been way better as a mainstream engine than the lame Falcon six.
I thought these ’77-’79 LeSabre Coupes were the sharpest B-bodies ever.
In ’80 they caved in to convention and made them with the same old vertical rear windows as all the other divisions. Not nearly as nice IMHO.
As far as the Bitter SC goes, yummy yummy I’ve got love in my tummy!
In my parallel universe me-as-a-GM exec fantasy world, I would have contracted to step of production of these bodies and sell them in NA as a Cadillac.
Imagine one of these with with a 231 Turbo V6 or a properly sorted HT4100 or even a SBC, of just keep the Opel 6. It would have been the CTS of it’s day and perhaps given the division a head start on what they’re trying to do now.
As mentioned further down, the Bitter CD (Bob Lutz was involved with it) did have a 327, just in time for the 1st Oil Crisis. The SC thus got stuck with less-powerful Opel sixes.
It was a Ford Cortina of the same vintage that crashed in “The Spy Who Loved Me,” not a Granada.
Arrrgh…it looked like a Granada to me.
The Cortina of that vintage did look a lot like the Granada, presumably on purpose, and was very successful for it, so…
There was a coupe version of the 1977 Granada, with an attractive fastback profile.
When I find my shots I’ll post it up
That’s a Ford Cortina Mk4 not a Granada Mk2 in that film
If you squint hard enough the Euro Granada and the Fairmont look related. I love how Europe got a competent, well engineered family car, while Ford’s “Better Idea” in the USA was give the Fox cars a horn button on the stalk and those friggin’ TRX wheels.
It was cheap thats what always counts for US and for Aussie gone was the 4 wheel independant suspension the Zephyr had in the 60s
The stalk horn button wasn’t total stupidity; Ford expected airbags to be mandated at the time & tried to accommodate them this way. As it happened however, they got a reprieve, & industry later figured out how to integrate horns & airbags.
As with AMC’s Pacer, regulator whims could play havoc with car designers.
The crucial point here is that the Granada was in a different market segment in Europe than the Fox-body Fairmont was in the U.S. The Granada was an executive car, priced in the same realm as a contemporary 5-Series BMW in both Germany and the U.K. Family buyers would be more likely to have (in the Ford line) a Cortina or even an Escort, depending on financial status.
So, in terms of positioning, it’s kind of apples to oranges.
Good point. In the UK a lot of the cars of the executive segment were offered as employment perks – for the managerial classes.
While I liked the Granada of this era – the executive class car for mass market brands in Europe is pretty much dead today – it’s been ceded to BMW, Mercedes, Audi. No more Scorpio, Omega, 605, etc.
Keep in mind that there were Plain Jane “stripper” Granadas with a 4 cylinder engine and a manual but also fully-loaded Granadas (the Ghia) with an automatic and a V6. The more simple versions were just a bigger family sedan than the more common Ford Taunus 1.6, while the Ford Granada Ghia V6 was the luxury executive car.
Opel followed an other route. The 4-cylinder Opel Rekord E was the Plain Jane family sedan. They made it longer, gave it more goodies, 6 cylinder engines and the result was called the Senator, picture below. And that was Opel’s luxury executive car.
That’s true, but to some extent that was also true of European 5-Series as well — there were carbureted 518s and so forth. In Germany, the four-cylinder Granada was cheaper than the 518, but any of the V-6s, even a midlevel 2.0 GL, was priced very similarly to comparable BMWs.
Ford was pretty hot on TRX for a while there. I think every car but the Panther got a version at some point.
Yup, the Foxes got the 390’s and the Escort derivites got 365’s.
I never quite understood the TRX thing, other than the French having to be different. I am planning a piece on it for my new ideas that failed pieces I hope to post here. That is if I can ever get off my fat butt and do it.
Supposedly the different bead profile allowed better steering response w/o making the ride as hard as going to a lower profile. Of course they used profiles that weren’t common, IE 65 and 55 (415’s) series, at that time. Though the Escort/Tempaz got 70’s.
I wish some companies would still offer those Recaro seats.
Now that’s a good looking car for its era. Even today the lines are really clean. I wonder how it would drive with an injected Cologne V6 and a manual gearbox.
Pity the US car market of the late 70’s wasn’t ready for a “domestic” car like this, although I’m sure plenty would have been sold if it had carried a European nameplate for snob appeal. That having been said, Ford sold a number of Capris here in the 70’s, so maybe the Euro Granada would have found some buyers.
A great looking car the Euro Granada – I just dragged the brochures out of my collection, and the 2.8 Ghia X sedan was loaded with features too. The Mk II Granny was actually a Mk I with a new outer skin. Underneath it was the same, and even the inner door pressings are the same for Mk I and II – which is especially noticeable on the wagons, where the rear door belt line curves up like the Mk I. The beltline on the 4-door sedan was straight, but if you look closely you can see the inner skin curving up behind the rear door quarter windows.
Fun fact: the Mk II Granada and XD Falcon share the same front indicators. It’s the pretty much the only interchangeable part (said Wheels magazine at the time), but if you ask me the C-pillar plastic cover, the bootlid and the back corner panels above the taillights look pretty identical too.
Hardly any of these in NZ, but the occasional one does pop up on trademe. Niiiiice!
These were indestructible cars. My father had a ’85 black Ghia which was still going strong in 2000. It had 2300 V6 with all of 110hp but lots of torque.
There was one V6 estate taxi in the neighborhood, all crumpled but only after close to a million of LPG fueled mostly city kilometres.
Here in Argentina the last generation Ford Taunus was sort of a mini euro Granada
And there was also a fast back coupe
I discovered the fastback Cortina/Taunus existed about 5 yrs ago, and have lusted after one since then… I love the Mk 5 Cortina/Taunus styling, and the SP-5 fastback version is awesome. Sadly they were never sold here in New Zealand, but the clubtaunus website has satisfied my longing. One of the cars on that site is a “Taunada”, and is a Taunus to which the Granada rear end has been added.
Here’s the “Taunada”:
Looks odd, but not so much as I would have tought
I just read something about this car before this article posted. Henry Ford II was apparently dead set against laid back grilles for US Fords, insisting that they only have vertical grilles – this was the car, although that’s not much of a departure from the vertical, that Jack Telnack was able to soften him up with on the idea slanted grilles and without it, the Fox-body Mustang would have been much different.
When I visited Germany for the first time in 1979, I remember these things all over the place. Many of them being used for taxis, along with the 300 series Benzes that were contemporary.
My first impression was that they were beautiful and looked nothing like the Granadas in the States. As luck would have it, none of my relatives over there were Ford fans. The vast majority of them being in Bavaria, were either BMW or Audi fans. I never got to ride in a civilian Granada. But it was very pretty car.
Then you had to hit me with the Bitter SC! Oh man, back in the early 80’s I would have given a left arm to have one of those! I already liked Opels (mostly because of the GT)(which also made me a black sheep) as a kid, but man, this car was over the top for something not styled like a doorstop.
Erich Bitter and crew did one heck of job on that car. I know Bitter still exists today, but is nowhere near as influential as the company was back then.
We definitely get short end of the stick here in the US. So many cars from all over the world, but we get what we get.
I visited my German relatives during the summer of 1979, and my grandfather had a Taunus sedan (the German equivalent of the Cortina). It was a very nice car. I’ve kept in touch with my cousin, and a few years ago he told me that he had a 1970s Taunus as a “beater” in the 1990s. He now works for Opel, but he called the Taunus a “very good car.”
How did he keep such an “oldtimer” on the roads until the 90’s? I would have thought the ADAC or the TŰV would have forced them to scrap it much sooner…
There’s another car worthy of a German CC; the Taunus.
He is quite a skilled mechanic. He now works for Opel.
Yes, yes you can! Disco and the recreational drug vending machines they must have had at the Big 3 in the 70s!
Weird, that was supposed to go up by Mike’s response.. Sorry!
I noticed the wheels too, It seems as though they were designed in Europe first and then someone in Dearborn said, “hey Frank you think these would look good on that Fairmont whachamacallit?”
Indeed, my mother’s ’78 Futura had those nice rims (not that she really cared, I suspect). There were larger versions offered for their pickups, too.
If you look very closely, you’ll notice that the U.S.-market wheels were four-bolt, while the U.K.- and Euro-market ones were five-bolt.
So I’d say that the Granada wheels inspired the U.S. ones, but as is often the case in this market, the style was more important than the substance. You still see that today, with oversized wheels and ultra-low profile tires mounted to otherwise economical family cars and SUVs. Oh, and SUVs…well, there’s another style-over-substance matter in its own right…
Lovely. Another car that I’ve actually owned. I had a 2.3 v6 Wagon that I got for free, and had to scrap because it was truly completely used up. Still, one of the best rides, and best handling big cars from Europe ever. Double A-arms up front, and IRS, and some very rev-happy v6 engines (not very strong on torque though). It’a almost the size of a same year Malibu, but weighs roughly 3000 pounds. You missed out on a treat in the US with these. Norway actually has a couple of insane MK2 Granada builds, one is a street legal 1500 hp sleeper with a tuned down pro stock engine, and another 1500 hp Twin Turbo’d Mustang Cobra dohc engined one is almost finished now. My dream Granada would be a 72-74 mk1 Coupe though.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Ford_Granada_Coupe_before_rear_three_quarters_reworked.JPG
Back in the early 80’s a bunch of us young analysts would stroll through the executive garage at Ford World Headquarters after lunch on days with inclement weather. Most days there would be a couple of Euro or Aussie Fords parked there, I suppose available on a pool basis for the various E-rollers to take home for the night or the weekend. Now recall this was when U.S. buyers had definitely fallen out of love with the Brougham look, as evidenced by Ford’s plummeting market share.
To a person, our reactions were along the lines of “OMG, so this is what a Ford can look like. Why are we here in North America stuck with all of the ucking fugly ones?”
Despite a credible effort to crack the upper end of the Euro market over the years, along with it’s Scorpio successor, Ford just never quite made the grade with status conscious buyers. No matter how impressive the specs (IRS and the like) the blue oval on the front just never carried the cachet to go against the blue propeller and the star, not to mention Volvo. I think Ford tacitly admitted this when they purchased Jaguar and later Volvo, dropping the Scorpio and essentially abandoning that market segment. (If we can’t beat ’em, buy ’em).
Well, we all know how that worked out for them. A quarter century later, Volvo is in the hands of the Chinese, the Indians have Jag, and back at the ranch (NA)Mercury is gone and Lincoln is on life support. Not much to show for all they spent IMHO.
As far as Ford offering Euro models in NA, that has been a mixed bag too. To my eyes, the Capri and Fiesta did well initially because they weren’t overreaching their price point perception. The XR4Ti and the Merkur Scorpio,
OTOH , suffered from the same perception deficit (against BMW, Benz etc) as they did in Europe, likely to a much higher degree in NA. Having said that, I like those cars, and defenders point to the strange names and bungled marketing as the reasons for failure. AFAIC the most brilliant marketing in the world couldn’t have saved them .
During the mid to late 80’s, I was working in advertising and making pretty decent money. I grew up in a Ford home, and my very first new car was a Mercury. I drove the XR4Ti when it came out, and it was not a great car. A good one, but with qualifications.
I’d had a 1980 Capri RS Turbo, and it was a POS. I was very skeptical of Ford turbos after that. The V8 Capris seemed like a much safer bet than another turboed Pinto motor. (I’m kind of waiting and watching all of this EcoBoost hardware to see how it fares.)
It had the bones of a great car, but the turbo Pinto motor and the less than well assembled interior is what did it in. Especially when they tried to sell it for more than $16K in 1985, my wife’s Capri RS 5.0L was under $14K, loaded and out the door (OTD). I could have done even better with a Mustang GT from the same year, many of those were $11-12K OTD,
I was acquaintances with the guy who sold me one of my Capris, and we would talk about the cars. He thought they were great cars, but the marketing support from Ford was almost non-existent. At most, there would be local ads for Cougars or Lynxes or Grand Mas, but hardly anything else. I can say I’ve never seen a TV commercial for a XR4Ti.
Wrong product at the wrong time, and definitely held hostage by it’s pricing. If gasoline had been much higher priced, and the Deutsche Mark not so strong, this would have sold very well, like the European Capri.
Try you tube https://youtu.be/yDjR40LjZf8 they are quite a few on it
The Bitter started off as an Opel concept car, right? If I’m recalling correctly, somebody was sad enough that they weren’t going to produce it that they ended up buying the rights.
It is handsome, although it occurs to me that in profile, it also looks quite a bit like the Ferrari 400i/412.
From my scanned 1978 slide archive, the Bitter CD:
A trip to Europe was a revelation to a car-minded teenager like me:
Frontal view. Didn’t know it had a 327 “Chevy Inside™.”
Now that’s a find!I’ve been a long time fan of Euro American exotica like the Bristol,Jensen & Facel Vega
So, I gotta ask: Does the Euro-Granada share ANYTHING with the Yank Grenade, other than the name?
IOW…is this a reskinned version of the same car; or just a similar badge? Were they both Falcons underneath; or did the Continental flavor have some there there?
Nup, name’s the same and that’s it. In fact this Granada was little more than a (big) upgrade of the ’72 Consul/Granada, mostly a mixture of the better parts of the English Zephyr/Zodiac and German Taunus M-series mechanically.
Recently read an old test (1978) of this car, the 2.1 diesel version. Weighed 1345kg, power of no less than 63 bhp officially. Tested power: 46 bhp, 0-100 km/h in 32,2 sec. Now that’s slow. Obviously, a taxi-only version.
I’d have thought that acceleration was too slow for a taxi. 😉
Ford Granada Ghia Limousine, as used by our Royal Family. They also had the more humble factory-4 door Granada Ghia. All of them had a V6, of course. (Photo courtesy of Paul Wouters)
Ford Granada Mk2 police car. Granadas (Mk 1 and 2) were also used as police cars in the UK and Germany, possibly in other countries too. (Photo courtesy of E. van Hengel)
AKA a jam sandwich in the UK
“a jam sandwich”
I think I get the picture…
I had a very nice gold 2.8 GL auto like the one pictured.Lucky South Africans got the Perana version with a 302 and 4 speed,there was a white Mk2 4 door and a Mk1 Coupe Perana Granadas in the UK a few years ago.
The 302 fit in that? Impressive. While not too hot in the bargy US Granada, it was punchy (by derated ’70s stds.) in the lighter Fairmont, which weighed about the same as the Euro Granada.
I understand the Granada’s market role, in the UK at least, was “Executive Saloon,” which one got while climbing the corporate ladder, instead of a pay increase into a punitive tax bracket.
They also had a Ford Capri(Mercury Capri in America) with a 302.
Gold metallic, a really hot Ford color in the late seventies. Especially on the Fiesta, Escort Mk2 and the Granada. Although IIRC they all came in a slightly different shade of gold metallic; to me the Fiesta looked more gold-colored than the Granada.
We had a 1979 gold metallic Ford Fiesta 1300S with a dark brown striping. With an automatic choke (which didn’t work flawlessly) and a 4 speed manual. It was a little lukewarm hatch, not enough horsepower to be hot. The norm back then was still (leaded) high-octane gasoline: “super”. Lower octane was called “normaal”. So you had Super, Normaal, LPG and Diesel. And “Red diesel” for farm tractors, construction machinery etc.
Never liked those Aussie/Euro Fords… Talk about generic looking appliances. The ugliest being the LTD and Falcon… Those things are so square they look like Bizarro Superman’s mug. Who designed those cars, Max Headroom?
The Holdens were a lot sexier, in the style department, IMO.
That Granada is as bland as a pair of Dockers. Blah
That car is so plain you can’t tell the difference if you saw a Cortina, of the same era.
I can’t imagine a Euro spec Granada, being more reliable than the US model. Really, 70’s Euro cars were pure unreliable rubbish, (except the W123 Mercedes)so can be said of the Malaise domestics. No wonder the Civic and Corolla, started to move in for the kill.
The only Euro Fords that I DO like are the Sierras, the turbo Fiestas, and I WANT an early RWD Escort.
Kind of reminds me of today’s throw away generic plain appliance look that most cars have now. Line up 4-5 with a side view and see if you can even tell what your looking at.
IMO the American Granada, not the Mark IV, is the consummate HFII/Iacocca “sell the sizzle, not the steak” car.
The “steak” is a ’60 Falcon with (almost literally) a ton of extra sound deadening, but the “sizzle” added was pitch-perfect for the times in a way that converged for Lee only that one time. Most of his cars were pitched at Boomers (’65 Mustang, ’85 minivans) or, OR, his own generation (the aforementioned Mark IV, ’80/90 Imperials). The Granada was aimed squarely at both the crowd just turning 30 and wanting a car that made them look like real grownups and at empty-nesters trading out of LTDs but not wanting the neighbors to think they’d hit hard times, and it sold like hotcakes for a few years.
I’ve seen mentioned that Ford considered the Euro Granada for the US but it would’ve cost too much. Whether that pricing study included a Brougham makeover I don’t know.
Definitely not a fan of the plain looking oddly proportioned Euro version. The US version wasn’t much better either, especially when it went to the Fairmont body.
The Australian XD series Falcon from 1979 was heavily influenced by the Euro Granada, if not downright copied. I’m willing to bet that despite the similarities, no parts are interchangeable between the two cars. The Falcon is larger and significantly wider.
I think I like the American Fairmont more than either of them. Still a little bit plain vanilla, but I always thought the wagon looked nicely proportioned.
The Euro Granadas were good cars, they would succumb to rust eventually but nothing like as bad as Escorts or Cortinas, while mechanically they were pretty much bombproof. You could get a cheaper stripper model with a 2.0 ohc 4 pot, a 2.1 and 2.5 Diesel (really slow and usually taxi use only) and 2.3/2.8 cologne v6s. Top of the tree was the Ghia X or 2.8i S with a 2.8i from the Capri, those were pretty damn swift for the time especially if you got a manual 5 speed, good for over 120 mph. I always wanted one but got put off because they were all pretty bad on fuel (probably 14/15 u.s mpg) but that aside they were generally hard to fault, you saw them Everywhere in ‘80s Britain.