A Ford Ranchero in the UK? A 1970 model, with an 4.9 litre 302cu in V8 engine? I think I can safely there are not many of these here. And that got me thinking.
The strapline for Curbside Classic is “Every car a has story”. What is this car’s story?
So, what do we know of this car’s story? Built in 1971 at Ford’s plant in Lorain, Ohio, it was first registered in the UK in 1996. It was last approved by the UK MoT test in September 2016 and is now test exempt, due to its age. Its mileage in 2016 was 26502. Other than that, we know nothing.
So, the QOTD for today, as many of us have more time to be creative (except healthcare system staff, who we simply thank just as much as can), is to briefly summarise the route this car took from Ohio to Oxfordshire.
And why it’s on front ramps on Christmas Day. Marks for what Gilbert and Sullivan called “artistic verisimilitude”.
Prize? Who knows? Maybe a ride in Boris Johnson’s armoured Jaguar? He’s not using it right now.
From the time he was a lad in the English countryside, Nigel never felt at home. He yearned for cowboy boots, a ten-gallon hat and a pair of six-shooter cap pistols so that he could walk around and say to random strangers “Stick em up, hombre, afore I make a lead mine outta yore guts.”
While his friends binged on the best British rock, Nigel listened to hours and hours of George Jones as he sang of heartbreak, hard drink and pickup trucks.
Nigel finally saved enough money for a holiday (which he stubbornly called a vacation) in the American west. It was during his stay among the cactus, sagebrush and sirloin steaks that he found his dream – a Ranchero. It was the kind of Ford truck that he could make work back in his home country, a little taste of America in a land of warm beer and diesel sameness.
He drove it to Texas where it was loaded aboard ship for its trip to its new home. All went uneventfully and ol’ Nige flew home and waited for its arrival. His dreams of left-sided driving in a right side world were crushed when it was discovered that paperwork irregularities would prevent a legal registration. But the lad has made peace with the situation, spending his weekends in that most American of pastimes – laying on his back under an old Ford, smoking cigarettes and muttering bad words as he tries to get the front suspension to stop squeaking. Nigel is a happy man.
Nicely written.
Back in the mid-1990s, Sir Jack Sears was wistfully remembering the time back in 1963 he took a very pedestrian, and incorrectly spelled, American Ford Galaxie, available off the showroom floor to any chump with a checkbook, to the track and thoroughly trounced the best of what Europe had to offer. Sir Jack knew he wanted to track down his old car.
Tracking down his old Ford required scouring South Africa and Australia. While there he gained a grudging respect for the number of Utes scurrying around doing business.
Upon finding his old Galaxie and shipping it back home to the UK, Sir Jack had another dilemma. The old Galaxie had been used hard and, like many Fords of a certain age, required a lot of face time.
Knowing he had to be hauling tools and parts (or those who he assigned to do so), Sir Jack was in a dilemma. He knew vans are worthless for hauling parts; too loud, with sudden stops making everything fly toward the back of your head. But Sir Jack didn’t want to subject anyone to something as colonial as an F-150. Besides, he knew with the generally narrow roads in the UK, navigating something considered normal size in the US would be navigating something considered as freakishly large in England. That F-150 would be about the size of a Rolls or Bentley.
So Sir Jack took Mrs. Sir Jack on holiday to the Grand Canyon. She had always wanted to see it; he thought going halfway around the world to see a hole in the ground was so much rubbish.
But he was wrong. While there they met a couple from Ohio, Norbert and Rose Ella Gaines, and had a fabulous time. At dinner one night Norbert, a former dirt track racer who often piloted another 1963 Galaxie, mentioned wanting to purge his old Ranchero.
Sir Sears was smitten, stopping in Ohio on the way home. A deal was made and the Ranchero was shipped to Merry Olde England – but not before Sir Jack had Mrs. Sir Jack take a picture of him in front of a Sears store. A Sears in front of a Sears; he was rather amused at it all. Once Sir Sears was through with it he sold it to an acquaintance with whom he soon lost contact.
The Ranchero was officially lost until one day the intrepid Roger Carr stumbled upon it in the midst of an oil change. Roger wasn’t aware the oil filter was of a size not carried locally and the new owner had gotten ahead of himself.
Well done, except my 80 Series Land Cruiser used the big Ford oil filters, so I suspect they may be more available outside the US than one might expect.
I know those headlights aren’t the typical sylvanias you would buy for $10 at Kmart. Daniel?
It was late summer in 1996 when Technical Sergeant Joe Smith received orders to the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, from his current assignment at Dayton’s Wright-Patterson AFB. The conundrum – should he ship his classic 1971 Ford Ranchero or put it in storage?
Joe checked with the Transportation Management Office (TMO) at Wright-Patt and they told him his orders authorized shipment of one Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) – so that made the decision easy – the Ranchero was part of the family – and it was going along. Joe’s assignment passed swiftly – and he met many Brits who shared his passion for US “tanks”. One was a British co-worker, John, a civilian employee at Lakenheath.
Joe’s Commander drove a brand new BMW 5 Series – and he told Joe about BMW’s Military Sales and Delivery program, where you could order a new BMW, pick it up at the factory in Bavaria, take a road vacation in Germany, drive back to the UK, and then ship the car home on your orders. Joe had always wanted a BMW…but the Ranchero was family…
It was a tough decision, but Joe saw how much John loved the big Ranchero – he knew he would give it a good home. And so the Ranchero went to its new UK owner and Joe headed back state-side with his new 3 Series…
They kept in touch over the years and John would share photos of the many UK car shows he attended – and the awards the big Ranchero captured. Unfortunately, John passed away in 2016 – and the Ranchero is now in the custody of his son – it sits in his driveway in Oxfordshire, and he’s not sure what to do with it…
Doh. It’s in the UK. Of course they changed the lights
Clive had always been somewhat of a Yankee-phile (or whatever one calls the opposite of an Anglophile), despite his Oxford upbringing. Yet although he had managed a trip once to Boston, he never had treated himself to a genuine American experience… until the early 1990s when Clive and his wife Susan treated themselves to a monthlong Transamerican road trip – flying into the East Coast and driving out to the notable Western US national parks.
It was the trip of a lifetime, though Clive wouldn’t admit to anyone that the part he enjoyed the most was driving through the vast American countryside… the flyover space that most Europeans ignore. It was there that the real America can be found, and Clive soaked up the small Midwestern towns as much as he could.
One morning while staying at a motel in York, Nebraska, Clive woke up early one morning and drive through the center of town. There, right in the main business district, was the most quintessentially American car he had ever seen: A Ford Ranchero. Just what was the point of this vehicle? Well, if you needed to ask, you wouldn’t understand the answer.
Clive couldn’t stop thinking about the Ranchero, and on his flight back he began pondering whether he could actually purchase one. Upon returning home, he began a weekly ritual of pursuing online car sales sites… this went on for over a year until he found the perfect Ranchero. He bought it – sight unseen of course, and had it shipped from Los Angeles the following week.
Finally, Clive could live out his American fantasies whenever he felt like blowing a week’s worth of savings out through the V8’s exhaust. It was fun – lots of fun, for two decades. Now in his 70s, Clive began losing motivation to keep his Ranchero running, and his longtime mechanic retired last year. In the fall of 2019, Clive jacked up the Ranchero for an oil change, but then noticed a bigger problem. “I’ll deal with it later,” he said, and left the big car/truck up on stands for the next weekend. That was a few months ago. He still says he’ll get to it one of these days.
Then on Christmas morning, Clive glanced out his window, and a man in a red Peugeot was taking pictures of his Ranchero. The thought suddenly struck him: “I’ll sell it… yes I will.” He put on an overcoat and boots as quickly as he could, but the mysterious Peugeot driver was gone. Without a trace. “Maybe he’ll come back,” he thought. “He seems like the perfect next owner for my Ranchero; I’m sure he is.”
“A 1970 model, with an 4.9 litre 302cu in V8 engine?”
Did Ford consider the 302 to NOT be a “5.0” in 1970?
Certainly by the Fox-Body days, 5.0 (Five Point Slow to the Chevy guys) was emblazoned on the sides.
It’s more a matter of Roger basing it upon what it is….4,942 cc’s, which would round to 4.9 liters. Ford likely used the 5.0 name to distinguish it from the illustrious 4.9 liter (300 cubic inch) straight-six.
I guess calling it a 302 was most common, Jason?
Was 5.0 litre used to hide the origin to appear newer and/or more European for the Mustang?
Yes, calling it a 302 was common for quite a while. However, somewhere along the way “5.0” and “302” became rather interchangeable, likely with the advent of the 5.0 badges on the early Fox Mustangs.
This is conjecture on my part, but there was a brief push for the US to go metric at some point – perhaps that is what inspired the 5.0 moniker?
All the car companies switched to metric for their engine displacements in the ’70s and ’80s. For one thing, it made the engines sound bigger; or just not as small.
Both the ’71 Pinto and Vega used metric engine designations. And from there on it just spread. By the ’80s, I don’t think hardly any American cars still had non-metric engine displacement designations; maybe a few laggards.
Love (from Europe) the idea that America needed to make its engines sound bigger…..;-)
I’ll bet that it was getting a starter replacement. There might have been issues with the replacement. That’s a good looking Ranchero. Not as useful as a real truck, but useful enough.
When Walter became the first in his family to graduate from community college, in a small farming town in California’s Central Valley, and be accepted to UC Berkeley, he was proud and excited. Upon arrival, he was surprised to see that most students walked, or bikes, or hitchhiked to get around. It certainly wasn’t easy to find parking for his prized, green Ranchero. As he got to know his fellow engineering students better, he fell in with a group of townies, who did own cars, though none as new and nice as his Ranchero. Bob had an old Chevy, Bert had a Corvair, and Dman had just bought a Vega – a Vega! – which Dman loved for some reason that Walter couldn’t fathom. He could at least have got a Pinto, thought Walter, a die-hard Ford guy just like his Dad. At least Dman’s Vega was green, just like Walter’s Ranchero.
After graduating, Walter went back to the Valley to work on the family farm. He drove the Ranchero for many years, checking on the fields and going into town for supplies. But at some point he saw the way things were going, and bought a real pickup. A Ford of course, SuperDuty, diesel, crew cab. The old Ranchero was parked behind the barn.
One day Walter was hosting a visiting group of British farmers, eager to learn about American high productivity methods. One of the visitors spotted the Ranchero and asked Walter about it. One thing led to another and before long, a few thousand dollars changed hands, shipping was arranged, and Simon was the proud owner of a real American classic. His Range Rover driving friends would be so jealous when they saw it. Not quite, it turned out, and years later, when the Ford Ranger was launched in the UK, Simon switched to another style of Ford pickup and the faithful old Ranchero was left up on ramps, along with an abandoned caravan.
Crikey, I got off the boat an’ all that, I drove here on me own an such, and the nice man said ‘e was gonna ‘ook me up to that nice caravan settin’ up just over there you see mate. We was going to drive down to the coast you see. Well one thing led to another, and he went in for a pint or two, and many a day passed you see mate? I ‘eard many a mention of a spot ‘o tea here and there with the missus and such, and brolleys were brought out in the rain ya know right. Then the mister drove me up on these here ramps, and I heard meself talkin’ with this here accent being here for so long and all that, and he was gonna do something with me bonnet and fix up me oil and all that.
Anyhow, neither me or the caravan ‘ave moved an inch in a fair while but I keep ‘oping one day not too long we are going to fire up those eight cylinders and wake the neighbourhood just like the old days me friend!
The ultra avant garde filmmakers the Cotswold Collaborative (aka CC), during a brainstorming session fueled by copious non prescription pharmaceuticals, decided that their next project just had to be a retelling of the Robin Hood legend blended with elements from “No Country for Old Men” set in Nottingham, of course, but with much 1970s and 1980s Americana thrown in. Robin Hood just had to drive a forest green Ranchero.
Recent hire Cedric did not grasp the freewheeling nature of the CC and thought the project was actually on for production. So, he took it upon himself to purchase a suitable Ranchero and arrange for shipping.
Some weeks later when relative sobriety had returned to the CC and a real movie was in production ( a retelling of the Battle of Hastings using bicycles and Super Soaker water guns) the long forgotten Ranchero arrived. At this point the only thing to do was foist the half car/half truck on an actor who was demanding back wages from one of last years projects. He drove off in it, cursing…
Thanks for joining in my bit of Cabin Fever fun.
I think I’m going to award the prize to Jason Shafer, who gains marks for artistic verisimilitude although he misses final twist, that the oil filter was expected to be found under the Xmas tree, the Ranchero was prepared…
I’ll be in touch with Boris when he comes out of hospital…..I imagine that’s how it will work…