Tensions with Russia, fruitless war abroad, crazy fuel prices, and impeachment define the mid-’70s as much as they define our era. If you’d made it to 1975 you probably had to accept that this was life and trudge forward as best you could. As Winston Churchill famously said: If you’re going through hell, keep going.
And what better car to traverse hell than a Ford Granada? Not to be confused with the European model of the same name, the Falcon-derived American Granada was a mid-size sedan for everyone afraid of the future who wanted to downsize from their excessive landbarge… just to be safe. You can see it on the faces of the models. They’re not particularly happy. The exuberance of the late ’60s is gone. They seem, if anything, tranquilized to match the times. Even the tagline, Elegance in a new, efficient size, drips with compromise. The brochure is full of features you can spec on top of the rather plain base car (opera windows, vinyl trim, plush leather seating) depending on your hopes for a Gerald Ford-run economy.
It’s not all bad, though. Look at this lady. She’s having fun. Is this the blithe optimism of the foolish or the zen-like awareness that this has all happened before and will all happen again?
Images: Ford Heritage Vault
Uh, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JtnEUPvpus
Most Iacocca-mobiles were either aimed squarely at his own cohort (’65 Galaxie 500 LTD, Lincoln Mark II, both 1981 and 1990 Chrysler Imperial revivals) or to intersect the leading edge of the Baby Boom (Mustangs and minivans). The Granada alone appealed to both – it was something somebody pushing 30 and trading out of a very used ‘stang or VW bus could feel like a real grownup driving, and something their parents who no longer needed a huge family car could downsize to without feeling they’d gone down in the world.
Sure, the GM offerings were objectively better but they didn’t have the right style.
And then: first Richard Nixon. American politicians had been old, and slow, and perhaps a little corrupt but nothing like Tricky Dick. It was like finding out your shady old uncle whom you didn’t like much anyhow was actually a serial child molester. It was a ugly shock… Then came the real shock: the oil shock. We were Americans! The richest country on the whole planet by a comfortable margin, and suddenly they came around and took out half the light bulbs in all the offices (you can look it up), they turned off the A/C, and the ultimate humiliation, to save energy they shut off the hot water in all public rest rooms. Third world, man, third world.
Coincidentally, all our beautiful 60’s muscle cars, Chariots of The Gods, started running like shit due to poorly designed pollution controls, and grew the equivalent of braces on their faces. It’s hard to drive to a glorious death in Bruce Springsteen’s suicide machine if the damn thing won’t start or go over 85 mph if it does.
The economy had crashed, and all money in the air evaporated: the dream was over. Even the expectation of a quick death via an atomic explosion vanished when we started détente with the Ruskies… damn.
Suddenly the realization hit: we were all going to have to get jobs, and become workadaddies like our fathers had. We were gonna have to freaking work every single day until we were old, real old.
So we all had to cut our hair and get jobs. That pretty boy in the brochure? You think he wanted to be a model? Hell no! But his rock band folded, he had too much pride to play that funky disco stuff, and well, ya gotta eat so you sell what ya got that sells. Wasn’t any better for the woman in that picture either. Tall, beautiful, and a real blonde (see: eyebrows)? Okay but you can’t be taller than hero-boy in this picture so you have to kinda slump over to be shorter. It was the same humiliation we all, former long-haired free-spirits faced. My friend was driving a dump truck, with his college diploma scotch-taped to the cab window. Me? I don’t wanna talk about it.
But the Granada: it was the new reality. IF you found a job, and worked really, really hard, and were successful, you could get a 15 percent loan over 5 years to buy a 63 Falcon in a cheap suit with a 6 cylinder engine that put out 75 horsepower (you can look it up). The new American dream,buddy, livin’ the dream.
So you think everybody in these pictures looks depressed? Well, yeah?
It was silver on the outside and a luxurious red velour interior on the inside. I’m not sure what engine it had, but it was automatic.
The car was in mint condition and couldn’t have been too bad for it to have lasted well over a decade. It seemed to have much better quality than the Chevy Vega and Chevy Celebrity his son owned around that time.
Nope. It’s ‘shrooms.
