Sucking in the 70s: Three Cars from America's Most Tasteless Decade

Stop by 15th Ave West and Dravus, and you'll find the gas station where the 70s survived. Both cars pictured below were very successful. The Chrysler B-body coupe, pictured here as the 1976 Dodge Charger but also sold as the Chrysler Cordoba, Plymouth Fury and a bunch of other names, was a big hit at a time when the company was staggering toward bankruptcy. And the 1978 Mercury Cougar, which was the same car as that year's Ford Thunderbird, sold an unbelievable 565,000 copies for Ford and Mercury combined.

On the one hand, these cars are remembered as gas-guzzling land yachts from an era when Detroit was increasingly losing market share due to its inability to compete with smaller, more practical, higher quality and less garish-looking cars from Japan. On the other hand, at least these cars tried to add a little artistry to their design, unlike today's world of identical gray SUVs.

The 1974 Maverick pictured below is parked around the corner; I suspect it also belongs to the gas station. Love the vintage stereo receiver in the back seat!

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1974 Toyota Corolla

1974 was the year the Corolla became the best-selling car in the world. Although little known in the US at that time, a series of gas crises combined with the inability (and just plain lack of interest) of American car makers to build a quality compact car would mean we'd be seeing a lot more of this car. Here's an even older Corolla I spotted in Queen Anne.

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1974 Volkswagen Thing Type 181

This is the second Thing I've spotted for this blog, but unlike the one I posted in January from the Greenwood Car Show, this Thing lives in my neighborhood. It's immaculate.

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1974 Volkswagen Thing Type 181

Sold in the US only in 1973-74, I see these in Seattle from time to time. Designed for the German Army, it looks just like the Kubelwagen of WWII.

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1974 Ford Bronco

Like the Jeep CJ, only a lot nicer. A great idea, but the Ford Bronco never really caught on while it was around. In 1966, Ford sold 26 Mustangs for every Bronco it sold.

If it ain't broke don't fix it: The 1977 Bronco is virtually indistinguishable from the original 1966. Beginning in 1978 Ford applied the Bronco name to a full-size truck. The Bronco compact SUV was just too far ahead of its time.

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1974 Ford Maverick

If you had visited my high school parking lot in 1989, you would have seen half a dozen copies each of two old Fords:
1. First generation Mustangs. I had two classmates who drove restored '65s. And I knew three other kids who, like myself, drove '67s; not restored and of dubious reliability.
2. Mavericks.

Of course there was a difference between the young Mustang driver and the Maverick driver. A Mustang said, "I have a cool car I like." By contrast, the Maverick said, "This is the only car to which I have access; it's better than walking." One friend of mine had a Maverick with a three-speed column shifter that he boasted had 200K miles on it. His grandfather and uncle had overhauled the engine themselves. Maverick wasn't the car you wanted, but it was hard to kill.

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Suddenly, It's 1974!

Which is the best set of wheels to get you home in time to watch President Nixon resign? This 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger has the cool Rallye wheels, unusual on the inexpensive Dart. On the other hand, these Datsun B210 four doors with their 1.4 liter engines kept you from running out of gas during the recent oil crisis.

Note the last picture below appears to show a Scion all the way on the right. That's an illusion; it's 1974! Let's get Led Zeppelin tickets!

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Ford Ranchero roundup!

It seems like Ford put an awful lot of expense and effort into their car-truck in the 1960s when you consider that it was never built in large numbers, required a lot of parts that weren't applicable to any other model, and that the Ranchero changed a lot from year to year. In fact, the Ranchero was made in 5 different models between 1965 and 1968.

The 1965 Ranchero (first car pictured below) was based on the Falcon compact. In 1966, it was based on the new, larger Falcon and had two models in the same year. The first had the same front clip as the Falcon, and the second had the front clip from the Ford Fairlane. In 1967, the Ranchero was based on the Fairlane (second car pictured below). Then in 1968 it moved to the completely different Torino platform (the third car pictured below is a Torino-based 1970, and the last car is a 1974) before finally moving to the huge LTD platform in 1977 with the final Ranchero being built in 1979.

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1974 Chevrolet Nova SS 350

The third-generation Nova introduced in 1968 was something of an odd choice, as Chevy's "compact" grew in size so that it was almost the same size as the Chevelle. The design remained in production virtually unchanged for seven years, and only became more popular at is sold nearly nearly 400,000 copies in 1974, and that was in spite of the fact that Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick had begun selling thinly-disguised copies of the Nova.

Observations:
* I can tell that this is a '74, as that was the only year for the big "Nova SS" decals. Who today can explain why anything became popular in the 70s?
* This Nova came to Seattle all the way from Tama County, Iowa. That's just an hour east of where I grew up, and the entire county has a population of only 17,000. There are a lot of Iowans here; at the Hawkeye bar in Queen Anne, you can't get in the door when a football game is on.

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