If it wasn’t for a red and white-striped Gran Torino that became famous on television, Ford’s intermediate would be nothing more than a footnote in the past. Compared with the sporty Torinos made between 1968-1973, the 1976 was a battle tank, a massive rolling sled with styling that was neither muscular, nor classy, nor particularly handsome even. It just existed, another placeholder in the lineup while Ford figured out what move they needed to make to get themselves out of the rut of large-barge machines they kept cranking out. Not to pick on Ford, every American manufacturer was dealing with the same problem in the mid-1970s, but people remember the police-package Mopars and the Colonnade A-bodies a lot more fondly than they remember the Gran Torino.

It’s not that the Gran Torino is a bad car…it’s pretty much on-par with the competition…it was just forgettable and was easily replaced when the Fox bodies rolled out for 1978. Gran Torinos were already an endangered species by the 1990s, and to find one as nice as this particular 1976 is nothing short of astonishing. This particular car was supposed to be a parts car for a two-door build, but would you tear one apart this nice? Strange as it may sound, we are actually digging the plain wrapper look of this car. The dog-dish caps on steel wheels is what is selling us on it. The 351 Windsor under that aircraft-carrier deck most people call a hood can be whipped up to move the Gran Torino around with some urgency, and running gear parts are all classic Ford, so beefing up the suspension won’t take much work. We’d get rid of those pen-stripe whitewalls for something a little more appropriate for a detective’s car and drive it as-is. It’s not the crew-cab Ford everybody would expect you to roll up in, but when it’s rocking down the Interstate, we doubt they will mind any.

eBay Link: 1976 Ford Gran Torino