How much longer are you going to be able to find a relatively cheap 1970s car that isn’t beyond hope? Every year I keep thinking that “this will be it”, and every year I find a couple of examples of cars that I wouldn’t mind taking home for one reason or another. Usually it’s not the highly modified cars that get my attention, either…it’s the car that has managed to survive forty-odd years without major modifications and hackery that I immediately fall in lust for. That’s the car that makes for a great driver, and is optimal for a good project base.
The Ford Elite only registers on the die-hard’s radar. It’s a fluffy Torino with a funky face…that might be a rough generalization, but it’s an accurate one. The Elite lived only because the Torino didn’t quite appeal to the same group of buyers that were snapping up Chevy Monte Carlos and Chrysler Cordobas, and the Thunderbird was too expensive for them. It was the 1970s…not one manufacturer quite had it right, but they tried. At least Ford stuck with a platform that worked…the Torino/Elite had roots from 1972 and even in their smog years, could run pretty hard…if you compared them to cars from the same model year. Power was down, weight was up, and looks…well, looks are solely your opinion, but we will say that compared to the Elite’s nose, we really miss the 1972 Torino.
Somehow, this 1976 Elite has made it through life pretty unscathed. As far as we can tell, one seat rip that’s easily repairable and aftermarket wheels and tires are the only deviations from stock on this two-owner, 351-powered car. Green isn’t everybody’s favorite color, but mercifully it’s a dark jade green and not one of the other funky shades Ford offered post-musclecar era. (At least it wasn’t “Lime Squeeze” like some later Mavericks got!) We’re willing to bet that the rear gears are a highway-friendly two-something ratio that should probably be ditched for 3.23s or better, and that the 351 is probably due for a go-through and cleanup, but that overall this mid-70s mover won’t take much of your budget to make fun.
And that’s a good thing, considering that if you pay full price off of Craigslist, this Elite will eat up $4,500 of your $5,000 Rough Start budget. As long as the engine is fine, we’d spend the rest of the dough getting the seat fixed and whatever is left would go straight into the gas tank.
Craigslist Link: 1976 Ford Elite
My dad bought a one year old ’75 Elite as his daily back then. He loved that thing because it was so comfy, but it’s 400M delivered 9 MPG in his city driving commute, I remember him and my car guy uncle rejetting it and recurving the distributor to try and find some mileage. He always thought it would be a collectible, and kept hanging on to it. He kept the miles off of it and always pampered it, but after about 20 years he gave up and sold it for cheap.