1979 Ford Granada: Regular Car Reviews

HEY KID! I"M YOUR UNCLE! I wanna see your YEARBOOK!
This is a 1979 Ford Granada, from the malaise era. It's a Personal Luxury car that can't go 65 MPH up a hill.

00:00 sawtooth driving
1:01 Yearbook
2:14 Intro
5:32 Personal Luxury Car
13:35 Love your enemies

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New 2nd channel "Regular and Roman"

[alphacharlie]

As a former Granada owner, it was one of the cars of all times.

[berke]

80-90 hp out of a 4 litre engine is a work of magic.

[The_Rutabaga]

Something something premature ejaculation joke because early.

[jay_hibb]

This was my dads first car. He moved from Jamaica to the USA in 1984 and got a 78 for $400 or 500. I found one recently on marketplace and asked him if I should buy for him. He asked me if I hated him.

[Apilot]

I can still smell the velvet like interior of the dark green Granada driven by my maternal grandmother on our way to the city for “just me, my younger brother and grandma” day of getting spoiled.

[steaksandwiches]

This was my moms car… After a Pinto. Then an Oldsmobile diesel. She sure knows how to pick them.

[agingmillennialmainer]

So by this definition a Toyota Solara is a personal luxury car. I can live with that.

[armorer]

Ford Granada: they loaded the corporate parts cannon and gave it a full broadside.

[awesumonpvp]

My first car (in 1998) was a 76 Granada. 5L (302 V8) with power steering and landau roof. True luxury for 17 year old me. I spent many summer nights sleeping across the sofa like bench seat, soaking in the teenage freedom.
Handling, fuel economy and power didn’t matter. She was mine, and she floated me gracefully from A to B whenever called upon. Thanks old friend.

[unicornshampoo]

Hello Mother. Hello Father. I am driving in this old Granada.

[rubberwoody]

Just remember that the cadillac 8.2L v8 made 187 horsepower in 1976.

[BlackPill-puvi]

FINALLY, Mr Regular gets to review a true Malaise Era car! And it's BROWN!
High end cars don't make Mr Regular happy. Malaise cars do. And he hasn't been this happy since he reviewed the AMC Ambassador sedan.

[MrPikeRider]

Seesawing at the wheel is the real world equivalent of playing a racing game with a keyboard and tapping the "D" key at the right frequency for the corner.

[thirdpedalnirvana]

The malaise engineering problem wasn't the gas mileage, it was emissions. It's easy to make a carbureted car get good fuel economy: put on a small carb and tune it lean. But lean burning engines create tons of nitrous oxides. In addition to dealing with the fuel crisis, the 70s were when the automobile stopped being a luxury and became a neccesity. Instead of 1 car per family there was 1 car per adult. The environmental impacts of the inexpensive engine tech that propelled cars into the mainstream was coming to a head. The triple threat the automakers faced wasnt that consumers needed more power and more mpg, it was that they also needed to not produce carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, which meant having a much tighter control of the air fuel ratio, which is very hard to do with carburetion. Asian and European markets had historically used engine size as a basis for road taxation, which meant that when that market demanded a hot car, it had to be achieved technologically rather than displacement. This meant that, pre-fuel crisis, the imports were a novelty, impressive that they could make as much power as they could, but with engines a quarter the size of their American counterparts, there still was no competition. Add in shipping costs and import duties, and the US automaker's home field advantage was nearly insurmountable. But then oil embargos and emissions laws hit at once. If the American automakers had decided that it was time for their tech to evolve with the times, they could have been back on top by the late 70s. But instead, they presumed their home field advantage was ironclad, that displacement and the good name of the V8 would keep them on top regardless, and decided they'd play politics by making their emissions compliant vehicles far worse than they had to be, in the hopes it would pressure the public to recall the politicians who were imposing emissions laws. They figured the Japanese auto industry was fighting an uphill battle just to be recognized in the US and they had plenty of time to ride out the storm. If they had listened to their engineers instead of their bean counters, they could have made much better cars sooner. But instead they burned away all their home field advantage and lost the gamble that emissions regulations would be a temporary problem. They then had to figure out how to invest money in modern automotive technology and retooling and reestablishing parts supplies while the business was operating at a loss. And it took the whole decade.

[TheRedCap]

I misread the title as "1979 Ford Grandpa"

[WizardOfCause]

My first car in 1999, was my Grandma's 1978 4dr Ford Granada. And it was the same yellow. And it had the smokers windows. And it fit 7 of my friends in if we really really tried, and it kept the blunt smoke inside the car where it didn't belong.
I had 3 exhausts fall off in the lovely salt planes that are New Hampshire roads, had a tow truck driver somehow rip my gas tank off while getting a tow and countless other things. When the car felt like scrap, I sold her to a shop. Months later, the shop would call me up, no one wanted to buy it, I'd get it back cheap.
Only messed up issue I really had with it was the headlights. The 78 Granada had a left foot button switch for the highbeams behind and to the left of the brake pedal, a lot like the Kennedy assassination. Problem is, if you live where there's snow and rain, eventually, enough moisture would get into that button and then while you're cruising along, smoking shitty Mexican tire weed with your friends on a cruise, listening to whatever the radio would pick up, the headlights would just start flashing on and off irregularly, until you shut the car off for a few minutes and let whatever fucker was happening stop happening.
Of course I was 16 and didn't know that was a simple short, but it's a memory I'll carry with me forever.
I miss you Granada. You were a big, dumb, ugly boat of a car. And you were mine.

[ryanwitman]

This car’s theme song is “Oh Lord, Mr. Ford” by Jerry Reed lol

[mzrzfxr]

Ford Grenada - The official car of I made it, except I didn’t…

My aunt had one of these, was this terrible green inside and out, had all the options like AC and cassette. I was maybe 7 and I have two memories of it - couch seats and it was so so slow on the highway that we would have to hang with semis on steep hills…

[bcm]

As a kid in 79, I remember these being everywhere. Especially with color matched landau tops and hubcaps. This and the Fairmont were peak Ford malaise.

[Haffmatthew]

I love how this Granada looks like it should be on the set of Edward Scissorhands.