Worst Car Inventions: Ford Uses a Gas Tank for a Trunk on Mustangs (and Falcons/Fairlanes)!

Learn more about this crazy car invention, the use of a gas tank for the trunk floor on first-gen Mustangs, Falcons, and Fairlanes.

Here's a link to the video on the Chevrolet Vega:

[charlesdalton]

In the early CJs, the gas tank was under the driver’s seat. Many pickups had the gas tank right behind the seat. We live and learn…thank you as always.

[michaelsullivan]

LOL!

As a teen in the 70’s, working on “old” 60’s cars, I loved the accessibility of the fuel tank & sending unit in Mustangs.

Remember thinking, “I wish all cars were like this”.

[bendeleted]

The Pinto wagon was actually a great, useful small car for the time.

[donwendling]

Steves's Mustang was Highland Green.

[desertmodern]

Nice to hear of someone else who prefers the look of the 1971 Mustangs to the prior models. The 1971 is drop dead gorgeous.

[gracelandone]

I had a 73 Gremlin with the Levi’s interior complete with copper buttons bought new off the lot as high school kid. The loan was for $63 per month, co-signed by a parent, paid for with $2/hour minimum wage job. This thing was a chick magnet, pretty much all any high school kid cared about then. As now. I still have the gas cap. My girlfriend drove a 72 Pinto, my mom a 74 Vega. The Gremlin was the best of these three by far. The Vega was a boat anchor.

[michaelpfaff]

I sold my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee this past summer. It was equipped with the towing package with factory hitch and wiring. If so equipped, it had a metal plate between the factory hitch and gas tank. But many Jeeps were not equipped with the tow package and added an after-market hitch. These Jeeps had no plate to protect the tank from a rear end collision and an after-market hitch could penetrate the gas tank. So Chrysler sent out safety recalls on EVERY Jeep, even if equipped with the tow package. The incentive to bring in the Jeep was that Chrysler would mail out a $100 Visa gift card. I took mine in, nothing needed to be done, and still got a gift card. So fuel tank issues still exist.

[jetsons]

The AMC Gremlin was the best of the three...
Thanks to Adam for another great watch of automotive history.

[creativeloafer]

I was surprised to learn my 1962 Falcon had the gas tank for its trunk floor.
Big fan of Bill Hickman’s work!

[tobymichaels]

Trunk engineering is an overlooked art. Case in point: the spare tire well of the '78-'87 GM G-body wagon is perfectly sized to hold a 15.5 gallon beer keg and 50 lbs of ice. Thoughtful engineers even included a drain hole which could be accessed by lifting a small rubber plug. I miss the '80s!

[bugnut]

Also, early pick-up trucks from the 60's into the 70's had the fuel tank in the cab behind the seat. You can tell which trucks had that design by the fuel fill door directly behind the driver's door.

[travislostaglia]

My dad was a ford man, he started working on cars in the early 60’s and me and my brother growing up we had a bunch of different shock tower ford’s. He always said to keep the rubber mat in the trunk and if you ever had to take a battery in one of those cars to put it on the floor behind the driver seat

[scottlogan]

I've owned many 1965/'66 Mustangs over the years. It was a never a problem or a concern for me. I never heard of a Mustang getting rear-ended and then exploding in flames. The 1968 "Bullitt" Mustang Fastback was Highland Green metallic.

[MostlyBuicks]

The French Connection has the best car chase ever. Bullitt and The Seven Ups were not too shabby either.

[Andy_Novosad]

A number of cars from the 1960s used this solution with a gas tank as a trunk floor. And newer had any issues.

[craigjones]

It might seem strange but definitely worked, in later Falcons and Fairlanes the spare tyre sat in a recess in the top of the fuel tank. Ford used two bottom sections of the tanks joined together to make a 36 gallon long range tank. There was a Masonite floor board covered with a rubber mat to isolate boot (trunk) contents from the fuel tank in vehicles with the standard 16 gallon tank.

[Paramount]

I had two, a 66 Mustang and a 69 Cougar. The hose between the filler and the tank cracked on the Mustang. I scored a great deal on a Pinto Wagon when I sold the Cougar due to the Pinto fire issue, which didn't affect the wagons due to a different tank design. I guess the Ford design was better than VW, having the tank over your lap right by all of the electrical connections.

[madmike]

You did not mention that they did come with a rubber type trunk floor mat to prevent the battery instance you mentioned. Great content as usual Adam, please keep them coming and how about another look into that man cave of cars you

[gergatron]

In Australia, a big adopter of the Falcon chassis, we used that fuel tank design until 79, when Ford Oz switched to one of the world's first plastic fuel tanks, suspended under the boot floor.

However wagons still used the drop-in fuel tank idea all the way till their demise in 2008, albeit with a false plywood floor. My 82 wagon has this.

I don't know about the US design, but ours had (on the large 80L versions), a recess for the spare tyre so that when you sat it in there, the spare tyre cover formed a relatively flat boot floor. Our 75 XB coupe had this type. I remember as a kid, an issue with the fuel vapour cannister caused the tank to pressurise and blow up like a balloon. My dad only found this out when filling up and noticed that it took 12 more litres than normal. He looked in the boot and noticed the boot floor has risen by a few inches. It actually split and a very dangerous attempt to braze it shut caused a small explosion in our front yard, freaking out our neighbours and of course my dad (who'd lost some of his eyebrows in the resulting fireball).

That attempt wasn't entirely successfully either. That car always smelt like fuel whenever riding in until he completely replaced the tank.

I must say though, the design was hardly a safety consideration amongst Falcon/Fairlane buyers, even after the more stringent crash standards came in through the years until the last wagon rolled out in 2008.

[OathTaker]

It looks to me that of course besides cost cutting being a reason for the tank to be the floor, I think that was an added bonus to the real reasons which was for better mounting, a larger tank & ground clearance because of the car's ride height being the actual situation they had to overcome, besides it's a lot more reliable than just two straps that would always rust out on cars very quickly in snow areas.