Faults:

Problems? Well, it does have that tendency to catch fire. The carb and fuel intake is all right next to the wiring harness and many electrical parts. Not a stroke of genius on these old Fords, but common problem for many I've heard. Mine caught fire 4 times over my years owning it. I carry a fire extinguisher to drive. If you don't, it always likes to burn parts that are no longer manufactured, and this results in many hours at the junk yard.

It's hard to start. More than the ordinary warm up time for a carbureted vehicle. It likes to stall, especially in the first 10 minutes of driving it. This is probably because I have it timed a little under manufacturer spec, because that's the only way I can get a 1975 boat-car to pass my state's emission requirements that were designed with fuel injectors in mind.

General Comments:

CARRY A FIRE EXTINGUISHER WITH YOU ALL THE TIME.

Other than the carb catching fire and being much too close to electric parts to spark it, it's a very well designed, posh, comfortable, smooth-riding car, after the first 10 minutes of it warming up. If I don't do this on mine, it stalls; like I said above, it may be because I've got it timed a little low to pass emissions.

It was $800 when I bought form original old-man owner. It's army green. I re-did the vinyl top with some green-brown plaid material and some polyurethane that I touch up yearly (like a deck).

The 8-track works!

I've never had to put any major $ in it, the engine & tranny still going strong, actually so are the alternator, battery, coolant system, shocks, struts, and things you expect to go bad.

I did have to do a little exhaust work, change the brakes, spark plugs, and other normal maintenance.

Only problem was that when it started to have undetectable carb issues, this caught it on fire. First time I thought I had found a leak in the fuel line, so just changed that & the filter while I was there. It happened again a month later. I replaced a bunch of hoses that got melted, and replaced some seals in the carb.

A month later, flames again. This time it burnt up a no longer made wiring harness that was a pain to figure out how to reproduce. Rebuilt the whole carb.

It happened again (damage minimised due to fire extinguisher always in floorboard now). Replaced carb with junk yard one that I put a new kit in. Good for a couple months... but my family kept riding me about not driving my Granade (well, what else will everyone call my army green spontaneously combusting Granada) now that I've got kids, so I sold it.

Faults:

A lot of things went wrong with the car. It wasn't taken care of at all.

General Comments:

We paid $500 for it back in 1987. We got off of a friend of ours who had it on his used car lot in Cinnaminson New Jersey. The car was supposed to be silver, but it looked more like a grey primer. The vinyl top was black, and looked fair at the time we got the car. The original hubcaps were still on the car! The interior looked fine.

As for how it ran, that's another story. It religiously stalled out a lot. Then during the 3 years of ownership, it was problem after problem.

Finally, when we took it to our mechanic one day, the mechanic called us to tell us that the fire department had to come to the repair shop. Why?

Because the motor had caught fire. So we sold the car to the mechanic for only $50!

I would never buy one of these because they are not too reliable, and they're ever so hard to get parts for.