We don’t see a lot of Pintos that are actual barn finds but this is one of them, despite being fairly “new”. This 1979 Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon was in a barn for 25 years and has been with the seller, sitting in the garage, for the last 9 years. They have it listed here on eBay in Shawano, Wisconsin and the current bid price is $888.88. I’m not sure what the significance is of that number, maybe 8 is the high bidder’s lucky number.
You can see the South Dakota license plate and that’s where the seller found this Pinto Wagon, sitting in a barn. They had big plans for it, thinking that they would do a turbo-six or V8 conversion but they never got around to it. I know the feeling and looking at that fantastic and huge shop space shown in the photos, I would also have quite a few vehicles in various stages of restoration hanging around.
Rust is the devil’s workshop, to paraphrase… and it never sleeps, or goes away, especially in the nightmares for those of us who live in the upper-Midwest or Northeast. The Cruising Wagon was a cool concept, is basically a small panel wagon but then Ford added the bubble/porthole windows in the rear and a choice of a few stripe packages and paint colors. The underside photos show heavy surface rust but nothing that really jumps out as far as major rust.
The photos are all over the board, almost like they set the camera’s timer and then tossed the camera into the air and whatever came out, they posted it on the eBay ad. I’m not quite sure why that is when it’s easy to rotate and resize images right on the eBay page as you’re setting up a listing. But whatever, the big thing is assessing the condition of a vehicle and as you can see, this one needs a full restoration. Although most of the interior looks dirty but otherwise great and it could most likely just be cleaned up, like the seats both front and rear, We don’t see the unique cargo area which is disappointing.
The yellow in the engine compartment is surprising, I assumed that someone just painted over the original color with yellow, but maybe not. The engine is Ford’s 2.3L inline-four which had just a bit less than 90 horsepower. The seller says that at some point, the coil wires were cut so it’s not currently running but these are tough engines and hopefully this one will be cranking again in no time. Is this Pinto Cruising Wagon worth restoring?
This car has one coil lol and you can see it under the hood prop. I wonder why that wire got cut.
Rats can eat a lot of things.
Ha! Great catch, Dusty. Ha, coil wires…
Seller is correct when he says coil wires as the two secondary wires appear to have been eaten by rodents.
I saw one of those in silver,while passing through
Mayberry (Mt Airy)NC.
10 points for a Mayberry reference, sir.
There is a guy here with one he uses as his daily. Kinda cool seeing it throughout the year.
How about an EcoBoost 4 cyl swap?
Manual transmission?
Love it , get her fixed up and on the road and I guarantee it’ll be the only one you see. Buddy of mine had pinto when we were in collage. He put a 302 in it. Amazing he survived
let’s disco!!!
Find a totaled raptor and do drivetrain swap?
Rust thru on the visible body panels means rust thru on the ones you can’t see. Not sure witch was worse the Vega or the Pinto for rust thru problems
The Vega by far, Keith. Up here in Chicago land, the Pinto faired FAR better than the Vega.
Didn’t realize how obnoxious those convex portholes were, or how large. I bet more than one person has grazed them while stumbling through a parking lot. At least it comes with a set of factory mags, used on the Pinto and Mustang II. I think this final restyle of the Pinto front end is second only to the first year in its appeal. I made scale models of these when they were new. Some dealers ordered them without all the stripes added which made them more stylish to me than the corresponding Vega panel (rarer but uglier).
I am a fan of the Pinto, & a fan of the odd. This car really turns the gears for me. Could be a fun little project if you are used to working with rust & crust. Being from Wisconsin, I am. Still bid at less than $1,000 ($888.88) which I feel makes this a bargain! I am in the market to sell off a few of my stash and not buy for now, otherwise I would be in trouble & I might have a yellow Pinto heading my way.
These aren’t worth that much when done and this one definitely has too much rust to make it worth restoring. If you really want one find a better one. They’re out there.
So ya got dual bubble port windows and a stripe.That’s one of the many el cheapo deapo marketing gimmicks they tried. Meh…
It still only got that stock 90 hp 2.3L in it which goes 0-60 in oh I’d say 2 minutes, with a tail wind. Just kidding ya kno.
With all that I’d have it and put in the VW ALH front set up I got, rid me of the puter in that process. Better motor and’ll last foreva.
I think this pinto should be put back into the barn forever, to help preserve it! Wink wink!
Love a Lima and that Weber progressice (32/36) it got here.
swap in the “D” port head make sure the DSII is hot’n go for broke.
I’d DD it till finding the problems, correct and think turbo (use 2.9 ranger motor?).
Auction update: this auction ended with a high bid of $888.88 and no sale.