It’s Wacky Wagon Wednesday here at Barn Finds! Here’s another example, this one is a 1976 Ford Pinto Wagon. Other than that dent on the LF fender it looks like a doozy, as far as Pinto Wagons go. It’s hard to beat that 1970s green and those Mack Truck-like bumpers. I’ll get it out of the way right now: there are no engine photos and in fact the car wasn’t even moved for the photo shoot, so to speak, so you’ll have to use your imagination to picture what the other parts of the car look like, or get in touch the seller in Los Angeles, California. This one is on craigslist with a $2,900 asking price. This car was $3,865 new and I think that this example would be worth that much again after some elbow grease. Thanks to Pat L. for submitting this one!
I can’t tell if the paint has faded a bit or if it’s been resprayed in a couple of spots. Thoughts? It doesn’t look like there’s much rust to deal with, which is always nice. The tailgate looks as solid as Sears, or as solid as Sears used to be before several bankruptcies and most likely going away very, very soon. This Pinto will be around longer than Sears will, which is both incredible sad and incredibly odd.
And, behind that green door.. er.. I mean, hatchback, is a nice-looking but somewhat dirty and possibly moldy (?) storage area. Just about everything looks nice on this car, to me at least. For being 41-years old it sure looks like it hasn’t been abused or neglected, too much, anyway. And, that missing engine photo should show a 2.8L / 170.4 cubic-inch V6 with around 100 hp. Or, judging by the seller mentioning that it has a 6-cylinder engine, although I’m guessing that it’s really a 2.3L inline-four.
The carpets are dirtier than a (insert un-pc phrase here) but look at that 4-speed shifter! YES! Most of these cars seem to be automatics and it’s always nice to see a manual transmission in one of them. I don’t think that a manual transmission was available with the V6, at least in the Pinto Wagon for 1976, so it’s my guess that the seller incorrectly identified the engine as a 6-cylinder when it’s really a 2.3L inline-four. Thoughts? The dash has a couple of cracks as does the driver’s seat, oddly seen through the windshield, for some reason. But, the back seat looks great. The passenger side door panel looks fantastic but the driver’s side has a little no-AC-window-open wear in the paint from someone’s forearm. This seems like a great project car for a Pinto wagon fan, especially with no rust and that 4-speed – no matter which mystery engine is under the hood.
The bumpers seem kinda weak and puny. I’d beef them up a bit.
I didn’t think Pinto’s came with a V6, but I could be mistaken.
The 2.8 Cologne V6 was available as an option starting in ’75. More Bobcats than Pintos had them, but they were out there. I learned to drive in my grandparent’s ’77 V6 Squire.
The V6 was indeed an option, but only with the automatic.
So true, I know that some came from the St Thomas plant, in Ontario ( CA ).
The boys who had them used to surprise a lot of people.
There was a atleast 1 V8 Pinto in the area, some local rodder..
In 1979 I drove a friends 1976 V6 4spd wagon around Denver CO. for a week.Quicker than you might think.Crusing at 80mph was no problem.Even though it was a high altitude car it wasn’t real happy towards the top of Rocky MT National Park though.Needed readjusted when brought back to the east coast,Fond memories…sorry
The now wife had a ’76 Pinto wagon, 4 cyl, stick, when we were in high school. If it were beige I would buy it in a heartbeat just to try to relive some of those old teenage memories.That wagon at the drive in…….
throw a coat of rustoleum beige on it and call it a day,$50 a few rollers and yer good to go.
i dont have any fond memories in a car like this,i do have fond memories in an aar cuda,a 70 split bumper camaro,a 69 stingray,a 72 chevelle 2 door hardtop350/350,a couple trans ams and z28’s,a 69 gto in dark green,a 65 impala but no memories in a pinto.i feel like i missed out on something,lol.
The V6 Pinto was indeed an improvement over the 2.3. While I didn’t really care for the 2.8 motor either ( had one in a Capri, 2.6?) it did give Pinto the edge over the Vega, which did not offer one. This is a super find, even if it is “just a Pinto”. ( they did happen to sell 3,173,491 of these things, of which this one happened to survive)
And I like “Wacky Wagon Wednesday”.
chevy monza which was glorified vega had 262 and 350 v8’s in 1975 and 76
My feeble memory tells me that this particular 2.8 liter V6 was originally available in the European Ford Capri (From Germany?) in the mid 70’s and was also used in the Mustang II along with the American Ford Capri and was available with the 4-speed manual transmission. While this engine did in fact eventually become available in the Ford Pinto and Mercury Bobcat, it was automatic only. I therefore respectfully agree with the author that this particular 1976 Ford Pinto 4-speed station wagon has the 2.3 liter 4-cylinder engine. Still not a bad daily driver.
Kaboom!
I drove a German Capri with the four-speed, and if I recall correctly, it was one of the sweetest-shifting four-speeds ever. Nice solid mechanical feel, probably due to not needing to do a convoluted linkage as needed on transverse engined front wheel drive cars, although the VW Golf always had a sweet shift linkage, nicely weighted, probably due to the concentric weight on the shift linkage as it left the firewall. But, as always, I digress…
Both of the above mentioned cars had tranny’s made in Germany, and were absolutely superb … without a doubt German transmissions were the sweetest shifting on the planet. I actually seem to recall that the Pinto 4-speed gearbox came from Germany … Go figure!
My 74 Capri V6 2.8L was amazing. Some motor work was done, and the engine builder offered to buy the car after it was broken in. Super good tranny, tons of torque and revved like crazy.
The V6 in those cars was designed to pass homologation rules for racing in Europe, where Capri did super well.
Read this link on the engine used by Ford, in Jalopnik.
http://jalopnik.com/the-unlikely-story-of-how-this-ford-gave-birth-to-bmw-m-1756927547
A little Pinto to go with your bumpers.
Hmm. The bumper guards and grille are 1975. The leading edge hood trim is 1976. The 2.8L was indeed available in the wagons only from 1975 thru 1979. I’m aware that ‘officially” no V6 wagons were available with the 4spd, but I KNOW that at least one was built.
When I was 16 yrs old (1976) I had a summer job at the local Ford dealer working on the wash rack. There weren’t many American performance cars being produced at the time and anything that had perfomance potential caught my 16 yr old eye. One day in Aug I was tasked with cleaning a brand new ’76 Pinto wagon from top to bottom. It wasn’t the 1st time, either. The car had been in our inventory for some time and it was being transfered to another dealer.
I distincly remember it: It was a new white ’76 wagon with the 2.8L Cologne V6 and a 4spd gearbox. It wasn’t “cool” by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted that little snotsucker. It looked like a whole lot of fun.
While it’s not likely that this is such a car, I can say with certainty that it is possible.
The Long roof guys will go nuts over this and I don’t think the wagons had the same kaboom problem as the hatchbacks.
Checking the stats, I see that there were NO 2.8 V-6’s in any Pinto with a manual tranny. It was a 3 speed C-4, only. They were shoehorned into a very small space, so I can only imagine how much fun they would be to do a tune up on. The 6 only offered, maybe, 15 horsepower over the 2.3 4 banger. As far as the KABOOM theory, it was so far over rated. There certainly was a failure @ Ford, but it wasn’t as extreme as everyone thinks. I LOVE Pinto wagons ! Fun to drive, and they get a lot of attention.
I never knew there was a problem with my Pinto 2.3 automatic Runabout until much later and when speaking to people from states in the Midwest and east. In SoCal they were very popular and explosions, I guess, were much more rare.
I just purchased this Pinto here in Los Angeles. The attached photo shows the MPG emblem which confirms this is a 2.3L 4 cyl. manual. And yes there was previous body work done on the lower right corner of the passenger door. There are some other areas of body work to be done but one spot of rust on the left rear wheel well. Nothing much has changed since the previous owner posted it in June 2017. I drove it on the freeway for several miles at we hit about 55mph. Not terribly bad. I;ll learn more about the car as the weeks progress.