Think about the last car show you attended this summer (if you didn’t, get out there!). Certainly you saw plenty of Chevelles, more than a few GTOs, a few Cutlasses and 442s, probably a Charger or two. How many Ford Torinos did you see? Considering how many were built, their popularity lags far behind many of those aforementioned competitors today, and therefore, finding one at a local get-together keeps you from becoming too jaded by seeing the same old, same old. Our friend Curvette must have felt the same when he found this one advertised by a well-known dealer on eBay in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. It has an asking price of $15,000, and while it’s far from being a show car, it’s solid enough to be a fun convertible if you don’t look too closely at some past body repairs that are becoming tired of being hidden.

The selling dealer, Classic Auto Mall, does include dozens of pictures of the good and the bad, so at least you know what you’re getting into. There are the typical rust bubbles in the fenders and doors, and this quarter panel patch has the distinct outline of rivet heads.

If you live anywhere in the northeast, however, you expect that kind of thing. What you don’t expect is a surprisingly solid and original-looking undercarriage. The floors and subframes don’t appear to have been subjected to any rivet-gun-wielding bodymen, and the untouched appearance of most of the suspension and steering make the mileage claim of 75,742 seem completely plausible. There are a bunch of pictures of the greasy stuff in the ad if you’re interested.

The door tag shows that the Torino still conforms to its assembly line dress.

Here’s the VIN breakdown:

• 9: 1969 model year
• H: Lorain, Ohio Assembly Plant
• 43: Torino GT Convertible with bench seat
• F: 302-2V engine

And here’s the rest of the data:

• 76F: Torino GT Convertible with bench seat (76D would denote the optional bucket seats, which were standard in 1968)
• Q: Brittany Blue Metallic paint, roughly the same color the car wears now
• 6B: Dark Blue Vinyl (this may be a misprint in my materials; the original-looking interior isn’t quite so dark)
• 11F: This is a fairly late-year build, scheduled for June 11th
• 38: Pittsburgh District Sales Office, so it’s been in the Pennsylvania area its whole life, although it has Maryland tags on it now
• 6: 3.00:1 open differential
• W: C4 automatic

Therefore, this is a fairly standard-specification Torino GT. The 220-horsepower 302 two-barrel was the standard engine in the GT, and this one has few extras under the hood; power steering is the only option I notice, and the brakes are standard non-power four-wheel drums. The car does have an aftermarket aluminum radiator, and while they don’t look great, my experience is that they keep the engine cool.

The interior is presentable but a little tired. The seller rightly points out that the carpet looks newer, and the seats, while not ripped, are a little discolored. An upholsterer certainly worked their magic on the driver’s side seat bottom; it’s a good job, maybe too good, but the only thing that absolutely has to go is the steering wheel.

If you’re a Ford person, it’s hard not to feel like the underdog in the world of late 1960s intermediates, but that relative rarity means that you’ll at least have something new to talk about in the sea of traditional car show material. This Torino, as it sits, is somewhere between a good driver and a car you’d need to restore. My experience (living in the salty Great Lakes) is that cars that don’t get driven in bad conditions and are stored inside don’t deteriorate as quickly as you’d think, so it’s entirely possible that given the typical 1,000-miles a year that collectors drive their oldies, this Torino could look the same as it does now in ten years. Whether it’s worth fifteen grand or not is up to you!