This, my friends, is a car called a Ford Pinto. Have you seen one before? (crickets) Pintos, Vegas, and Chevettes aren’t muscle cars or classics but they’re usually interesting to see here and even more interesting to see in person. The seller has this 1980 Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon (sans graphics) listed here on eBay in Amelia, Ohio, the current bid price is $2,550, and the reserve hasn’t been met yet.

Other than Barn Finds and car shows, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a Pinto (or, Vega/Chevette) on the road. For a guy who loves oddball vehicles so much, you’d think that I would have owned at least one of each by now. For my Pinto, I’d want a Cruising Wagon as seen here, but maybe not a graphics-delete version. I want full-on crazy graphics, which is why I’ve recently gotten a Barn Finds forehead tattoo. Just kidding, but that’s not a bad idea. This one has a crack in the windshield, so add that to the to-do list.

Ford offered the Cruising Wagon beginning with the 1977 model year and I think this funky sedan delivery-like wagon would have looked great on 1971 through 1973 Pinto wagons with small bumpers. The diving deck bumpers on the post-1974 cars aren’t the most visually-pleasing automotive accouterments ever invented. Whether a buyer ordered the graphics or not, they all came with rear window louvers and a porthole window in each of the rear panels. This one would have originally had black around the side windows and windshield, which appears to all have been painted body color, unfortunately, along with black side mirrors. The wheels wouldn’t have been available from Ford for this model.

You can see that this example is a little (lot?) rough around the edges, and kudos to the seller for not hiding anything. They show many photos of what looks like it could or could not be or have been (have I skirted around the issue long enough?) possible former bodywork. They show an underside photo but it’s pretty dark so it’s hard to tell what’s going on under there.

The seats appear to be in good condition both front and rear, as does the rear cargo space. This is the standard interior but there would have been fancier and, some would say, cooler fabric choices as options. This one has a four-speed manual transmission but a three-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic would have been available. The seller does say that there’s a “small rust spot in rear floor” and they say that it’s an “ez fix.”

The engine is Ford’s famous 2.3-liter OHC inline-four, which would have been factory-rated at 88 horsepower and 119 lb-ft of torque when new. The seller says that it runs great and doesn’t leak anything. It’s unfortunate that this example has been modified so much from what would have been stock. A car like this is probably worth more in bone-stock configuration unless it’s a nutso restomod with a V8 or at least a T-Bird turbo-four. What are your thoughts on this Cruising Wagon?