Gas mileage of a 1973 Ford LTD?

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When I was a teenager, my Dad had a 1975 LTD Country Squire. Could fit 5 families inside of it and another family on the roof. My father was obsessive about recording his gas mileage and I used to help him do the math at each fill-up (it was before the days of calculators on our cellphones and you needed a working brain to do the calculation). Never did better than 13 mpg. 400-2V, severely asthmatic land yacht.I think that 0-60 was at least 20 seconds.
 
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Originally Posted by ArtDecoWorld
Here are some pics of my Valiant from a road/day trip. Options are a slant 6 and an AM radio (original, and works). Oh yeah, it also has a heater. Cruises right along and turns 50 this year.


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That's a beautiful Valiant! I'd love to have something like that in my garage.
 
Totally jelly about locations like Cali where you can use old cars like these as DD's because no worry about rust.

I'm old enough to remember when cars like this were dirt-cheap old beaters (late 1980's)….you could buy them all day for next to nothing.

As others have said, even back in the day, they weren't great driving cars - heavy, slow, wallowing, thirsty cars that rusted like crazy. They were reliable mechanically, and very comfortable, so they did sell well.

I love them, bc they are all (Torino, Elite, Cougar, LTD) such good examples of 1970's soft luxo-barges. Would love to have one.
 
Originally Posted by maxdustington
1973 would have a pellet type catalytic converter, parasitic early smog controls and possibly non-transistorized ignition? 400 CI so it would be even worse than a more modern 5.7 or 5.0 SBC or SBF.

I believe no car had a catalytic converter in 1973, or 1974.
By 1975, nearly every car had a catalytic converter.
 
Electronic ignition and an ecu/throttle body conversion is what $500?

Convert out the points and tune it a little on the leaner side and you should get double digits and a lot more power out of the stock mill with minimal effort.

Get rid of the slush box and put in a 4 or 5 speed stick and you might hit 20mpg,
these cars always needed constant adjustment and tuning if you wanted it to run well, is the exhaust tip white?
don't and the numbers slip into the low single mpgs
 
Originally Posted by Kestas
Originally Posted by maxdustington
1973 would have a pellet type catalytic converter, parasitic early smog controls and possibly non-transistorized ignition? 400 CI so it would be even worse than a more modern 5.7 or 5.0 SBC or SBF.

I believe no car had a catalytic converter in 1973, or 1974.
By 1975, nearly every car had a catalytic converter.


Even if he wanted a cat the 2 way universal cats are only like $50 and free flowing compared to the antiques
 
'73 was the year in Cali where cars went to heck in a handbasket due to emission requirements. I believe it was the next year when the other 49 state cars followed suit, but most of them might have been ruined in '73 also. Maintainability, performance and fuel efficiency all were much worse than the prior year. Without modification American cars from that era were undriveable IMO. And you would have to search far and wide to find a better example of the above than a Ford Galaxy.
If you want an hard to maintain, poor performance, smog spewing gas guzzler by all means grab it!
 
Even the gas mileage on my 1972 Beetle, bought new, was horrible. On the highway I averaged only 18 mpg
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, it being such a powerful engine
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. From 1972 through the later 1980's was a dark time in this country for vehicle mileage and performance. My 1996 Contour 2.0L gets double the highway mpg, is cleaner and a heck of a lot more powerful. For some things the old days are not always the "good old days".

Whimsey
 
Interesting thread on a subject related to this. May help with oil choice if you buy it.

https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/4442600/Searchpage/1/Main/272440/Words/%2BTorino/Search/true/73-74-torinos-havoline-30wt#Post4442600
 
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Back then guys would desmog a car as soon as they could. This mostly involved removing vacuum lines and plugging the vacuum ports. It cleaned up things under the hood without affecting driveability. Sometimes driveability was improved.

As these cars aged, they would sometimes run "sick." These problem were often traced to old and cracked emission vacuum lines. A lot of these problems disappeared with the advent of fuel injection.
 
Update: I made it over to the auction. The car sold for $7,900 out the door ($6,200 bid + fees). I'd have probably taken a few swings had it been under 5k out the door.

It did look to me like some area(s) might have been repainted (paint residue on the grill work). That said, it was a nice car. The seats were in excellent shape. Dash nice. Had what looked to be the original radio). A third brake light had been fitted in the rear. Sounded good idling.

It's probably a good thing it went over what I'd pay. I already have too many cars.

There are a lot of dealers/car flippers there. I've bought a few vehicles from the auction, and I have seen a fair amount of what they sell end up on Craigslist or eBay. Interesting enough, I have seen flippers overpay for some of the older rides in that I see them fail to sell on eBay/Craigslist for the margin they hoped.

Interestingly enough, my Valiant came from this auction, only I didn't buy it there. I was there when it was being auctioned, threw down a few bids, then decided it was going higher than I wanted and stopped. The following week i kept thinking about it as I loved the body style/color, and I regretted not going higher. So, I started looking for Valiants on Craigslist. And, lo and behold, a month or so later there it is! I didn't recognize the sellers as the person who won the auction. At any rate, I ended up buying it for a few hundred less than what it sold for at the auction. I happily drove it home 124 miles (actually those photos above are from that trip).

As to the LTD, I think the dude who bought it did so for himself. I can't imagine it's worth more than that. Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see if it pops up for sale.
 
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Wow, I wouldn't have thought it would go that high. My first car was a 72 LTD with the 400/2 barrel and while I don't remember the exact mileage, I know it wasn't very good.
 
Originally Posted by ArtDecoWorld
What would something like this return in gas mileage (city/highway)? I don't expect it's much, just curious. I used the vin to try and lookup the engine. They have a 5 posted in what appears to be the engine position, which doesn't seem to correspond to anything, but an 'S' is a 400. So, I assume that's what they meant.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/ctd/d/redwood-city-1973-ford-ltd-low-miles/6836057188.html

VIN: 3J675223892

http://www.tpocr.com/fordvin13.html


Or, perhaps:
 
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