I had one on the list.
I found a piece of chrome trim from it in the garage a few days ago. What's this? Oh, yeah.
It was a white '73 hatchback Pinto ($2368) with the 2.0 engine and 4-speed transmission, for 11 years, and 165,00 miles. No AC, so it wasn't perfect, but AC wasn't in every car back then, anyway. I think the engine was a German Ford import, since it had metric bolts, and the rest of the car didn't.
It was recalled to put a thick black plastic diaper under the tank straps between the tank and and the differential so the differential bolt heads wouldn't puncture the tank in a rear-end collision and set you on fire.
I put a Pioneer Supertuner in it and had a pair of home speakers with 12" woofer and a tweeter in the back.
It towed an old wooden day cruiser for a friend in St Petersburg at least once. It was way too much load for the car. People at the boat ramp were laughing "You'll never pull it out!". The ramp was wide enough, so I set up the car at 90 degrees to the trailer, we winched the boat up, and by starting sideways on the ramp it came right out, much to the dismay of the expectant onlookers who, no doubt, all had proper boat yanking vehicles .
Spent a summer in Montreal and Chazy Lake New York with it. We stuffed a 400cc Suzuki Enduro in the back and took it from the apartment to the lake. It crossed 100k miles just north of New York City where the yellow puffs of sulphur laden smog would first pop over the hills as you approached the city from the north (still maybe 50 miles away).
It propelled me into the beginnings of my Telecom Career in 1983, hired out of Tampa, drive for a little training in Dallas, drive on to Hotchkiss Colorado for a couple of months, then on to Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, and on to Concord Tennessee. That was my first trip West.
It began eating timing belts (non-interference engine), and I became able to change the belt in 10 minutes or less with a crescent wrench and a 3 ft length of broomstick for leverage. The last time it happened it was driving back to Wilkes-Barry from Atlantic City, and I didn't have a spare belt, so I crawled in the back and went took a nap. Upon waking, I saw I was in sight of a Ford Dealer, walked, waited a few minutes for the Parts Department to open, got a belt, and was on my way again.
At least twice, it just stopped running, but if you removed the distributor cap and jiggled the points it was good again.
It got bumped in the right rear corner hard enough to mess up the hatchback, and was retired in November 1984.
It had electric wipers. So, it wasn't the worst car.
That honor (for me) went to a Fiat, in which I had a $10 equity share, which we never got running. I suppose we really didn't know what we were doing, looking back on it. We accidentally rolled it trying to push start it with another car one day. Decided that was fun enough to get our money's worth, and rolled it a few more times, then abandoned it.
