Round 2/AMT 1977 Pinto - Super Loser (out of box)

[Dave Van]

I need an Aztek for a Breaking Bad model!!! 

[Motor City]

50 minutes ago, Eric Macleod said:

What? Nothing from AMC? Gotta add a Gremlin or Hornet in there.

This is a fantasy list, Eric.  The Hornet sedan was made from '70-'72, and the hatchback in '73 and '74, by Jo-Han.  Most, if not all, were promos.  Gremlin kits were also made.

[Mark]

On 7/30/2019 at 4:52 PM, Tom Geiger said:

No, we didn't!  No doubt due to our disdain for the Russians!

 

 

 I'm not sure whether they were available here or not.  I do remember watching the news on a Canadian TV station, and seeing a story about some gas stations there refusing to gas up Ladas.

[Mark]

1 minute ago, Motor City said:

This is a fantasy list, Eric.  The Hornet sedan was made from '70-'72, and the hatchback in '73 and '74, by Jo-Han.  Most, if not all, were promos.  Gremlin kits were also made.

Jo-Han made Hornet kits for each year '70-'74, but they could only be built as funny cars (though nobody ever ran one in 1:1).  No stock kits, only promo models.  

There was a '72 funny car kit with correct for '72 taillights and trim revisions, even though there was no '72 promo as I remember.

[Motor City]

Mark,

Thanks for the clarification on the Hornet kits.  I couldn't recall anything but the promos.  I agree with Eric that we need a Hornet kit.  A '71 SC360, a hatchback or AMX would be cool.

 

[Eric Macleod]

On ‎2‎/‎26‎/‎2020 at 12:54 PM, Motor City said:

This is a fantasy list, Eric.  The Hornet sedan was made from '70-'72, and the hatchback in '73 and '74, by Jo-Han.  Most, if not all, were promos.  Gremlin kits were also made.

You learn something new every day. Clearly I have not been on the lookout for any of these. Do I hear Matador 4 door?

 

[Motor City]

1 Adam-12 ...

[horsepower]

On 7/5/2019 at 12:47 PM, 1972coronet said:

Long lead-time on vehicle development was also an issue . The Pinto was in R&D in c.1968 ; the Vega in c.1968 as well ---- a good 4-5 years before escalating gasoline prices . Add the component of the ever-moving target of then-new EPA standards (esp. California ! ) , and the annual safety update / upgrade standards , and the death mask was cast .

Chrysler's 'problem' was with the "right car at the wrong time" all-new 1974 C-bodies ( Monaco , Newport , et al. ) being introduced mere months before the 21st October 1973 OPEC Embargo , and the recipe for disaster was boiling on the burners ... "Badge Engineering" was bourne-out of this (e.g. , the Royal Monaco vs. the B-Body 'Monaco' [ formerly badged as a Coronet through 1974] , and the Fury vs. Gran Fury [ formerly "Satellite" through 1974] ).

The Vega and its companion "H-Special" models were destined for failure because they were rushed-into production ---- at a tremendous cost of line workers ! The edict of "One [Vega] Built Every Minute" caused the plants to go-through employees like I go through Marlboros !  I worked with a couple of guys whom worked at the South Gate ( Ca. ) Plant when the then-new Monza ( H-Special ) was slated for production at that facility (whose mainstay was full-sized cars) . The tales they would regale us with ; everyone was on , shall we say , "second-party-performance-enhancers" just to get through the insane amount of energy required to slap those cars together . More than one time the line was stopped because the guy whose job it was to drop the engine-transmission assemblies into the cars was so "performance-enhanced" that he had slung the engine-trans combos straight-into the windshields !

As far as the Pinto fuel tank ; from what I'd heard through the years was that a 'simple' TSB was issued to the dealerships , as a fix had been devised ( I could swear that I'd seen bags of those 'fixes' around in the parts department --- their part number was to the effect of "D3TZ ---" or perhaps "D5TZ --- " ) , but no Recall notices were sent to the consumers . 

those recall notices DID go out to customers, BUT they were sent to the person who was on record with Ford as the buyer/owner they didn't have to search for any further owners down the line as it was felt that in most cases any Pinto owners that wanted to bring the car to the dealership and leave it for a day would do so. I received two for different recall programs, and the funny part is the first one we got was for a '74 we bought from the Chevrolet dealership. Ford really did a mistake on the FIRST attempt at making their first all new metric four cylinder, they didn't design a squirter (which was a hole drilled in the top of each rod to spray oil on the cylinder bores to lube them for preventing wear)  those engines were wearing the rings out in less than 40,000 miles. But I had already sold the smoker so didn't send the recall notice to the new owner. The other one I got was for a '71 I bought as a repo from the Ford dealership (wish I could find more deals like that, it was built in July of '71, and I bought it in September of '72 with less than 12,000 miles on it and paid $1,680 out the door!) That was for the fuel tank recall and it was sent in 1977.

[styromaniac]

My first car ....a '77 Pinto.(  Graduation presents for my twin bro and me from dad...he got almost a 2 for 1 deal from a dealer in Newport News Va. Brother's Pinto was silver, mine dark forest green. My paint held up a lot better than his. ) A high school friend of ours had a coppertone '72 Pinto Runabout , the version with the hatchback, it was a sporty little car so we had no qualms about the choice. I had a traveling job after college and I drove the wheels off that car. Not the best for building up speed on an incline but was reliable and that rack and pinion steering was a trip. It wasn't until later I heard about the piston scuffing and then the potential explosiveness in a rear end collision. ( but then...what subcompact in those days would come out well in a collision ? ) The recall's remedy for the fuel tank if I remember correctly was an the  insertion of a polyethylene shield between the big bolt on the differential and the fuel tank and an extension of the fuel filler tube. I put more than  100,000 miles on that car so I guess we got our moneys worth. The 2.3 litre engine proved popular down the road....I've posted before that a stone mason I worked with in the 80s and 90s used to hop up those motors for racing boats. ( Bob Bernardon...he owned the C-Gas class gasser records in the 60s with his 39 Chevy "Jolly Dolly". )

Edited March 2, 2020 by styromaniac

[CapSat 6]

On ‎7‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 10:11 PM, Faust said:

You guys didn't get Ladas Tom? 

Man, there were two of those in my townhouse complex growing up. One was blue (dark blue, with rust) and the other was bright yellow, with a bit less rust. 

Canada as a passion for crappy, supposedly 'economical' cars. Cheap doesn't always mean economical, but many in Canada don't get that...

The Yugo was a car sold in the U.S. In the 80's, I thought that one was based on the Lada, which I think was based on an old Fiat. No Lada-branded cars were ever sold here as far as I know. I knew of a college-age girl around my age at the time that had one. As a "new" car, I heard it was terrible.  

[Rob Hall]

4 minutes ago, CapSat 6 said:

The Yugo was a car sold in the U.S. In the 80's, I thought that one was based on the Lada, which I think was based on an old Fiat. No Lada-branded cars were ever sold here as far as I know. I knew of a college-age girl around my age at the time that had one. As a "new" car, I heard it was terrible.  

Yeah, the US never got any Lada vehicles...some Canadian friends of mine have told me about having rusty ones in the 80s...one friend had a Lada sedan one as his first car in Saskatchewan.   (one odd thing--autocorrect keeps trying to change 'Lada' to 'Yada')...

Speaking of Pintos, my sister's first car was a '76 Runabout...I've long threatened to build a model of it for her...she had it for about 5 years from 1976 on, through college..it was a worn out, dented rusty mess by 1980, but it got her and her husband from Ohio to Arizona w/ a U-Haul trailer..

Edited March 2, 2020 by Rob Hall

[espo]

I was working at a Chevrolet dealer in Sacramento when the Yugo rep showed up one afternoon to pitch the car to the dealer as a possible second line car. Just so happened, by the time the dealer took it on a test drive it was one of those cool damp evenings that you would need your defrosters as soon as the car started moving . They didn't get a block down the street before he turned around as the Yugo couldn't clear the windshield.  Then Chevrolet gave us the GEO.   

[CapSat 6]

31 minutes ago, espo said:

I was working at a Chevrolet dealer in Sacramento when the Yugo rep showed up one afternoon to pitch the car to the dealer as a possible second line car. Just so happened, by the time the dealer took it on a test drive it was one of those cool damp evenings that you would need your defrosters as soon as the car started moving . They didn't get a block down the street before he turned around as the Yugo couldn't clear the windshield.  Then Chevrolet gave us the GEO.   

Had to...

 

[CapSat 6]

Faster, Neddy- faster!!!

 

[espo]

3 hours ago, CapSat 6 said:

Had to...

 

Great looking ride. Many years ago I lived in the Pismo Beach & Grover City area. There were many cars that had been placed on a 1/2 ton or Jeep chassis and they always looked like a fun 1:1 project.

[Mike999]

Old Ladas were all over Alexandria, Egypt when I lived there (2005-09).  Mostly used as taxicabs, though the Egyptian military also used the little Lada Niva 4x4 as a staff car.  Alexandria is right on the Mediterranean Sea, so most of the Lada taxis had Fred Flintstone floorboards.  They also had an interesting piece of optional equipment; a huge, cast-iron Russian taxi meter bolted under the dash.  The meter had Cyrillic characters, which didn't matter. None of those meters had worked since the Brezhnev years, you negotiated the price with the driver. 

For fans of rust and weathering, here's a typical Lada taxi in Alexandria. (Not my photo, since I'm too lazy to hook up the external drive and dig thru my pictures).

Edited March 2, 2020 by Mike999
goof

[stavanzer]

Those Taxis all had that huge roof rack too, didn't they? I've seen other pics of Taxis in the Mideast and they had those racks.

(I guess because the trunks are too small to hold much luggage.)

[espo]

They may need the roof rack in the case of someone having luggage. The Trunk Floor is most likely gone if the Floor is.  Any time you're by a large body of salt water your car is goin to suffer  even if it's in a garage. 

[Mike999]

You're both right about the roof racks.  I lived in Alexandria but worked about 50 miles away, in the Nile Delta.  My daily commute took me thru several little farm villages and towns.  Quite a few big old American cars were in daily use as taxis, including Fords & Chevies from the early 1950s. They all had big roof racks.

For intercity taxis between Alexandria and Cairo, one favorite car was the Peugeot 504 station wagon.  It was amazing, those things would be crammed with 7 or 8 people and loaded with baggage.  Check out the luggage rack on this one:

[slusher]

On 2/26/2020 at 11:23 AM, Dave Van said:

I need an Aztek for a Breaking Bad model!!! 

That would be really neat!

[Casey]

AMT 1350:

[PintoKING]

PLEASE, oh so PLEASE make that the old MPC kit!!!

Drats; its got hte AMT logo....

[Rob Hall]

Yeah, the AMT '77/78 Pinto was reissued a few years ago.  MPC made a '78 Pinto hatchback and wagon, the wagon got modified into a '79 which has been reissued, but was the MPC hatchback ever updated to a '79? 

[Luc Janssens]

2 hours ago, Casey said:

AMT 1350:

Don't like the nose of this year Pinto, but do like the decals, think they would look great on my '75 Pinto kit.

 

[1972coronet]