Adventures of a 1978 Ford Granada

Around 1989, my mom gave me my first car. It was the car I learned to drive in as she had owned it for about six or seven years before I did. It had a lot of problems, but most of them were because of the bad design of the carburetor it had. The car had a straight six cylinder, 250ci, with a one barrel carburetor. Most large Ford vehicles had the 302ci V8 at that time. But, once I took a few do-it-yourself car repair classes, I got that car running really well and took it all over the southwest United States in the early 1990s.

At first, the car didn't have a good paint job and most of the original paint was faded away. I put some primer on other parts and even had a new fender put on one side after a carport accident before I owned it. Later, I had it painted all over and it looked great for a couple of years. Then, I had engine problems and had the engine rebuilt. But, the rebuilt engine only lasted a couple of years and, eventually, I had to trade it in for another car in 1995. The paint job also began to look bad, too.

Unfortunately, I misplaced a lot of my photos of this car and had to re-download them off another site I posted them on. So, some of my photos may be a little on the small side. I will try to find the originals, later. But, all of the photos on this lens were taken by me, mostly using 35mm film. I didn't get my first digital camera until much later.

The photo in the module is of the car in Snow Canyon State Park in southern Utah.

One of the things I was trying to do was restore this old car and keep it until it was worth some money. Unfortunately, it was not practical to do so, especially living in an apartment where I can't work on my own vehicles. But, if you can work on your own car, you might find these items useful.

I also thew in a few interesting items about Ford Granadas, too.

I went on many trips with my Ford Granada, but mostly out exploring in our local Anza Borrego Desert. I even drove it on dirt. For some reason, it was fairly good on dirt roads, except when there was a lot of sand. One time, I got the car stuck in the sand and had to get someone in Borrego Springs to tow me out. But, it was a long trip back into town. So, I was very careful not to get stuck in the sand again (and I never did).

Here is a picture of my car before I got it painted. I took this photo outside of Flagstaff. I drove all over the Navajo reservation in that car and even visited the Grand Canyon. The car did absolutely great the whole trip and I never had any problems with it. I even got good gas mileage on that car through constant diligence and tuning. My highway mileage was about 30 mpg and my city was about 22-25 mpg. I could swear that I even got higher mileage on the highway sometimes. Most people didn't believe me when I said I got that good of mileage on it because it was such a heavy car. Much of the car was solid steel and iron.

Here is my car at Yaqui Pass in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. I have a bug net over the grill because sometimes I would get so many bugs in there at certain times of the year and they would plug the radiator. The car had a large cooling and electrical system because it had the police chassis on it. It also had A/C, too, but it didn't work half the time I had that car.

Here is a drawing I did of my car near my tent while camping. It is based on an actual photo I took. I think this was in the southern area of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

When the Ford Granada came out, it was touted as a more affordable version of a luxury car, usually a cheaper Mercedes or Cadillac. Indeed, when this car was new, it was seen as a little bit classy.

I think I saved a few of these ads, myself, and even had a couple framed.

In 1981, Ford completely changed the Ford Granada to what I believe was the same body and chassis as the Ford Fairmont, a smaller, more lightweight vehicle. This revision only lasted until 1982 when the Granada was discontinued.

Here are some links about either the Ford Granada, itself, or about traveling and camping by car.

If you search for "Ford Granada", you will find several links to the British version of the car. It is not the same car as was sold here.

As I track down more photos, I will post them here. Especially those from the trips that I took.