Fun With Cropping And The Grandeur Of The Gran Torino-Based Ranchero And The Horror Of David Lynch

You know what one of my guilty Malaise-era American car pleasures is? Ford Rancheros. Especially the sixth-generation ones from 1972 to 1976, based on the Ford Gran Torino. I like these because they had that sort of exuberant, overdone, curvy ’70s style that I’m kind of a sucker for. So, of course a brochure for the ’75 Ranchero is going to get my attention, but what I didn’t expect is for it to remind me of a very creepy scene from David Lynch’s wonderfully unsettling film, Mulholland Drive.

I get that this seems like a pretty huge leap to make, but let me explain. It’s an absurdly tiny part of the movie, but, as David Lynch excels at making tiny parts of his movies deeply creepy and hard to forget, I think it makes sense it’d have stuck in my head. And, it’s sort of a literally tiny thing, too. You’ll see.

It’s from this page of the Ranchero brochure:

Look at that Ranchero, the choice of fancy horse-couples everywhere! I especially like it in that avocado green and woodgrain in the upper right – is there any color scheme that is more unapologetically ’70s than that?

But, the part I’m thinking of here is near the middle of the page, where the horse couple is posing with that brown Ranchero. If we crop this image just right, getting rid of the brown Ranchero they’re scaled to match and instead only keeping the much larger blue one, we get this:

This way it appears that our horse couple are about, oh, six to eight inches tall, a pair of tiny equestrians hanging out in front of that Ranchero. Maybe they ride Corgis?

Anyway, the scale of these two somehow reminded me of this scene from the end of Mulholland Drive:

Sure, the horse-people are less scary than those old folks, and the old folks only stay tiny for a moment, but that’s where my brain went, and the only way to free myself is to share this all with you. Terribly sorry.

That said, it’s still a good reason to appreciate this era of Ranchero! Look at the curves on this thing! I especially like that deep intaglio strake at the rear quarter, and the slight arch on the front fenders. These were oddly swoopy truck-like vehicles!

This is the facelifted front end, which hid the front indicators in that big grille; I think I actually prefer the earlier, pre-5mph bumper face, which had more of a fishmouth-style grille:

You could get these with Ford’s 250 cubic-inch inline six, which made a Malaise-tastic 98 hp, but there were also Windsor V8s that made between 120 and almost 250 hp or so. Look how good that thing looks in the classic Torino/Starsky and Hutch-style livery!

I think the Rancheros must have started as Torino coupés, and I think the coupés look fantastic, too. Look at those hood scoops! They all have such a Syd Mead sort of yesterday’s tomorrow sort of look about them.

Now just keep an eye out for tiny people.

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