Don't fully agree on his opinion of the car, but it's interesting to read.
I had a 73 Gran Torino Sport. 351 Clevland 4spd. Medium blue on black. Pretty much exactly as below.
The title star of 'Gran Torino' is a metal hulk that illustrates what went bad in Motor City. By DAN NEIL, Automotive Critic December 24, 2008 The title character in Clint Eastwood's Motor City morality tale is, by the reaching light of history, a fairly negligible hunk of machinery: a green 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport, with a sleek "SportsRoof" and a gold "Laser Stripe," one of many million overfed, undersprung and largely unlamented muscle cars that poured out of Ford, GM and Chrysler factories in the early 1970s. Why not something heroic, a Chevrolet Camaro or Corvette? Why not a Dodge Challenger or even a boattail Buick Riviera? Why did the director (Eastwood again) go with a Gran Torino as the motorized MacGuffin? Car guys get it.
You could prowl vintage car shows for years and not find an automobile that, in its malign typicality, better summarizes Detroit's fall than the 1972 Gran Torino. Let's begin with the thing itself: The car was tubby and it was awkward. It handled like a block of ice with a steering wheel. It lacked even minimum corrosion proofing and so rusted with relish in northern climates. That this oaf of a car should be given the sporty-sounding but nonsensical Italian name Gran Torino -- meaning "great Turin" -- is a bleak joke. (This isn't the car's first brush with pop-culture fame: A mid-'70s Gran Torino, with white hockey-stick paint scheme, starred in the TV series "Starsky and Hutch" and the 2004 retread movie.)
The 1972 Gran Torino was one of no less than nine largely redundant iterations of the Torino nameplate, part of a classic Detroit product strategy that attempted to fill every cranny of the segment at the lowest possible investment. That year's Torino -- "Gran" or otherwise -- also represented a significant retreat in terms of engineering. The previous model-year car was built on a unitized steel chassis, or monocoque, like modern cars. For 1972, the Torino returned to a virtually obsolete and inferior body-on-frame design, which lowered the costs of putting multiple body styles on the chassis.
You could blame Ford's penny-chiseling management for the Torino's mediocrity, but you would also have to indict the assembly line. In 1972, Detroit's unionized workforce was in the full flower of its indifference. Shop foremen battled against even the most common-sense efforts at accountability and quality control. Drug use, absenteeism and even sabotage were endemic. Managers were afraid to walk the factory floors alone.
And 1972 was in many ways an inflection point for the U.S. automakers, the year that Detroit's mighty cylinders began to seize. The Big Three would never again be as comfortable, and arrogant, and solipsistic, as they were then. The following year's OPEC oil embargo sent them reeling. It was this generation of cars, which almost seemed to radiate contempt for their buyers, that drove Americans into the embrace of Japanese automakers when they came. It was this generation of carmakers, and indeed the one that came after, that failed to answer the challenges of an increasingly competitive global market. That failure took Detroit -- a once-beautiful city of broad avenues and majestic public spaces -- straight to hell.
So to say Walt Kowalski's Gran Torino is a cinematic metaphor doesn't really do it justice. The car -- to whatever extent it is fractionally responsible for Detroit's undoing -- is an agent of the film's action, a prime mover, an original sin. And Walt, a retired Ford autoworker, is an original sinner. One day in 1972 Walt is wrenching away on a Ford assembly line, stuffing a steering box into a shiny Gran Torino before going home to a comfortable middle-class home on a quiet street in Highland Park. Thirty-six years later, he raises the blinds of that same house to discover the world he knew is gone. The jobs have vanished, the factories closed, the prosperity replaced with desperation. How did he get here?
He sounds like the typical American film critic, bashing the crap out of domestic cars (it's a 72, get over it already!) and Detroit. You can be sure he does drive an import, drinks imported booze, wears imported clothes and thinks Euro trash movies are the greatest.
He sounds like the typical American film critic, bashing the crap out of domestic cars (it's a 72, get over it already!) and Detroit. You can be sure he does drive an import, drinks imported booze, wears imported clothes and thinks Euro trash movies are the greatest.
And here's his car...
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65 Laurentian post, 67 Grande Parisienne 4 door HT.
He sounds like the typical American film critic, bashing the crap out of domestic cars (it's a 72, get over it already!) and Detroit. You can be sure he does drive an import, drinks imported booze, wears imported clothes and thinks Euro trash movies are the greatest.
yup, sounds like another dumbass trying to sell his employer's newspaper. "obsolete and inferior body on frame design" sounds like he was the newspaper's film critic the week before, demoted or promoted to auto critic this week. what's his 'expertise' next week?
Ex mother in laws boy friend back in the day had a 72 with a 429 in it. At 17 years old he told me to take it for a ride. I don`t think the guy had taken it over 60 mph. It was struggling to make 85 when it spit the fan belts. Thought the thing was a dog.
I have seen the trailers for the film, think I will go and see it. Clint looks like he is in top form.
Sounds like a good excuse for an East End get-together - movie followed by Timmies for some intellectually stimulating discussion?
As for the critic, or whatever he is chosing to call himself, another "know it all" who actually knows nothing at all about the auto industry at the time or now...
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Hillar
1970 LS4 (eventually an LS5) Laurentian 2dr hdtp -and a bunch of other muscle cars...
I have seen the trailers for the film, think I will go and see it. Clint looks like he is in top form.
Sounds like a good excuse for an East End get-together - movie followed by Timmies for some intellectually stimulating discussion?
As for the critic, or whatever he is chosing to call himself, another "know it all" who actually knows nothing at all about the auto industry at the time or now...
Hey Hillar, Mary's sister saw it on the weekend and she is just raving about it. She said "Raymond has just got to go and see this" of course Mary wants to go now too. My SIL is a die hard NDP so for her to like this sort of racist vigilanty thing it has to be good.
Apparently Clint's character is a combination of every badass he ever played, could be his parting role...he is 78 now.
As for the title, don't get carried away boys, its not a car flick at all. As the reviewer everyone hates above said the car is just a metafor. Come to think of it I never saw the Gran Torino in the trailers at all.
From what I've read also the car has very little to do with the movie. What irks me about the review is the pseudo- intellectual snide ass comments about the car and Detroit. Gran Torino's were no better, no worse than most of the cars produced in '72. Whether you like them or not. What Japanese car built in '72 didn't rust as fast or faster than a Ford? How reliable were those European sh*tboxes in '72? Anyone seen a 72 Jaguar on the road in the last 10 years? How about a 72 BMW?,or Corolla? How about a Datsun 240Z with any original body panels? I happen to like a lot of those foreign cars from the '70's, but... They had plenty of problems on their own. By the way, has anyone here ever attempted to restore one of those unibody cars? I didn't think so...
We had a 72 Corolla and I hate to admit it, it was actually my first car. 1600 with Toyota's version of the 2 speed glide.
They rusted as much if not more than any American car of the time. My brother and I actually rebuilt the motor of that thing in our garage using nothing but basic hand tools - we used an oil filter wrench the squeeze the piston rings on! I was constantly doing body work on mine, I even repainted the whole car using Canadian Tire spray bombs in the garage until I finally got rid of it in 78 and moved up to my first real car, a 70 Cutlass.
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Hillar
1970 LS4 (eventually an LS5) Laurentian 2dr hdtp -and a bunch of other muscle cars...
i remember watching eastwood in rawhide tv show hes good and if made by eastwood its gotta be a good ovie i know were i'm going this week end movieeeeee marty
I actually like the 72 Grand Torino. Nice looking car, decent power (I had a 400 CI 73 Ranchero - it could smoke the tires pretty good), but not the greatest handling, super soft ride. Maybe the last good looking Ford in the 70s.
It's hard to imagine Clint Eastwood acting in another movie after this performance.
I'll have to agree that the car is a Metaphor, only disagree with the reviewer in the initial post about it's symbolism. I my view the car represents all that was and is good about America and the American dream, Patriotism and the way of life that defending your country and working hard all your life delivers.
