"survivor" 1968 Ford Torino Two Door Hardtop, No Rust, Nice Original Interior

As a car, truck and tractor collector for over 50 years,I feel that I am very fortunate to be living in Montana which is one of thedriest parts of our country. This semi-arid climate isrelativelyeasy on vehicles, especially if they have been kept inside and out of the sun and weather as this vehicle has.Die-cast zinc or "pot metal" trim parts do not pit or corrode nearly as bad as they do in the wetter climates. The unpainted sheet metal parts up under the dash of vehicles in most parts of the country get a red rust coating on them but not normally here in Montana.I have a local friend who is an auctioneer and he claims that even when it rains here, the wind blows the vehicles dry shortly after the rain stops. So here is your chance to own a "blow-dried" vehicle. If you have never treated yourself to a rust free and basically un-corroded vehicle so far, here is your chance to own one now.
This listing is for an exquisite original and totally un-restored 1968 Ford Torino 2 door hardtop that is in truly exceptional original condition. It is painted Meadowlark yellow and has a black vinyl top witha NuggetGold nylon cloth interior. The seats havecloth on the seating surfaces with vinyl forthe backs of the front seats, door panels, rear side panels and headliner.This caris equipped with a 210 HP 302 V8 engine with a 2 barrel carburetor.The transmission is the famous Ford C-4 Cruise-O-Matic three speed automatic transmission. This car is also equipped with manualfront and reardrum brakes,power steering, the original Ford AMpushbuttonradio, full wheel coversand a day/night interiorrearviewmirror.This car is still wearing all ofitsoriginal yellow paint except for the trunk lid which was replaced and repainted many years ago. The original black vinyl top is truly beautiful with no cracks, rips or any other damage at all. The interior, including the headliner, seat upholstery, door panels, carpet and dash pad is all original.The headliner and dash pad are about as perfect as one might hope to find on any 50-year-oldcar that has been driven 76,000 miles.
The door and rear side panels are very nice except for a fewnarrow scratches on the upper rear part of the passenger's door panel. The seats and carpets are showing some very minor wear. Both the front and rear seat bottoms are very nice and clean but have 3 cigarette burns in them that a professional upholster sewed up for me. The front and rear seatbackrestsare in very nice original condition except for some minor soiling that you can see in the photos. The engine runs fine and the transmission works fine too with no apparent oil leaks at all.The brakes do not work at all and the gas tank needs to be cleaned out and coated inside or replaced.
Please do not be frustrated because I listed this gem with a reserve. I do that so that I don't have to spend 10 days worrying about giving my car away or havesomeone shill bid on it or buy it back for meat the end of the auction as some sellers do. I listed a very solid 1967 Pontiac LeMans convertible that was missing an engine and transmission here on eBay about 5 years ago. I figured any A-body GM convertible of that vintage would not need a reserve. My car sold for $2,200 to a collector in New York who wanted the body to fix his rusty 1967 GTO convertible. He was absolutely elated to win that auction and told me that he placed a $7,600 proxy bid on my car in an attempt to make sure he would win it. It really hurt to find out that I left over $5,000 on the table on that deal so that is part of the reason I generally use a reserve on my vehicle listings here.
IfiguredI that Idon't need a reserve on any Chevelle or Corvette I might list here but I learned through experience that I need a reserve on most other vehicles I might list here.If this car does not meet my reserve and you are serious aboutowning it, please call me so we can work out a deal after this listing ends. I can thenmakea "second chance offer" for you so that you can own this very special automobile. My phone number is406-799-1847so please feel free to call me with any questions you might have.
Now for some of the known history of this beautiful automobile.As you can see in one of the last photos of this listing, this car still has the original temporary metal warranty plate and the permanent plastic warranty plate with it. The original owner's manual is included as is the pouch given to the new owner by Archie Cochrane Motors of Billings Montana where this car was sold new.As you can also see in that photo, there isa folded poster from Ford that one can unfold and put in the window to signal for help or gasoline.
This car was purchased newon March 20,1968, by Hal Watson who lived about a hundred miles away from Billings in the smaller town of HarlowtownMontana.I believe both Hal Watson and his wife are gone now but his daughter is still living. I talked with her lastyear and she told me her family moved to Bozeman when this car was only a few years old.Her parents used the car here in Bozeman for a while before buying another car and giving this Torino to her brother. Her brother died in a car crash involving another vehicle not long after that so the car was left in the garage as a sort of memorial to him. It was stored in that garage for many years until there was a fire in that house. The firedid not affect the garage or the car but they needed room to deal with the damaged household items so this car was moved outside. It sat outside for a few months before a neighbor suggested the daughter put a cover on it to keep the sun from damaging it. She bought a car cover and it was on this car for a few months before my friend bought the car from her. He knew that a carstored outside with a car cover on it is a mistake. That car cover wore through the paint on all four corners and caused some other minor paint damage in a few placesas well. About 3 years ago, a local car collector mentioned that he had thisvery nice original car available. I would have liked to have owned a new Torino GT in 1970 but wound up with a 1970 Olds Cutlass Supreme instead. I guess I never gave much thought to Torinos earlier than that. A while later I went to look at this car. Even though it wassittingin a field with 2 flat tires, no wheel covers on it (they were in the trunk) and a very dirty front seat, I could see a diamondin the rough. I bought the car, hauled it home and decided that my first priority would be to make it run again aftersittingfor several years. I loosened the engine oil drain plug and found no evidence of any moisture in the oil which is a good start. The oil was black but not heavy with sludge at all. I then drained that oil and refilled the crankcase with new oil and changed the oil filter.I turned the engine by hand just a tiny bitbut I wanted to be safe so I then removed the spark plugs and squirted a few pumps of oil in each cylinder. I then cranked the engine over with the starter for 30 seconds, let the starter cool for a half hour and cranked it again for another 30 seconds. I re-installed the spark plugs and cranked the engine for a bit again. It cranked evenly indicating that no valves were stuck open so that was a very good sign. I unhooked the fuel supply hose going to the carburetor and hooked up a small fuel tank that wassettingon a soft pad on the car roof.I removed the air cleaner, squirted some gas into the carburetor and hit the starter. The engine fired right up and ran well at an idle for a couple of minutes. Acouple of hydraulic valve liftersclattered a bit or about 15 seconds or so before they pumped up as they should.They soon quieted down and this engine ran beautifully with no unusual noises or any smoke from thetail pipe.I topped off the anti-freeze in the radiator that was a gallon or so low and let the engine run at about 1,000 RPM for about 10 minutes. It warmed up fine but the radiator had a leaking tube so I shut it off.
Now that the engine had warmed up to operating temperature and seemed to runfine, I checked the fluid in the transmission. It looked and smelled fine so I restarted the engine andpulledthe gear selector into drive and then reverse. The transmission seemed totakehold both wayswhichwasa nice bonus for me. The car was still on my trailer so I removed the front and rear seats and spent about 2 hours vacuuming the front and rear carpets. I then hauled this car to a detail shop and spent $500 having him use his special machine to clean the vinyl top, headliner, dash, seats, carpets, door and rear panels and the trunk floor mat.A friend that does car upholstery sewed up the three cigarette burns on the front and rear bottom cushions and replaced the button that was missing from the front seat bottom cushion where the driver sits.The front and rear seats and door panelscleaned up so beautifully thatone would never know how dirty theyhad just recently been. I covered the seats,stored them in my warehouse and started to workfinding missing parts and upgrading what few parts were damaged on this car.Ispent $280 having a radiator shop in Billings replace the original radiator core that they said could not be repaired. There had been a minorashtrayfire a long time ago and it damaged the plastic trim panel above theashtraya bit. I was very fortunate to be able to findan NOSpanel hereon eBay. I have not installed it yet so it is shown in the photo showing the severalloose parts.I also purchased a new battery hold down and the special bolts that hold it to the battery tray.The battery tray is not rusted out but someoneflattened the leftflange to make it accommodate ahuge battery many years ago.
I needto explain the quarter panel damage behind both rear wheels. When I bought this car there were two sets of tire chains in the trunk. I am not a tire chain collector and thoughtthat nobody else likely is either so I scrapped them.The original owner evidently used tire chains with or without snow tires quite a bit and they damagedthis car behind both of the rear wheels. The quarter panels behind both rear wheels have only slight sheet metal damageand have some surface rust there but are not rusted through at all.One photo of this listing shows that damage and the other side has identical damage so I did not show thedamage on that other side.
The bottom rear areas ofboth aluminum rear wheel opening moldings are damaged a lot as are the fronts of both of thealuminum trim strips that run from the back of the wheel opening moldings back to the rear bumper. I found one of those NOS trim strips from Green Sales Companyand it is shown in the photo with the loose parts. I bought a pair of new replacement wheel opening moldings and they are also shown in the photo with the loose parts. I am still looking for the other NOS or nice used aluminum trim strip but have had no luck yet. This car has only two minor dents that I can recall. One is a deep door ding on the driver's door and it may show in some of the photos here. I talked with an expert regardingdentlesspaint repair and he was hesitant to guarantee that he could remove that dent because of the thickness of the metal used in this body.Another minor dent is at the very front ofthe rightfront fender. The dent removal specialist figured that he could possibly remove that dent but I have not had him attempt that yet. I figured that I should let the new owner decide if and how these dents should be dealt with.
The very fragile and vulnerable "L" shaped aluminumtrimpiece that goes on the very front of the rightfront fender was damaged when the fender was damaged. I could not findan NOSpart like this so I bought a pair of nice used ones here on eBay for around $200 andthey are shown in the photo of the loose parts.
This car was hailed on at one time and the damage is only on the hood. I suppose this happened before the trunk lid was replaced so that is why there is no hail damage on the back of this car.There are about a dozen tiny dents on the hood. The local paintless dent repairman felt he could remove those dents easily because they are relatively small and shallow.The old bias ply tires on this car were on it when I bought it. I had some newer radials I could have put on this car but I decided they might look out of place on a "survivor" like this.You can see where the tire chains rubbedthroughthe black side wall and into the white wall on the left rear tire. I decided to let the new owner of this car decide what type of tires to install on this gem.
There were three layers of canvas covering the floor of this trunk when I bought this car. When I took this car to the detailer, I discarded that canvas. It protected the vinyl trunk mat so well that the trunk mat looks almost like new except for a tear at the front of the mat.My photos do not do justice to this truly exception original trunk mat.While I had the car out for detailing, The original jack, jack base and lug wrench are included. The relatively fragile anodized aluminum grilleis in superb original condition as is the die-cast center medallion that has the silver, red and blue insert.The front bumper is absolutely wonderful except for a tiny ding at the very front about14" in from the right end of the bumper.This dent is so small that one does not normally see it but it is there so I feel obligated to mention it.The rear bumper appears to have been straightened and replated. I suppose this happened when the trunk lid was replaced. The chrome is peeling a bit around a couple of thebumper mounting holesand there is a tiny deflection that one can barely see about 18" in from the right end of this bumper. There are NOS rear bumpers here on eBay for $395 and $695 and one of them would grand on the back of this beauty. The original dash pad is absolutely beautiful and without any cracks or damage for the most part.It is, however,sagging just a bit by the left edge of the glove box door and that makesthe glove box door hard to get open most of the time. I have not attempted any repair of this minor issue and will leave that to the new owner. The four chrome plated plastic bezels in the four large holes in the dash are all cracked in one place and shrunk enough to leave anoticeable gap. I have looked at several 1968 and 1969 Torino's in the last year and every one of them has this problem. This car has very little die-cast or "pot metal" trim on the outside. The only die-cast exterior parts that I can think of are the grille center medallion,left hand outside mirror, both door exterior door handles, both tail lamp bezels, the emblem around the trunk lock and the pair of emblems on the roof sail panels. All of these parts are still in excellent original condition and without any pits or even fine hairline cracks as is so common for most die-cast trim parts of this vintage.This car still has it's original Ford AM push button radio which is a real blessing and quite uncommon for intermediate vehicles of this vintage. Because nobody ever felt it necessary to install a better sound system, nobody ever cut speaker holes in the rear deck or either of the door panels of this beautiful "survivor". All seat belts were in very nice original condition when I bought this car except for the black receptacle on the center belt for the front seat. It appears to have been smashed in the bottom of the left door at some time which broke the black plastic outer shell. I searched eBay for several months before finding three of them. One outer shellhas been installed on that buckle and two extra shells go with this car. Three of the four headlamp bulbs appear to be the originals and have the FoMoCo logo etched inside an oval. All four of the original full wheel covers are in excellent condition. The original glove box documentation is shown in one of these photos and includes the owner's manual,plastic pouch, a folding sign asking for help or gasoline, the temporary aluminum warranty card, the final issue of the plastic warranty card and a heavy paper pouch from Archie Cochrane Motorsin Billings that sold this car new. A pair of the original Ford double sided ignition and door keysareincluded. The squarer headed key fits theignition switch and door locks white theoval-headedkey fits the glove box and trunk locks. It is hard to find any car of this vintage that still has it's original rather than duplicated keys. I will contact the daughter of the original owner and see if she happens to have any more of the original Ford keys that came with this car.
The headliner is as perfect as it can be as are both of the sun visors.Both of the front shoulder harness upper belts are still in perfect conditionand hanging where they should be on their special hooks locatedabove the side window andunder the headliner. All of the side windows and the rear windoware original Ford glasses in excellent condition. All of the side windows fit as they should and roll up and down withnoproblems. The windshield is very nice with no damage but it has been replaced at some time.The power steering works great and was not low on fluid when I bought this car. The power steering pump does not have the characteristic "Ford Whine" as so many do on older Ford vehicles of this vintage.
This car is so complete that I can not think of anything that is missing other than the extra pair of keys and the original new car smell. This is a very fine and truly exceptional "survivor" vehicle that any serious Ford collector should be very proud to have in their collection. I am about run down and you may be tired of reading my book by now so I will stop for now. I am sure I missed some detail you may have a question about so please feel free to email or call me at any time. Please remember to check out my other special vehicles listed here including a superb original low mile "survivor" 1970 Mercury Monterey station wagon that ends here the same day this Torino listing ends.It has a better interior in some ways than this Torino does but the paint has more tiny imperfections. None the less, it is a wonderful car too.Thanks again, Bob Woodburn - phone 406-799-1847 in Bozeman MontanaOn Sep-12-14 at 06:49:48 PDT, seller added the following information: After I got up this morning,I decided to add a bit more tothis description while I still can. A seller can not add anything to a description within 12 hours of the time it will end. The underside of this car has been undercoated and is in excellent condition except for the gas tank that has a 3 or4 inchdiameterdent in each of the rear corners. They are not that bad but I have to mention that they are there. I don't recall ever seeing any fluid leaks under this car wherever it has been parked so that is a real blessing. Many cars of this vintage seem to have automatic transmission fluid leaks for some reason but there are none on this jewel. All of the dash indicator lights work and I have photos that show all four of the instrument panel pods with the lights on if you want to see them. There are two reasons why I included a close up photo of one of thepairofdie-cast Torino emblems that are on the rear sides of the vinyl top.One reason is to show how beautiful these fancy chrome plated emblems with the wreath around the word Torino are. The second reason I included this photo is for you to hopefully see how nice the original black top material is. I am baffledwiththe way the front and rear seat backrests show some minor soiling on them now while the front and rear seat bottom cushions appear to be very nearly perfectly clean. When the man at the detail shop cleaned all four of the seat cushions forme about a year ago, they looked almost perfectly clean. He said he cleaned them 5 times and figured that the foam under the seat covers had absorbed body oil and sweat and that it would continue to bleed out a bitintothe covers.These seatswere stored under cover out of the car until a month ago when I put them back in the car.I displayed this car at a car show but nobody sat in it. I then had it outside for a day while it was raining. I looked for evidence of water leaks around the windshield, side windowsandrear window and found none so that was good.The cardboard rear shelf behind the rear seat shows no evidence of any water damage so that is good too. I suspect the front and rear seat bottom cushions have awater proofcovering over the foam rubber under the covers to help keep those bottom cushions from absorbing water, urine or other spills. I suspect the foam rubber on thebackrest cushionsmay not have the same type ofwater proofcovering on them.If you are an expert on Ford upholstery of this era, please let me know if the bottom cushions have a waterbarrier on top of the foam andunder the cover and if theback restcushions do not. This is such astunningoriginal car that I plan to do some more work on cleaning theseback restcushions it this car does not sell. My plan would beto have an upholstery shop remove both of the backrest covers, clean them off of the cushions, install a water barrier over the foam on the cushions and reinstall the covers.That should get the covers as clean as possible and hopefully keep them that way. If you are an experienced upholsterer and my thinking is in error, please let me know. I just added the last two photos of this listing. The next to last shows how nice thechrome plateddie-cast zinc trunk emblem and plastic insert are. They are in super condition with no pitting on the chrome bezel or damage to the plastic insert. One can see considerable paint damage to the left and right of the trunk lock cylinder in that photo. If this car does not sell, I may have the trunk lid repainted. That would really make this car look better and get rid of some of the worst paint damage on the entire car. Since the trunk lid has been replaced and does not haveit'soriginal paint, nothing regarding the originality of this car would be destroyed if the trunk lid is repainted.The last photo is a right front view of thisbeautytaken in the evening when the sun was low in the west.One can see the worst of the dozen hail dents on the hood in that photo. The hail damage is not really very noticeable until one looks closely in the right lighting conditions. I think it would add over a thousand dollars to the value of this car if one would have a professional paintless dent repairman remove those hail dents.Thanks again, Bob Woodburn - phone 406-799-1847 in Bozeman Montana