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Joe S.'s Limited Production 1976
"Starsky & Hutch"®Ford
Gran Torino®
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| Joe's car was built in March of 1976. Paul S., a long-time
friend and co-worker of Joe's father, Ray, purchased it from Stinger's Ford in Dayton, Ohio on April 2, 1976. It
has a 351W engine with 2 bbl carb, a C4 automatic transmission, black vinyl bucket seats with floor shifter, an
8-track player, and dealer-installed air conditioning. |
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| Joe grew up loving this car, and says that for years
he harassed his dad about asking his friend to sell it. Finally, Paul S. sold the car to Joe's dad in February
of 1999. The car had about 80,000 miles on it at the time. Ray enjoyed the car a great deal, Joe says, and took
it to many local car shows and cruise-ins. "He got a real kick out of the attention the car got, particularly
after the 2004 movie was released." The car was first featured here, under Ray's name, in December of 2003. |
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| Sadly, Ray lost his long battle with cancer in 2005,
but passed the car along to Joe shortly before. On a whim, Joe and his son brought the car to our S&H Torino
Reunion at the Fairlane Club of America's National Meet in Cincinnati in June of 2007. You can't see the other
cars in these photos because Joe arrived after all the S&H parking places were full, but there were 11 more
S&H Torinos right across the parking lot from Joe's. |
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| Like many of us, Joe says, "I now own the car
that I grew up being infatuated with. I drive it mostly on weekends and to the occasional cruise-in. My children,
who are about the age I was when I first fell in love with the car, seem to have developed a similar appreciation.
They frequently ask, 'Can we drive the Starsky?' I usually give in, and my wife and I load the kids into the car,
go for a ride, and all end up with smiles on our faces." |
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We were all glad to meet Joe and see his car in Cincinnati.
Although it was completely repainted after a fender-bender when it was only a couple of years old, it hasn't been
changed since then and still has all of the factory installed hoses, air cleaner, smog controls, and everything
else (including factory paint daubs and chalk marks) under the hood. It still has the original 8-track player and
dealer-installed Air Conditioning (which works), and even sports its original Magnum 500 wheels with trim rings.
It is also one of very few S&H Torinos I've seen that has not had a black pinstripe added around the white
stripe (although none of them came from the factory with black pin-striping, most owners add it to make the car
look a little more like it did on the TV show).
When Joe opened the hood for all of us other S&H Torino owners, it was like Christmas morning. I've never seen
so many people excited to see an original air cleaner, but the fact is that most of them - just like the Magnum
500 wheels - have long ago been replaced with some fancy chrome thing. Although I've seen about 100 of the original
1,000 (or so) S&H Torinos, this is one of only a handful that still looks almost exactly the way it did when
it rolled off the assembly line in 1976. Thanks for sharing it, Joe! |