A six-week strike almost changed what came standard under the hood of every 1968 Ford Torino GT, and this cream convertible carries the 390 four-barrel V8 that serious buyers stepped up to instead. With only 5,310 Torino GT convertibles built that year, it’s a genuinely rare body style. Read on to see what almost derailed the model year before it started.
A gallery of glossy photos doesn’t always explain why a car mattered, and this 1968 Ford Torino GT is a good example of a machine that looks like a footnote but actually carries real history under the sheetmetal. Ford built more than 100,000 Torino GTs that year, yet a labor dispute nearly changed what came standard under the hood before a single one reached a showroom floor. The car pictured here carries the 390 four-barrel setup, one of several engine options buyers could step up to depending on how serious they wanted to get. What almost derailed the model year, and how rare is the version sitting in these photos?
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MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images displayed here.
A Strike Almost Changed the Standard Engine
About six weeks into 1968 model year production, a six-week UAW strike against Ford forced a cost-cutting move that made a 289 cu in two-barrel small-block V8 the standard engine on the Torino GT instead of the previously planned 302. Buyers who stepped up to the 390 four-barrel V8 pictured here were opting into real performance: 335 hp at 4,800 rpm and 427 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm, backed by 10.5:1 compression.
How Rare Is This Body Style
The Torino GT came in three shapes: a formal hardtop, the SportsRoof fastback, and a convertible — and the car pictured here, with its top folded down behind the rear seat, is the convertible. Of the 100,384 Torino GTs built for 1968, only 5,310 were convertibles, making this open-top example meaningfully rarer than either the hardtop or the 74,135-unit SportsRoof fastback that made up the bulk of production. A 390-equipped SportsRoof of this vintage ran roughly 7.2 to 7.7 seconds to 60 mph with a quarter mile in the low 15s; a convertible carrying the same drivetrain would trail those figures slightly, since the extra structural bracing and power-top mechanism needed to keep a topless unibody rigid added noticeable weight over the coupe body styles.
A Color Combination Built for Top-Down Driving
This particular convertible wears a soft ivory-white exterior paired with a deep blue interior and matching blue convertible top — a classic late-1960s pairing that was specifically chosen to look good with the top either up or down. Chrome trim rings the grille, headlight bezels, and rocker panels, while styled wheels finished in a bright metallic tone dress up what was otherwise a fairly clean, unadorned body side for the era.
Blue Vinyl and a Simple, Business-Like Dash
Inside, the blue vinyl bucket-style front seats and matching door panels carry through to the rear bench, with a woodgrain-look insert breaking up the dash ahead of a round four-gauge instrument cluster. The deep-dish steering wheel sits close to the driver in a layout built around visibility and control rather than deep cushioning, appropriate for a car that was just as often bought to be driven hard as it was to be admired at a car show.
What the Engine Bay Confirms
Popping the hood shows a big-block FE-series V8 finished in factory Ford blue, topped with a chrome air cleaner lid and correct-looking factory decals and clamps — details that matter to buyers trying to confirm a car is genuinely numbers-matching rather than a later engine swap wearing GT badges. The engine bay is clean and uncluttered, consistent with a 390 rather than the tighter packaging that came with Ford’s larger 428 Cobra Jet option introduced partway through the model year.
Why the Torino GT Gets Overlooked
The Torino GT tends to live in the shadow of Ford’s more famous 1968 performance models, particularly once the 428 Cobra Jet Torino arrived mid-year and grabbed most of the magazine coverage and drag strip attention. That’s left the earlier-production 390-powered cars, especially rare body styles like this convertible, relatively undervalued by comparison, even though the production numbers say a 390 convertible is objectively harder to find today than plenty of cars that get far more attention.
What a Convertible Adds to the Ownership Experience
Beyond the rarity, a convertible changes what it’s like to actually live with a car like this: a power top adds a mechanical system that needs periodic attention to hydraulic lines and pump seals, structural reinforcements mean the underbody is worth inspecting closely for rust or prior accident repair, and finding date-correct top material and boot covers can take longer than sourcing interior parts for a hardtop. None of that has hurt demand for well-documented survivors — if anything, it’s part of why a clean, original convertible like this one draws serious interest the moment it’s listed.
Where the Torino Fit Into Ford’s 1968 Lineup
The Torino line sat above the standard Fairlane in Ford’s mid-size hierarchy for 1968, adding extra trim, a more upscale interior, and a completely restyled roofline that helped distinguish it from the more basic cars sharing its platform. The GT package added items like the hood scoops, styled wheels, and GT badging seen on this car, positioning it as the performance-oriented flagship of the Torino range without pushing buyers all the way up to Ford’s dedicated pony car, the Mustang, if what they wanted was a roomier mid-size body with two rear doors’ worth of usable rear-seat space in the hardtop and fastback versions.
Why 1968 Was a Turning Point for the Model
1968 marked the first full model year for the Torino name after it debuted partway through 1968 as Ford’s answer to increasingly sophisticated mid-size competition from GM and Chrysler. The mid-year arrival of the 428 Cobra Jet option would go on to overshadow the earlier 390-powered cars in period road tests and later enthusiast attention, but that timing quirk is exactly why a documented, numbers-matching 390 car built earlier in the model year, like the convertible pictured here, tells a more complete story of the Torino GT’s debut season than the more famous Cobra Jet cars that followed it, right down to a strike that briefly threatened the whole lineup before it ever reached a single dealer.
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I loved the ’68-’69 Torinos. I drove one in ’76 with a 390 auto, it was a fastback and ran very strongly, if it did not sound like there was not a tight bolt anywhere on the car I’d have bought it, but it had been dogged too much, not wrecked; it just drove a bit too “loose” and rattly.