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A 1970 Ranchero GT with a Drag Pack 429 Super Cobra Jet is a truck almost nobody ordered: fewer than 5% of Ranchero GTs got any 429 at all, and Ford rated this one at 375 horsepower it plainly made more of. Muscle Car Of The Week walks around an untouched Dark Ivy Green survivor, factory inspection stamps and all.
The 1965 Ford Ranchero traded the outgoing 260 V8 for a fresh 289, turning Ford’s car-based hauler into something that could embarrass full-size trucks off the line. Built on the same platform as the Falcon sedan, it rode like a coupe and hauled like a truck, wrapped in a fresh finned face. Here’s what made the ’65 Ranchero one of the more surprising performers in Ford’s lineup that year, and why it’s earned a following among muscle car fans who also need a truck bed.
A 1958 Ford Ranchero isn’t the car you’d expect to see wearing a roll bar and side pipes, but that’s exactly what makes this Pro Street build worth talking about. Ford’s second-year hauler borrowed its facelift from the Thunderbird and offered up to 300 horsepower from a fresh 352 V8, hardly the stuff of drag strip legend. Someone clearly disagreed. Take a look at how this family grocery-getter got the full strip-brawler treatment.
The Ranchero occupied a strange spot in Ford’s lineup — part car, part truck, and rarely taken seriously by muscle car buyers chasing a Mustang or Torino instead. This 1969 GT changes that calculation entirely by packing a 428 Cobra Jet under the hood. Read on to find out how a car-truck hybrid ended up with one of the most feared engines of the entire muscle car era.
1970 finally gave the Ford Ranchero its own identity — Ranchero or Ranchero GT badges on the glovebox instead of Fairlane or Torino script, plus a pointed grille, hideaway headlights, and coke-bottle styling that left the old body looking dated overnight. Four distinct trims rolled out that year, from the woodgrain Squire to a GT that could be ordered with a 370-horsepower 429 Cobra Jet. Here’s how Ford split its unibody truck-car into four very different personalities for one model year.
A forgotten 1979 border-town action film produced one unforgettable stunt sequence: a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker chasing a 1966 Ford Ranchero, with a 1959 Dodge Mayfair also caught in the mix, all captured in a single real-world take decades before CGI made this kind of scene easy. Preserved by an archive channel dedicated to rescuing lost car-chase footage, the clip has drawn comparisons to Tarantino’s stunt work. Watch three generations of Detroit iron collide with movie history.
Part pickup truck, part passenger car, the 1968-1969 Ford Ranchero offered genuine hauling utility without sacrificing Torino-level comfort and trim. A redesigned grille, plush upholstery options, and three distinct trim levels gave Ford a single body style that could compete against both work trucks and upscale personal cars. Read on for the details behind this early car-truck hybrid.
Ford built the Ranchero by grafting a pickup bed onto a two-door station wagon, and by 1971 that formula could be ordered with anything from a mild six-cylinder up to a 370-horsepower 429 Cobra Jet. It was the last model year before new horsepower rating standards and emissions rules reshaped the entire performance car market. Despite sharing its underpinnings with the Torino and Mustang, the Ranchero has long traded at a discount simply for looking like a truck. That is starting to change.
Ford invented the modern car-based pickup with the 1957 Ranchero, then spent 1958 giving it a completely new face borrowed from the Thunderbird’s design language. This red and black two-tone example runs the 292 Y-block V8 backed by a three-speed manual — the configuration most 1958 buyers actually chose. Production that year barely cleared 10,000 units. Read on to find out why the Ranchero’s second year is the hardest one to find today.
Only two of these were ever built, and this 1957 Ford Ranchero hides one of the most unlikely muscle car secrets of the entire decade under its work-truck sheet metal. V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week goes looking for the story behind a supercharged engine nobody expected to find in a Ranchero, and the NASCAR connection that explains how it got there.