Hello. Looking for info on my dad's 72

Thank you guys for having me. 

If you go to google, you can search by image now (upload some of your photos and it will search the web).

I did a search on your first photo and found these :

Good luck with your search!

Chris

Looks like bucket seats judging by the shape of the driver seat in the pic from the back left direction…….

Dfox

The grille emblem will be the ‘74 r/w/b gear-type emblem so it matches the trunk emblem.  I personally think it looks funny when they are mismatched.

The 74 ranchero had the same gear but the red/white/blue had no lettering

The ‘73 ranchero had the same housing but the emblem was black/ red with silver lettering.

‘74 Gran Torino Sport grille emblem

1974 Ranchero grille emblem

1973 Ranchero GT grille emblem

Hope that gives you some direction.

Dfox

You have all of the great pictures, I should have touched base with you way back then. I discovered most of the differences, and chose the later Ranchero GT emblem, plus a good GTS emblem. I have them but planned to work on them later.

I'll cut out the Sport lettering of the one and place it in the center of the Ranchero emblem, likely also with the white background. I've had the script pieces since the mid 80's, and one extra Sport front end(yellow with the wide side moldings, and script).

Thank you all for the information.

My father did say it had a 351C not sure what the trans was. 

I have seen several 72 GTS for sale but it seems like most have chrome side molding and not the fade sticker. Was this something that wasn't optioned as much?

If you have the VIN, post it here so we can find out more about the car.  We can decode it for you.  You can also get a Marti report which will tell you all the original specs about your car.

Lunchbox755 wrote: I do not have the Vin. All I have is pics and the little information my dad gave me before he passed.

If you are just after very close to what that car was, we can help a ton to point you to the likely features it had, and what other things you might like. All of those old Fords are scarce, but selecting the main features you want is the main step.

I thought by your comment above that you had the VIN, but I think we have enough details.

There has been some great advice so far.  If you aren't concerned with finding the exact car, then it wouldn't be too hard to replicate your dads old car. From the info we have, it we know it was a 1972 Gran Torino Sport fastback, with a 351, likely a 351-4V (Cobra Jet) since the rear suspension has a sway bar which was not available with the 351-2V engine.  It was painted 2B bright red with a black vinyl top and a black interior.  Hogfiddles thinks it is probably bucket seats.  An automatic transmission will be way easier to find, 4-speed cars are very rare and expensive.

What you need to find is an affordable 1972 Gran Torino Sport fastback, preferably with the best body you can find. These cars were horrendous rusters, and many panels are not readily available. Then build it to the known specs above. Even if you find a 351C-2V car or some other engine, you can convert it to a 351-4V or swap one in place if you aren't concerned with numbers matching.

As for the laser stripe, it was not a very common option.  Since reproducing the laser stripe, there seems to be more Torinos with laser stripes now.  Most 1972 Torinos had the lower body chrome moldings.  The lower moldings and door rub strips were not available on laser stripe cars.  If you buy a car with moldings, you can remove them and install a a repro laser stripe.  However, you will have to do some body work to remove the mounting points for the moldings and laser stripe cars using different wheel lip moldings that are super rare and hard to find.  Some cars, like the Torino in Clint Eastwood's movie, just run with no wheel lip moldings, which is not factory correct, but definitely the easier option. The movie car (below) was converted from a molding car to a laser stripe car.

You also might want to be careful about buying a car with a vinyl top.  They are much more prone to rusting, to the point where the roof sheet metal needs to be replaced.  You could add a vinyl top to a car that doesn't have one, but you'd need to find the moldings (not easy). 

Here is an example of the rust under a vinyl top.  This car's roof was beyond repair and the roof skin was replaced.