1992 Mk3 Ford Granada goes for a drive

you join me today at the wheel of one of the great ford the big forwards yes i'm driving a mark iii granada in this case a scorpio well mark one scorpio mark iii granada if you're watching this video in europe you may be wondering why i've given this car the wrong name it's a scorpio not a granada but in the uk it's not it's a granada and scorpio was a trim level because well reasons let's get into all of that so this is a mark iii granada a mark on scorpio if you're on the continent now unlike the mark ii granada which had been a carryover and a refresh of the mark 1 this was an all-new design clean sheet ground up the works nothing stayed well a few things stayed from the mark ii granada nurse car came out in 1985 just three years previously the sierra hit the market with ford's new jelly mold aerodynamic styling um which had been well it taken a mixed reception let's put it that way it wasn't the most loved by some people were starting to find a bit of traction with others however ford took the bold move they were going to follow the family look and keep things looking forward-like and sierra like and everything was going to be new and aerodynamic you can't fight progress was their correct opinion basically they knew that aerodynamics and wind coefficients were valuable commodities coming up in the future so they had to make this work so they pressed ahead with the sierra style underneath this thing it is basically an elongated extended sierra platform so it's more sierra like than you might imagine and less granada like in terms of historic platformage so in perhaps typically ford way it was an advanced modern looking exterior over slightly older underpinnings with a sierra extended platform and rear wheel drive in the back now this one you'll notice is an state which is a good thing in my book now you'll notice the front end is slightly more modernized as well this is because they facelifted the car in 1992 and brought out the estate in 1992 and the whole point of this new front end was to update the family look so it looks more like the then current generation sierras with the new um wrap around headlights and everything and also this grill is also giving a full taste of the marquan mondeo which was just around the corner now the back of the car was a massive departure for the granada certainly for the first seven years of production were hatchbacks a thing that granada had never been before and this is a strange thing to put into this particular market because uh let's open here and get out the wind the granada was designed to fit into the d-e segment in fact its internal um nickname moniker when it was being designed was the de1 d being large family eb executive it was a crossover designed to take on offerings from bmw and mercedes maybe even audi a bit at the time but ford buyers have always been a slightly different demographic so they wanted to appeal to them with a big luxury car that fitted their character and style which to a large extent they did but the hatchback like the aerodynamic styling was a bit of a shock of the new and it's still regarded as one of the less popular grenadas of all time i guess you would call that right this car being an estate is absolutely cavernous in here it goes back a very long way if you've got stuff to shift this is a car that will do it the load opening isn't massively tall but you can certainly bundle a struggling item of luggage in there without too much difficulty and it's straight into a nice flat floor as well so no problems with load lips and so forth underneath here we do have a metal floor this is strong corrugated double skin metal so you can put a lot of weight in the back of there which has got what i believe to be roof bars actually what does montag say by trip silver lung main in german i don't know full size alloy spare wheel probably roof bars under the floor and on this side yes they are the roof bars we've got uh all the odds and swords for fitting the roof bars to the roof we've also got loud speakers here left and right and a little cubby hole here which contains the first aid kit there is a full load space cover which is uh actually surprisingly low so once the load space covers on it's not a particularly tall um boot area interesting and then these big back seats which are huge padded puffy backs like a early 80s leather leather lounge suite will fold 60 40 down giving you a massive flat load space now looking at the styling of the exterior you can see the slightly ford family americanized look that was coming into the ford of europe at that time now i can't let this pass without comments we've got headlamp wipers ultimate most wonderful favorite thing of all on all cars ever probably heavy bonnet no straps no gas struts you think on an executive segment car you'd have gas trucks now this is the 2.9 cologne v6 now there were multiple engine offerings i'm going to have to read this to you there are too many to go through at the lowest end of the scale there's a two and a half liter 69 horsepower diesel which is very much your economy entry-level version then you had a couple of four cylinders um in the pinto range a one point eight eighty nine horsepower and a two liter carburetted 104 horsepower um pinto four pot in march 1989 that became a 1998 cc chain driven twin cam two liter and we gained bosch l-jet um injection which is luff jet air jet loft being here um and that was 113 horsepower then we get on to the fun stuff there was a 2.4 liter v6 making 130 horsepower and there was a 2.8 liter v6 making 148 bhp and that 2.8 v6 later became a 2.9 the ultimate of course was the cosworth-powered one the big daddy of them all which is the 24 valve 2.9 cosworth worked over quad cam 200 horsepower car which goes north to 68.1 seconds and has a 140 mile an hour top speed now this is pure 80s 90s ford luxury you sink into these huge leather armchairs oh this really is like i don't know drug dealers flat in 1987. they're just so squishy and padded and you feel like they're deflating as you sit into them now this leather often deteriorates really badly and looks terrible after a fairly short time but this car's only got 28 000 miles and it's a 100 from you it's been very well cared for and it actually looks virtually like brand new in here right let's whip you off the tripod and show you around the interior now the first thing to notice is these are electrically adjustable seats in many directions and now as i said big and squishy soft leather these big bolsters are just massively padded and goopy almost then we climb in the instrumentation is very forward very very black plastic and over here it's a lot more of the well if you're used to driving sierras and fiestas and escorts in the 80s and 90s the style of design will look very familiar to you and also this kind of mock um elephant hide stuff which isn't as soft as it looks actually is all over the top of the dashboard not cracked at all in this particular car we have got double t-shelf three going on got a minor t-shirt here in the center and a narrow t-shelf here this is where you put your cups and that's where your snacks go in this particular car there's a nod to previous generation granadas with the trip computer here to the left of the wheel so multi-functions time date temperature that kind of thing trip computer giving your economy and speed that kind of thing range left in the tank now back over to the uh instrument cluster a rev counter speedo fuel and temperature that really is all we've got it feels like you want to have more like a big audi with like 19 different dials showing every little facet of the vehicle's being but this is this is ford this is more basic and the materials fill up on more basic as well um these indicator stalks and uh wiper stalks you'll find the same things in an orion if you're spending three times the amount on your big top end granada you might be a bit miffed to find those in your in your sons or if you're the director and you've spent three times the cost of an orion on your granada scorpio and your junior salesman orion has got the uh the same stalks that you might be a bit miffed we do have a better steering wheel though it is leather clad it's a little bit of padding but barely any and we've got cruise control multi-function steering this is very very early days of multi-function steering wheels so this is a massive deal i mean ford may well have not given you the same kind of material quality as the mercedes did but they loaded you with toys we do have a horn for the horn test ignition on horn test yeah that's a decent horn they do good good horns over at ford to the right of the wheel we've got a little bit of air blowage and there's rotating and pulley rotatable and pullable fog light switch and headlight switch and a bit of timber in the door because we've got timber in the dash as well which we'll wander over to in a second this is quite nice veneer stuff not really padded elephant hide going on in the center of the door and more perforated there the same as in the seats this is really incredibly soft and padded nice feeling that i don't know what the longevity of it is but it feels very nice at the moment now plastic door handles i think on an executive car you're going to get some shiny chrome stuff but this really is textured plastic then we have our electric window switches for the front and our electric mirror switch as well for adjustment again a full forward parts bin item back over to the center of the dashboard if these aren't the same buttons we'll find in sierras they're certainly very similar indeed basic rotary controls for our heating ventilation and a clicky on clicky off for the air conditioning now this is cool this is very cool indeed this is our double stack stereo not doubled in double stack ford 2008 rds two tuner eon system with a cassette in the top and dropping down here to a cd player the ford 240 or using the keycode security system this was properly posh and advanced stuff for the time you're an absolute baller if you're rolling with this in the car now this is automatic gearbox there was a manual option as well but this is the auto one which is far more popular in this vehicle nice action on the ashtray sliding out there lots of room for your sweetie wrappers 12 volt lighter socket down there then we've got oh here we go not a leather wrapped handbrake i'm surprised at that actually kind of plastic hand pan brake bomb warmers bomb warmers are a good thing in a car of this nature rear rear electric windows and the lockout button so you can stop the kids messing around in the back over to the left underneath that uh snack area of the t-shelf we have got more of this uh veneered wood stuff rolling into the passenger door and it looks kind of wrong but it's got the the recess for the air vent but it's just a little bit wrong having these little white labels for the uh air vent controls just stuck on there it kind of spoils the woodiness and a big glove box down there that is a huge glove box lots of room for activities and also behind the handbrake i managed to miss this a second ago we've got a cd caddy oh this is awesome so you can have your your stash of multi disks ready to flip into the front and also cassette storage so all of your multimedia needs are catered for in the armrest above us we have got an electric sunroof with uh basically the same buttons as you find for the uh for the windows electric tilt slide it does feel big and feel grand it's got kind of an american car feeling about it really as you're sort of just wrapped around in such a big squashy chair and uh lots of big chunky buttons as well let's have a quick look in the back of the thing this rear door is a little bit tight up here at the top you could easily bang your nose on that now getting in we've got lots of room here in the back now my granddad did actually have a hatchback one of these back in about 1989 i think it would have been when it was new i seem to remember the rear seats of the hatchback were actually electrically reclining this one doesn't have it because they're folding seats instead it's more of the same black leather as a sea of black in here very very squishy armrest in the center it's got three belts across the back like in the mark ii grenada we've got the carpet in the bottom of the doors and this plastic isn't that tactile we do have more nice leather up around here a little ashtray on the top same plastic door handles as before in the front that's a shame they've not gone for a night slightly more premium feel and also this is unusual in the car of this era a second 12 volt socket in the back is a lighter obviously in this car but 12 volts which is great if you're putting kids in the back now they can play the nintendo's knifepads and things lots of headroom lots of headroom it would be good headroom anyway but being in a state it just goes on forever the cars i think is three inches longer in the estate than it is in the uh in the hatchback version let's get behind the wheel and see what's like on the road now these locks may be something you may remember from the controversy in the mid 80s uh from launch until 1987 they used chubb blocks then 1987 onwards they used tiblocks now there was some controversy that these barrels only had seven different designs so anyone with just seven keys could steal any granada i think there are actually quite a few more variations than that in actuality but certainly at the time it was pretty much thought you could just drive off with any grenada you fancied right let's kick this v6 into life oh my god i love the sound of a v6 haven't you four speed auto let's roll oh this sound takes me back to my childhood am i granted only had v6 granadas for years and years and years just associate that sound with going out for a drive summer as a kid [Music] it does feel rapid it feels like a fast car straight away now whereas the bmw certainly the mercedes equivalent of these things felt like they were i'm going to use a cliche here hewn from granite utterly unbreakable lumps of steel iron that you couldn't even destroy if you tried to but certainly the merc at the time had a well a lead and feel to it they are enjoyable cars but they are not rapid this on the other hand feels far more alive and engaging the controls of a much more lightness much more modernity but my 1985 you'll be looking at things like the w123 still very very early w124s during this car's youth the rover 800 was still a year away in 1986 so really its only competition was coming from the germans in fact it was a german itself really because the scorpio and the granada were built in cologne in germany now i do have to say it does feel weird on these huge seats they're so huge and squishy and puffy that i actually feel like i'm being lifted up out of the car and pushed towards the dashboard by them [Music] now if you're watching in america as i know a few of you are you may know this car as the mercor merc mercor scorpio which was sold through lincoln mercury dealers in 1988 and 1989 to uh not massive success as ford had hoped so they were withdrawn after that before this facelift came out [Music] okay we've got empty closed road this road is actually closed behind me so we're all on our own let's see what acceleration is like that's 50 that's the limit that is pretty darn brisk i'm gonna say this is a great car to drive this does the thing that fords always do they're engaging and entertaining lots of fun bringing executive toys to the masses basically okay it was an expensive car but not as expensive as a merc and certainly didn't have the overtones of superiority you might get with the mercedes or a bmw but we have got everything we've got our advanced trip computer for the time we've got our multi-everything radio cassette system air conditioning electric sunroof electric windows central locking not remote central locking at this point sadly underneath us we've basically got a sierra platform which has been extended uh quite extensively um we've got a bit of a mismatch or mix match mixed bag i guess of previous generation granada engines which gradually evolved through the car's life and inside we've got some of the latest technology this was the first car to get anti-lock brakes as standard across the range so they were bringing very modern technology to this vehicle and to the entire range everyone's the most basic diesel or two liter petrol you've still got abs on the thing this car is now for sale at stun call classics it's a one owner car with less than 29 000 miles on the clock so it's virtually like new it came from hendy ford originally and it's been very well maintained all its life it's only just arrived with stone cold literally a few days ago they've not even had time to wash it yet before i come and stall it away from them so it does drive well it drives like an american car of the era because it's big it's soft and rear-wheel drive and automatic it really does feel like it could be a ford of america product now often you drive a car from 20 30 years ago that was a big car in its day and it doesn't really feel big anymore this one still feels long it doesn't feel wide so much anymore but it does feel long it's 15 foot 10 inches long which is pretty big as cars go driving down this fairly poor road you can actually hear all of the interior leathers and rubbers creaking against each other as you sit in the car and drive it you notice a few more things about the design first of all the very angular shape of these dashboard areas here and then also things like how domed the little uh yogurt pot wire mesh speaker grilles are they really stick out little little millennium domes in the doors and also when you turn the car on and off you get a whole bank of warning lights in the corners underneath the dials it will just it's hidden most of the time then it pops up and looks very modern all of a sudden this is a very easy car to drive the automatic makes it obviously dead simple and being an executive car executive segment most of them were sold as autos i think the merkur in america was sold maybe 80 or 90 went as automatics even though the manual was available as an option and uh in canada where it's also sold as americorps they only offered the auto option there wasn't even a manual available when this car was face lifted they finally brought it in line with the europeans and called it the scorpio as well so the mark iv granada became the mark 1 scorpio in the uk or the mark ii scorpio in america it was a big bug-eyed thing which really did not sit well with really anyone frankly but something i hadn't realized is that they carried over this floor pan this this chassis as that car so looking underneath that you've got the same doors the same roof the same floor pan going into that later car which i had not realized until the other day looking at this car as an estate you are more aware of the fact it is sierra based because those rear wheels do look slightly funnily in board um when you come to look at it again never noticed it previously well thanks for joining me today here in this lovely lovely granada mark iii granada here in the uk and this one's a scorpio it's as good as it gets and it is a very nice car you know when i set off to do this review i wasn't sure if this was gonna be one where i was gonna be wanting to drive home and buy the car at the end at the moment i really do enjoy it i'm absolutely loving driving it but i'm not sure it's what i'd want on my drive i can't really decide let me know what you think in the just in the comments below if you've enjoyed this please hit like and subscribe and smash the bell notification to find out when i'm driving something next and i'll see you again soon driving something completely different

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 33,194

Rating: 4.9463654 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, ford, granada, scorpio, mk3 granada, granada scorpio, mk1 scorpio, estate, station wagon, longroof, wagon, car review, test drive, road test, history

Id: 1CnGOH_qzOY

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021