Rarest Mavericks and Comets?

My previous Comet GT was a grabber blue 6 cyl. Stats from my Marti report. - Matt

1 of 2,761 with the Competition Blue paint
661 with Black Vinyl buckets and Competition Blue
16,393 with the 200 six and C-4 auto
13,677 with GT appearance gro

 

What year was your GT?? If it's '71, the 200/C4 figure has to be for all Comets, not just GT...

 

It was a 71, and believe your right. Maybe some with another 6 cyl, GT will have the breakout for them. - Matt

 

Anyone know how many were optioned as LDO's each year? (Luxury Decor Option).
How about LDO 's with V-8's?

 

Correct. Since both 2dr Sedans and GT's used the "31" body code, any of the stats listed in the Marti Report are for any and all 2dr Comets that year. The Marti report for my Grabber lists the statistics and then says "...For the 1971 2-Door Grabber" which is treating the Grabber body code "93" as a different car than the "91" 2dr sedan. According to this formula, Comet GT's were just a 2dr sedan with a GT option added to them, which is really sucky, because they deserve better!!

 

My report also says 83,000 Comets were produced in 1971. Is that an accurate number for ALL first year Comet production?

 

And I agree, Paul. IMO, the base model 200 engine should have only been relegated to the NON- GT cars. Ford left.. more like threw.. so much potential on the table with these cars that it's almost just plain silly. With a 302/4bbl/4 speed option it would have been a stupid easy to gallop right past most of those heavy 71-73 Mustangs and that newer fangled Mustang II. No Boss motors even required.

Oh well.. at least they pumped out millions of these cars for us to hotrod and I can still afford to buy a Mustang II just the same as could my Comet. lol

 

Of the 1971 Comet GT's built, my report shows.. "420 had Vermilion Cloth/Vinyl Bucket Seats".

Statistic courtesy of Marti Auto Works and copyrighted.

 

My cars Marti report says that of the 13,677 Comet GT's built.. "1,510 of them were painted White."

Statistic courtesy of Marti Auto Works and copyrighted.

So, not sure how to interpret this. Nearly 1/3 of people ordering White GT's chose the same Vermilion color advertised in those old sales brochures? Or is Marti saying that out of ALL those 13,677 GT's built.. only 420 had the Vermilion color interior option?

That seems too low. Is red really that rare for GT's in general?

another IMO.. Ford dropped the ball not having a wider selection of stripe colors(matching interior/vinyl top colors)".. which is of course where I'm trying to pick up their slack on my '71 GT restomod. Vinyl top or not.. this car would have looked really killer if Ford would have given us more stripe/tail panel color options. Same goes for a lot of the other sticker taped cars back then too.

 

I believe the 420'is referring to the white ones built. -Matt

 

Well after looking through the site here, Erik-Mav posted is Marti report up here http://www.mmb.maverick.to/attachments/marti-comet-cut-jpg.47517/ for his white 71 GT and it shows 5557 White GT's with 670 having the Vermillion Bucket seats. So perhaps yours is for white ones with the red top? Or is your white paint code the same as his? I wouldn't think they would have two different whites but who knows.

Interestingly enough of information I have gleaned from here and other reports I've seen for 71, I have 13,677 GTs: 1165 Black, 2761 Competition Blue, 3656 Competition Yellow (Courtesy of z28th1s), 4903 Bright Blue Metallic (Courtesy Mavaholic), 1909 Competition Green (Courtesy Brainsboy), and either 5557 (Courtesy Erik-Mav) or 1510 White depending on which of the two reports is correct. With all of these numbers reported from Marti reports, we are well over the 13,677 GTs? Who knows. - Matt

4738 302 + 3spd.
16,119 302 + c4
16,393 200 + c4

 

Marti no doubt has the ability to break out the statistics on only Comets with GT package, I'm just not sure it always happens though...

The 200 was optional and required if you wanted to order automatic... 170 & three on tree was base drivetrain...

 

I'll stick by my guns on this one. You see, I HAD a 70 Boss 302 Mustang and drove several 69 and 70 Boss 302's. I know how these cars ran in factory trim. Saw a lot of Boss 302's at Dragway 42 and they were all in the 13.8 to 15 second range back in the 70's. I'm not talking about launching it at 7,000 RPM with the rev limiter removed on good tires with a 4:30 0r steeper gear. I'm saying if you took a 1970 Boss 302 crate motor with manifolds, rev limiter and factory duals and install it in a Maverick as Ford might have done back then , it would probably have run 13's in the day with the tires that were available back then.

 

In regards to your first set of numbers above.. my report shows the exact same thing too. It appears that the 5557 number for the white painted cars would be off the Comet 2 door(VIN code 31/body code 62B) sedan production number.. of which 54,884 were 2 door sedans(GT's included). Then from there it get's broken down to "GT only" of which only 1,510 where said to have been painted white. From there I "believe" it denotes that 420 of those white '71 GT's had the Vermilion bucket seats. And then further refined until there were only 36 of those having red vinyl tops installed.

Still trying to get a hold of Marti's office to confirm my interpretation of his numbers but seems a bit tough to get a human on the line.

 

I could agree with most of that for bone stock engines and was primarily saying that the weight of this car would put it a notch above the rest of Fords supercars for pure stock racing. Many people don't realize that the Boss 351 Mustang was one of the fastest pure stock "cookie cutter models" ever made by Ford.. or anyone else for that matter.

And you probably know by now that I like a good poke just as much as the next guy but will usually give it right back so I will knock this ping-pong ball right back atcha' with this.

After having been in and driven.. even personally tuned, or just helping others before I really started to understand how to tune, many of those same muscle cars.. I will surely say that there was HUGE potential left on the table from the factory. Before ECM's controlled things.. that's the only way the factory could really get their stuff to live under the average power mongers right foot. My 2 gearhead uncle's had a very good friend who did a lot of tuning on the pure stocks and he was pulling exhaust manifolds and recurving distributors like a mad man whenever we visited or needed tools. I was pretty young at the time, but still vividly remember him having up to 5 or 6 very rare cars lined up in the driveway at any one time. He did everything to make some quick bucks of course, but Mopars were his specialty and that was the first time I ever stood right next to a Superbird(probably a big reason why I'm still so fond of Mopars). Also the first time I saw and heard a dual-quad 427 in an R-code Galaxy too. The driveway and road in front of his house was almost completely covered with burnt rubber from "test burnout's" and joy rides were very common.

So with all that nostalgia out of the way my point is that headers alone(being combined with the complimentary fuel/ignition tuning) could easily extend the rpm range and gain 20-30 horses at the rear tires.. maybe not as much on the small blocks but there was still a solid 20-25 hiding in there yet(even more in the little Boss motors after rev limiter removal). The bigger advantage to be had was on the Big blocks, apples and oranges I know, but my stock cam'd SCJ powered Torino gained more than 30 wheel horsepower and revved about 300-400 rpm higher than ever before once it was tuned back in after swapping to Hooker Super Comp headers. I was nearly floored and had I known that large amount of power was still being left on the proverbial table, I wouldn't have wasted my time porting the hell out of my factory manifolds and hogging out their collectors to run a full 3" mandrel bent exhaust. Would have been even more to be found there after I put the longer stroke 460 crank in it later on too. And THE biggest advantage to be had from uncorking and tuning those/these old engines was not in peak horsepower and torque gains from the extended power band.. but the added transient throttle response and greater AVERAGE power gained throughout the engines entire rev range. Made the cars much funner to drive and also gave the illusion of even greater power because the added torque was hitting the tires harder. Fun times to be a gear-head and I miss them greatly.

Thanks for straightening that out misinformation, Tom. Figured someone would probably jump on my mistake after I remembered there was also the 170/1bbl base motor while working out in the shop. I would have to guess that not many people ordered these "GT" sticker taped cars with the 170 cid base motor so that may be very rare from a numbers standpoint. Obviously not desirable for any collectors yet.. but really low production numbers me thinks. I've been in a few cars with those little motors and my mother had a 64 Falcon with that little motor and it was SUPER quiet. She had a really bad habit of trying to restart the car because we couldn't hear.. or feel.. it running. I still remember getting embarrassed in parking lots. lol A friend of mine in Texas also had a highly optioned 64 Mustang with that little 170 motor too. Very nice quite car to cruise around in but not something we cared to take out onto that crazy circus act of an interstate that snaked around Dallas.