Why not? Gran Torino wasn't a bad car in it's day, and Ford sold (to steal an expression just used) a gazillion of them. Ford was into smooth comforetable rides with sporty skins and alot of pull off the line. Ford V8s at the time had relatively low horsepower, but near outreageous torque (they pulled like freight trains on low end acceleration, but had lousy top speeds.... and measured fuel economy by gallons per mile).

I thought the fastbacks were really cool, and before Ford stopped putting 460 V8s in them, they were quite capable of laying a nice black strip of tire (if not exactly lightning acceleration).

Even cooler were those side decals...... they were reflective!

 

100% agree