Ford’s brazen effort to invade the exclusive club of true luxury cars with it’s groundbreaking 1965 LTD didn’t stop at the sedan and coupe. Ford developed a “LTD Limousine program” with the intent to sell them officially at Ford dealers. A contract with Andy Hotton’s Dearborn Steel Tubing was supposed to generate 100 of these, but it’s believed that only some ten were ever made. Here’s a web page with all the details and more shots. Oh; the shorty version? Are you sure you’re ready for that?
It was another one of Lee Iaccoca’s radical ideas, even much more far-reaching than anything else he had dreamt up so far; a luxurious ultra-compact city car, to turn the VW-led import market on its head. It proved to be a bit too much even for the still Lee-smitten Henry Ford II, and was given the rare thumbs down. And one or two engineers actually raised questions about the safety of the fuel tank. Fortunately, one photo exists, since the prototype was duly crushed (further).
Is it April 1st already ?
Re: City Car – How many Shriners can you fit in there?
It appears hit by a mallet in a cartoon (one lump or two?) and should pop back into standard size any moment now.
The limo might have actually made sense as a livery car to allow segmenting the Continental as a “private” limo with the LTD as a fleet car. The city car simply shows that while Iaccoca had a lot of ideas, not all of them were good.
It seems to be a rather good idea, just a mind-boggling poor execution. Set aside the styling for a moment and just look at the proportions: it’s not fundamentally different than any number of small four-doors that came along shortly afterward.
The rear end of my mom’s LTD was almost that short…
I’m calling Photoshop on that short version. Now if there were video of that thing being driven…although I don’t think it would have been possible to put a drivetrain in it without a lot of effort.
It’s either Photoshopped or there was a gross paint mismatch between the front door and fender. Also, note how the sun’s reflection magically stops at the door.
It was either Photoshop or PRE-Photoshop… ie: they they took a picture of a fullsize LTD, cut it up with an XActo knife and reglued pieces together. The shadow under the back of the car has been blurred. Look at the questionable fit at the base of the C-pillar, the thickness of the roof at the top of the windshield, and the shading differences where the front edge of the door meets tha back edge of the front fender.
I would have to see a better picture before I believe that the “compact LTD” even got to the prototype stage.
Sorry to be a killjoy, but #2 is a shop from fordmuscleforums.com. LTD Smart 🙂
Lido definitely had a “Type”.. That LTD limo reminds me a lot of his K based limos..
From the all mighty Allpar..
The short one was an obvious Photoshop.
The proof: Iacocoa HATED little cars. With a passion. Hoods, longer the better. He would never have stood by to see one of “his” models desecrated in such a way.
He loved the K-Car only in that it enabled his Chrysler to stay in business to crank out more models like the Imperial…he hoped. He understood the realities of the times, but he hadn’t changed, not much…
The idea that he hated little cars shines in the fact that the K cars had roughly the same interior space as the M bodies..
We can hash this out if Paul does a CCEEKC.. 😀
Hopefully he has a staff then.. This site is going to get big..
CCEEKC? Enlighten me, please.Something to do with K Cars? Or?
Curbside Classic Extolling Every K-Car?
The “EEK” were the extended K-cars: E-Class (we owned one – great car!) Caravelle, Dodge 600.
No problem, then. CCEEKC coming.
Also the 1988-93 Chrysler New Yorker/Dodge Dynasty, 1990-93 Fifth Avenue and 1990-93 Imperial. There was even a Brougham package on the Dynasty, it included a landau roof. Probably the last Brougham Dodge made.
That photo reminds me of Arthur Fellig, aka: “Weegee” and some of his camera magic. This was all pre-computer!
Ha – nice chop! Love it – it reminds me of the two-passenger ’57 DeSoto roadster I made with an x-acto knife in 1957.
It is a photochop because I did it LOL I can’t believe it. I was doing an image search for 1965 LTD and it came up. Too funny. I posted it first on the Ford Muscle Forum as part of a discussion ( as Mazder3 pointed out)
It was a quick chop hence the sloppy blurring and I’m not that good at it either my younger brother is the pro.
It was taken from the factory promo shot of the original car.
Lehman-Peterson, the company that built the Lincoln Continental stretch limo, made a handful of LTDs–the main styling difference being a full length window for the extended rear door.