Ah, the Country Squire. What says 1960s to 1970s upper-middle class suburbia better than one of these? Before minivans, before SUVs, and before crossovers, these were the ne plus ultra family hauler for upwardly mobile moms.
The Country Squire had been a Ford staple for many years by the time the 1975 model came along. Introduced in 1949 as a two door steel-roofed wagon with real wood inserts in the doors, quarter panels and tailgate, they were soon a family staple. The 1975 model was a restyled version of the 1973 Ford. ’75s had new front and rear styling, and several new interior options across the board. The Country Squire gained a new grille and hidden headlights, shared with the plush LTD Landau series.
All LTD wagons were powered by a 400 CID V8, backed by a Select Shift Cruise-O-Matic transmission. A 460 V8 was optional. Other standard features included power brakes, power steering and a power tailgate window.
Country Squires added the usual woodgrained vinyl sides and tailgate, framed by light fiberglass woodtone moldings. An extended range fuel tank was optional, adding an extra eight gallons to the already good-sized tank.
These were the biggest Ford wagons would get, with a length of 225.6″, 121″ wheelbase, and 79.9″ width. You did get a lot of space though, with 94.6 cubic feet of cargo volume – more than 100 if you counted the below-deck storage.
An interesting feature was the dual facing rear seats, which turned your Country Squire into an 8-passenger wagon. It was very different from the rear facing seats found on most Detroit wagons of the time, with the exception of the 1971-76 GM B-body wagons, where the third row actually faced forward. Ford’s famous Magic Doorgate made it a lot easier to get in and out of the jump seats, too.
If the standard interior wasn’t to your liking, there were several optional interior choices. The Landau Luxury Group was the best interior you could get, with embroidered split bench seating, shag carpeting and – ooh, an electric clock! It was essentially the same interior found in top-drawer LTD Landau sedans and coupes.
Only slightly less plush was the Squire Brougham option, which featured a split bench seat with fold-down armrests and passenger recliner. It was, as you might have guessed, lifted from the LTD Brougham series. Most Country Squires were loaded, and popular options included the SelectAire air conditioner, Automatic Temperature Control, vinyl roof and a luggage rack with built-in woodgrained wind deflector.
Now, if you didn’t want to flaunt your good fortune, you could get a plain-sided LTD, load it up with options, and the neighbors wouldn’t be the wiser. But then you’d miss out on those cool hidden headlights!
Whether basic or fancy, these wagons were just the thing for hauling the kids to the Grand Canyon or towing your boat up to the lake for the day. If National Lampoon’s Vacation had been done in the ’70s, this would have been Clark Griswold’s ride.
Thanks are in order for PN, who shot this well-traveled Squire a while back.
What a great vehicle. I love it when a great name on a car stays at the top of the pecking order for a long, long time. Like the Chrysler New Yorker, the Country Squire was the top end Ford wagon when it came out and went out. From the 1940s into the 1990s – that’s some staying power. Just think – these things came with flatheads, Y blocks, FEs, Limas, and finally the injected 5.0. Quite a spread.
For those of us who grew up in the 1960s, these things were iconic. My dad had a white 66. It seems like everyone’s dad, mom, uncle, neighbor had one of these at one time or another. And how few of them are around now.
As a kid, I loved the dual facing rear seats. They seemed so roomy at the time. I can recall an adult sitting back there once, but could not imagine doing it for any long period of time.
Wish we’d had one of these back in the ’70′s. My dad wouldn’t have gone for the fake wood, though…it would have been the plain-sided LTD for us. A buddy’s dad had a few of these (a ’66 and later a ’70) and they were great cars.
Living on the east coast of Canada, it’s hard to imagine cars this old still in daily use.
Take a trip to Vancouver Island and you’ll see old cars all over the place. The mild climate and salt-free roads are very easy on cars.
Vancouver is a different place; our pollution tests and class consciousness mean old cars are very rare indeed.
I’m not so sure about how much daily use this one gets. It’s part of a rather interesting collection of four cars at this house; three out front, and one in the driveway (second to last picture). Every time I’ve walked by, they’re all there. Maybe they don’t drive much anymore; it’s a walking-friendly neighborhood (Whitaker).
With that in mind, the most amazing thing about the Country Squire is the fact that the headlamp doors are in the down position. Absolutely amazing. The Ford headlamp doors of that era were vacuum operated. (When I graduated high school I picked up a 1975 LTD Landau coupe bank repo for $700. I fought a vacuum leak for over a year before I figured it out!) The default for the headlamp doors with a loss of vacuum would be a return to the up position (for obvious safety reasons). Even the slightest vacuum leak would eventually have the headlamp doors headed up after an extended period of time without having the engine started and the vacuum restored. Vacuum leaks were not the norm, but they were not uncommon, particularly as the car aged, and this car has definitely aged!!
Neighbors had one of these in the early 80s. My memory may be off but I think I remember it catching on fire while parked. Is that even possible? Maybe a smoldering short?
Anyway, good timing – found some real wood on this ’51 over the weekend:
Country Squire, Colony Park, Estate, Kingswood, Brookwood, Vista Cruiser, Town & Country…
(Sorry I zoned out for a moment, forgive me)
Michael Meyers drove one of these in the original ‘Halloween.’
Interesting they gave ole Mike a Country Squire to cruise the suburban ‘hood while stalking Jamie Lee Curtiss.
Looks wide enough to carry drywall and plywood. Looks long enough to do a good job with a ladder rack. Probably as good for work as my 77 impala was. I think I like it.
Don’t know if I could afford it though. Might have to buy out exxon or shell. I was doing just fine till reality struck.
The engine size makes it seem like these cars should’ve been hot rods but they were so heavy and inefficient that it just wasn’t happening.
In my opinion, if you were looking for a neat project you’re either better off going back to the 60′s before pollution controls or going 1979 & later when a strict diet made them far better on fuel without any sacrifice in power or room.
Good grief! What a bomb. There is no way I would ever lower myself to drive something as hideously ratty as this. Reminds me of a guy I worked with once, who admittedly didn’t quite have them all, who hauled coal(!) in his 1962 Tempest wagon. He did the best he could with what he had. Perhaps that’s the case here.
Junk it quickly…please?
By 1975, I was in Jeep/pickup truck/minimalist-back-to-nature-lifestyle-weekends-camping mode along with my buddies…until I met the wonderful gal that would become my wife in two years that June…
I abhored all full-sized cars at the time, mainly because they were all unapologetic gas hogs and the quality was abysmal.
1975 was also the last time I owned a Chevy until 2004 when I ordered and bought my 1976 Custom Deluxe C-20!
> Junk it quickly…please?
Zackman, if you look at the pics closely, you’ll see that the body on this car is actually in fairly good condition, with very little visible rust. It mostly looks ugly because all that fake wood hasn’t aged well. How many cars from Eugene have been featured on CC that have been cobbled together or have real live moss growing on them? This certainly isn’t the worst car that we’ve seen. Heck, the windows in the rear doors even roll all the way down. I fail to see why this car deserves such harsh criticism, at least on this website.
I agree if it weren’t for the piece of trim missing on the front fender a little contact paper would have this thing looking pretty darn good again. OK it really needs the proper Di-Noc but still it is in very good shape.
Also the 1970s era silver paint that never seemed to be able to hold a shine after about 5 years.
At least it is better than the clear coated silvers that followed that lost their clear coat rather quickly.
One issue that comes up in me are the emotions I felt and remembered at the time when I see something here that raises my hackles one way or the other.
Yes, the car in question is a survivor, for sure.
Now that you raised the point about the windows rolling all the way down – now I gotta take back what I said!
And remember Z-man, the windows haven’t been cleaned on the outside OR the inside for what, a decade?
Nothing makes an old car look better than cleaning the glass.
Except maybe a new set of whitewalls.
Nice, straight bumpers on this one.
Sure hope we see more of the Mercury behind it.
My best friend’s mom drove one exactly the same as the one in the first ad at the top. It was traded in for a more fuel efficient silver 83 Camaro which lost all of it’s paint within two years. I remember that she was very sad that the wagon was gone.
Nice! My dad had a 73 Colony Park with a 460, and I still miss that car, what a cruiser. Only downfall was the gallons per mile fuel mileage!
Perhaps it’s because it’s what we had when I was growing up, but I’m much more partial to the late ’60s Country Squires. Our ’68 had the 390/four barrel – it would *move!* Dad had a massive box-tube trailer hitch frame bolted underneath and we pulled an 18′ “Swinger” camper all over the SE on family vacations.
IIRC, there were seat belts for ten (six adults on the bench seats and four ‘young’uns’ in the ‘way back’).
Cost reduction efforts really seemed to kick in in the ’70s, and I find these later generation LTDs to be but a mere shadow of the ’60s models, which were almost jewel-like in their interior appointments.
This snapshot reminds me of the famous Bigfoot sighting picture.
That street sure has a high density of CCs. You’ve got the Merc behind the Country Squire with a Squareback behind it and a Tempo and the previously featured homemade truck thingy lurking in the background.
The Country Squires definitely earned Ford the moniker the Wagon Master they used in some advertising. As the proper station wagon neared its end Ford had over 50% of the market, with Subaru taking about 25% and everyone else accounting for the remaining 25%.
The problem with the pullman rear seats on these is that they are useless for anyone but small children, I had a Colony Park for a while before my Estate Wagon and there is just no way an adult could sit back there, much less 2.
then again, no self respecting adult would sit in those rear facing seats Carmine!
But if you had too…..
The third row on my Estate Wagon is roomier than the back seat of a 2nd gen F-body, you could fit 2 real adults back there.
I sorta like it but I always thought the LTD was dowdy looking. I always dug the lines of the GM rivals better.
I think Country Squires are very attractive up to about the 1968 model. After that, meh. And the ’75? Double meh.
“Only slightly less plush was the Squire Brougham option, which featured a split bench seat with fold-down armrests and passenger recliner. It was, as you might have guessed, lifted from the LTD Brougham series.”
So could you still get the nylon tricot (panty cloth) like earlier LTDs?
Oh wait, a fondness for nylon tricot might be why you need a wagon in the first place…
1975 was the begining of the big Ford wagons’ sales decline, with high gas prices and GM’s smaller ’77 B bodies gaining. Also, some shift to mid size wagons. Minivans were 8 years away.
The high water mark for Squires in my mind is 1973. Seems like all of Chicago suburbs had one in every 3rd driveway.
The LTD, with the exception of the Landau, is probably the only car I like from Ford during the 74-78 period. The overhangs weren’t ridiculous and it didn’t appear as bulbous as the pre 77 GMs.
I’ve mentioned the parents’ powder-blue ’66 Squire previously, but later on they also had a ’72 Colony Park in bright red. Of the two I much preferred the Squire for drivability; the CP was just ridiculously floaty and tended to wander all over the place going down the road. Made at least one lengthy trip in the thing, hauling some friends to northern Jersey, and even made a foray into Manhattan, where it looked supremely out of place.
On a more esoteric level, if one must have acres of fake wood down the side, the Squire gets the nod as well; the Merc’s sheathing just looked like a sheet of contact paper with a cheesy bit of chrome to cover the edges.
I believe this car wins the title of being the broughamiest wagon ever built!
You would have to pick one with the vinyl roof option checked , as many of them came back in the day. I Use to think that it kept the car a cooler place on a hot summer day. Is that complete poppycock?
My parents had a succession of those through the seventies/early eighties, owing to the number of siblings who learned to drive in them.
Very comfortable, very quiet and reasonably well assembled. I don’t recall any of them having major mechanical issues. The perfect car for a family…
…except they handled – empty or loaded – like a shopping cart full of canned soup.
Drove exact same model and color in senior year of high school. Actually handled very well, just steer and the wagon would cleanly follow, like guiding a hot knife thru butter. Very good ride. Brakes were kind of touchy. Huge bench seats front and rear. They did have standard power tail gate windows even if you didnt have power windows in front. Never worried or at least bothered about being tail gated in this giant, everything is soooo far back there.
I almost salute these when I see the survivors roaming LA. Battle weary but still serving someone. 1969′s were a real step down from 68s IMO… and by 1975 the bean counters had made a shell out of the Country Squire to where it seemed tacky.
Now I understand why my sister traded the Colony Park she had For a Cutlass Cruiser. I remember that all over the road feeling in many a full sized Lincloln or Mercury… It’s not fun.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve got a ’69 Country Squire that I hot-rodded and I love it. It turns heads everywhere it goes. OK, some people call it the “brady-mobile” or the “brady bunch car” but I don’t care, It’s cool. I can put a 4′x8′ sheet of plywood in the back and close the tailgate. Try doing that with your cross-over or SUV. I even have a matching pull-behind custom trailer for cruise nights that I made from a wrecked beyond repair 1970 Country squire. The FE 390 motor isn’t really that bad on gas either and gets about 14 mpg around town, not bad for a 5000 pound fullsize american car with a big-block V-8 and a 4 bbl. carb.
Kenny.
I for one love the 69 big Fords, particularly as a Country Squire. They just did not mix well with northern climates. You have a great cruiser there.
Sweet, lets see a picture of the trailer too.
Do you have a photo of the trailer?
I’ve got the trailer in the shop but I’ll see if I can get some recent pics posted, Kenny.
When I got my license in 1983 Dad gave me his 73 Duster and bought a 74 CSquire with only 32K miles from a widow of a friend of his. It even had the original Firestone721s still on it.
I found out the hard way how bad those were when I took it camping with 5 friends and we blew 2 tires on the way. Amazingly we were bale to find a second used tire along the way to get to our destination.
About a year later my dad became ill and couldnt drive anymore and my mom sold it [too big for her to park; even after she learned to drive on a 1950 Nash!] to buy an 82 Skylark. YEESH!
LOL! My grandfather had the yellow one like in the top picture. I remember riding with him all over town sitting on the front seat arm rests (these are the days before car seat rules) as a 3 year old..eating cookies while he smoked cigars…ahh the 70′s!