The tenants who occupied my house prior my moving in warned me that our next door neighbor was a reclusive woman who hated loud music. That turned out not to be a problem since she suddenly left one day, leaving behind a dumpster full of old magazines and appliances which disappeared just as quickly after a house flipper acquired the property.
Among the magazines, some of which were over eighty years old, was a November ’76 copy of Sports Illustrated where I found this two-page spread for Ford’s full-size LTD and LTD II. There are a lot of excellent ads in the issue, but the tone-deafness of this plug made it especially hard to pass up. I have an appreciation for the late, pre-Panther LTD, since it was the biggest and softest of the land-yachts, but passing off the LTD II as trim and sporty is truly amusing. It’s also a bizarre contradiction in an ad which boasts so much about sheer size and capacity.
Neither of these LTDs is a CC favorite (although I imagine attitudes are different across the pond), but they epitomize Ford’s “better idea” era, making this an ad worth sharing.
Related reading: 1977 Ford LTD II and 1978 Ford LTD
And of course, they won’t mention that the downsized GM cars have the same or slightly more space than the boats they replaced, nor will they give any mention of fuel economy…
Or that these 1977’s would languish on Ford dealers lots while GM could not keep pace with the demand 1977 B bodies.
Ford actually didn’t do too badly with this lineup in 1977. Production of the the true fullsize models (LTDs, and a few stray Custom 500s still being offered to the fleet market) was nearly 450K. That lagged well behind the business Chevrolet was doing with the downsized B’s (about 660K), but was an increase of more than 50K from 1976, and the best year that Ford’s fullsize line ever had after the 1973 oil crisis. Ford had also typically been behind Chevrolet in fullsize sales for years, so it wasn’t anything new to be in second place, although the gap in ’77 was much bigger than it had been in ’76, and certainly bigger than Ford ideally wanted it to be. There was no beating the B’s, but given the circumstances, the big Fords didn’t do too badly. Ford undoubtedly benefitted from a full-size market that was at its post-1973 peak, that its cars were going to attract any traditionalist holdouts that didn’t like the new-sized GMs, and that Chrysler had become a complete nonentity in the low-to-mid priced end of the fullsize market. Sales would drop off quite a bit in ’78, though, and Ford probably couldn’t have been competitive with these cars for much longer than that.
The LTD II wasn’t as successful, but still wasn’t a complete disaster. I beIieve that its 1977 production was around 230K. Not great, but better than the Torino had done the past few years. In hindsight, it’s remarkable that it sold that well when you consider how poorly it really lined up with the GM B-bodies. Sales plummeted over the next two years, though, as fullsize customers increasingly accepted the new template established by the Bs and as the intermediate market moved to smaller cars. IIRC, ’79 LTD II production was below 50K. With the Panthers on the scene, I’m not sure why Ford even kept building LTD IIs into 1979. Fleet sales? As long as they were going to keep building the T-Bird and Ranchero off that design for one more year, they might as well continue building the LTD II as well?
Olds Cutlass line was #2 for 1977 [going by memory], and #1 for ’76 [posted often on blogs].
That’s very possible; I was thinking second among fullsize cars. I’d be surprised if anybody else’s fullsize cars were as high as the mid 400Ks in 1976.
Cutlass of course benefitted from being a “regular” midsize and a midsize personal luxury coupe all rolled into one. In this era Chevy A-body production routinely exceeded Chevy B-body production, but the Chevy A’s were considered to be two distinct product lines by most people.
That was a smart move by Oldsmobile. The Cutlass Supreme claiming the number-one sales spot was fairly big news in 1976, and made both the Cutlass and Oldsmobile look like winners.
Yes, true, the MC and Chevelle/Malibu were broken out into two lines. Olds benefited using Cutlass for all their mid size, but common people called them all ‘Supremes’.
Ah, yes…I remember these advertisements: “Home of the Whopper”; Ford ran these ads at least until they brought out their own downsized automobiles.
Well, everything is relative in the long run….
I recall the 1976-78 era very well, and I was certainly counted among the fans of the more “traditional” FoMoCo and Mopar options. Hindsight tells us that the GM effort for 1977 was a very good one. However, I was not all that sure about it at the beginning. My tastes still ran toward the Lincoln Town Car and Chrysler New Yorker that were genuine land yachts.
An aunt and uncle bought a 78 Sedan DeVille – I remember thinking that it did not compare that well with the 78 Continental that my father drove. However, one of those cars was the future and one of them was the past. And I would still rather have a Continental or Marquis or a big Mopar from that period. Go big or go home!
It’s easy to shoot down the LTD II now, the fact that it wasn’t very successful makes it even easier.
But, Ford’s logic at the time was pretty sound:
*The mid-size Ford dated to ’71 and needed an update.
*The long hood short deck look was very popular.
*These cars would have to share architecture with the mid-size personal luxury car.
*GM was going to have new cars, like it or not, so play your strengths and hedge your bets. More traditional styling and frameless windows might catch a “B” backlash.
*The Panthers were a few years off.
So, like GM’s Colonnade cars, the sedans and wagons were a bit of an afterthought to the Thunderbird / Cougar XR7 coupes that sold as fast as they could be built.
Today we marvel at the serious front overhang and those damn Ford bumpers, but GM had this segment nailed with its new B cars (and Colonnades hung in one more year for traditionalists).
So, the LTD II ended up being for Ford loyalists that wanted something a bit less ponderous than the big bruiser. That is not a huge market segment to play to. But, add the T-Bird and Cougar XR-7 and you can call this platform a success for Ford.
It’s the way it’s marketed which seems so strange. And from today’s perspective, it’s hard to see why you just wouldn’t go with the biggest one, if that’s what you wanted. But yes, I do like the frameless glass and the styling as a whole (except the double-stacked headlights).
I’ve sat in marketing departments, and it is hard to get your message across, you have to work with the product you’ve got, and the limitations your bosses impose. HFII loved his big cars.
I think the core message is “we still have true full-size cars AND, fresh metal on trimmer cars that match the competition.” They kept adding words to that and some things got a little awkward. And, the fact that the product didn’t match the competition in key areas of space and fuel efficiency wasn’t the marketing department’s fault.
Naming the two cars with the same name was sort of a wishy-washy hedge, but foretold of what amounted to a consolidation of these cars to the Panther platform.
And as non-appealing as the LTD II may have seemed, it was WAY more competitive than the Plymouth “Small” Fury or the corresponding Dodge Monaco that were clearly reheated leftovers from 1971. And the Matador was even worse. Compared to those, the LTD II suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
Years ago I had the utter misfortune to have been assigned as successive company cars a 1978 LTD II and a 1980 Matador. Both 4 dr. sedans with H.D. suspension. The Ford had a 351, the Matador a 360. The Matador was faster and handled far better, but it was so ugly and the epitome of uncool. The LTD II at least didn’t scare people.
There was no 1980 Matador – the last ones were ’78s.
“I think the core message is “we still have true full-size cars AND, fresh metal on trimmer cars that match the competition.”
I think this is absolutely correct. The LTD II was intended to give Ford a car that would line up in terms of exterior dimensions with the downsized GM B-bodies. Calling it LTD II encouraged people to think of it as a full-size car (as opposed to merely as the successor to the Torino), and here we see it being marketed in tandem with the regular LTD. In hindsight, thinking of this car as a serious competitor to the GM B’s seems ridiculous, but Ford was just working with what it had.
There were undoubtedly some traditional intermediate buyers who were still looking for a car like this in 1977 — at the start of the model year, GM and Chrysler’s intermediates were similar in size — and Ford dealers would have been happy to show them an LTD II as well. But the Torino needed to be replaced, and there was clearly no long-term future in intermediates this size (GM was working on the downsized A-bodies for ’78, Ford had been marketing the Granada as a smaller alternative to traditional intermediates from the day it was introduced, and Chrysler was readying the similar in concept M-bodies for a mid-1977 model year introduction).
+1 The ad doesn’t seem contradictory to me – rather that Ford was still offering the choice of a big car along with “trimmer” models (granted the bloated LTD II being characterized that way is literally a stretch:-). Perhaps the ad creators were making lemonade out of lemons (and a lot of these cars were just that) but if you put it in the context of the times – when people still wanted the big cars, it worked. Of course the Iranian Revolution/gas crisis of 1979 came along and proved that GM’s timing was better.
Thanks for sharing the ad Perry, these old ones are fun. I hope you have some more for us in that old cache of magazines.
Michael Landon drove an LTD II on the show “Highway to Heaven” in the 80s.
There were people at the time, that didn’t like the GM new class of 1977 & ’78. Like my uncle with his ’74 Le Sabre. “It’s a smaller car”. Is what he’d say, often. I learned to drive with a 1978 Impala, and was a better car than our 1972 Clamshell Kingswood wagon. The fullsize cars was where the action was back then. Our Kingswood didn’t fit in our garage either.
To be fair, they don’t call it trim and sporty. They call it trimmer and sportier than the full-size LTD. It’s all relative.
Like Dave B says above, you gotta sell what you got. That’s all they’re doing here.
Remembering these cars when they were new vis-a-vis against the downsized GM’ers of 1977, we kind of thought this sort of Ford advertising was lame and, as it turns out, a HF-II style holding pattern until THEIR ‘narrower, smaller’ full-size cars came out in ’79 (which, by the way, one could still buy a new LTD-II, which was smaller inside, larger and heavier). Even as an 18 year old, I knew that the GM “B” bodies were ‘the future’ and the Fords and full-size Mopars were at the end of the line.
I also recall that in ’77-’79, most people knew the LTD-II was a slightly restyled “mid size” Gran Torino and that most of the LTD-II’s seen were usually fleet cars . . . .
Was the LTD II perhaps for those for whom the Granada was plush enough, but not quite l-o-n-g and “old school” enough? (I’m guessing its length was between Granada and the full-size; I may be mistaken.)
Yes, the LTD II was sized between the Granada and the “regular” LTD.
As far as I can determine, the LTD II (and Thunderbird) were only about 9 inches shorter in overall length than the nearly 19-foot-long LTD. If anything was “trim size” about the LTD II, it was the passenger compartment, given how much of its length was the ridiculously long hood and front overhang.
You got that right. I had a ’77 T-Bird for a short while, right after owning a ’77 Sedan deVille, and it was disturbing to realize that they were roughly the same size car, but the Bird’s back seat was just about useless, the trunk was decidedly mediocre, and the amount of wasted space in the front overhang was silly.
Brings back memories. I was a 15 y/o die hard Chevy fan and hated Ford’s ad campaign then. “How can they keep making gas hogs!” “These tanks can’t handle at all!”
The big LTD’s sold to old, old timers who “had to have the size”, even with smaller interior. But behind the scenes, Ford was hard at work on the Panther, while bragging about “Road Huggin Weight”
GM sold well to younger middle aged buyers, like my parents who were 40ish in 1976-77. They were fed up with our ’72 Caddy getting 8-10 mpg city, and only 16 if doing 55 with backwind. They missed the better mileage that 1950s/60s cars got, such as our ’70 Monte Carlo and ’68 Plymouth that got 16-18ish.
We got a ’77 LeSabre after the Caddy and certainly helped save gas $.
Then an ’80 Regal V6, my dad kept it til 100k miles, since it was ‘so sporty to drive’.
My parents were Oldsmobile loyalists. I remember when the downsized GM full-size cars debuted. My car-conscious mother said they were “too small” and she preferred their bigger Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale.
Within two years, she was talking about how she wanted a brand-new Delta 88. They finally traded for a 1982 88 Royale, which both she and my father really liked.
What helped was actually getting the die hards to sit in a GM B/C body and feel the room. Auto Show displays also got rear ends in seats. The more airy greenhouse certainly helped, and by the mid 80’s the cars made a huge sales comeback, along with Panthers. The big car loyalists ‘got used to’ the size.
I was the opposite of you. I harbored a lot of GM animus, and considered these big Fords (and the Mopars) as the continued availability of the full fat/full flavor double cheeseburger that we had grown up on. The new downsized B/C body from GM in 1977 was “Big Car Lite”. “Who the hell wants to pay full price and get less car?” For a couple of years, both of us got catered to in the full size class. 🙂
Chevy fought back with an ad showing the extra cubic feet in boxes next to a Caprice. It worked.
Big car buyers were looking for better MPG, and 16 mpg was a welcome from the 8-10 of the 1974 heavyweights. Cut gas budget in half for many.
The ads do seem somewhat silly, because we know what ultimately happened – Ford followed the GM template and downsized its big cars, too. Even in 1977 we knew that the GM full-size cars were the wave of the future, no matter what the Ford ads were saying.
When looking at the LTD II, one also has to remember that the new “downsized” 1977 Thunderbird was transferred to this platform. Thunderbird sales rocketed from roughly 52,000 for 1976 to over 310,000 for 1977. Sales INCREASED to 352,000 for 1978, before falling back to 284,000 for 1979. Considering that the 1979 Thunderbird was final year of that body style, and the fuel shortages caused by the Iranian Revolution had throttled the sales of full-size and intermediate cars by the late spring of 1979, that is an impressive showing.
Given those figures, and profits likely racked up by the Thunderbird (not to mention the Mercury Cougar XR-7, which also sold well), I’m guessing that Ford didn’t worry too much that the LTD II wasn’t exactly a hot seller.
Moved from above since goes with Geeber’s comment:
The new T-Bird took a bite out of LTD and Ex-Torino sales. “Why get a cheap looking coupe when for a few hundred more can get a T-Bird!” Or, “why get a plain base LTD [replaced the Galaxie 500] when you can get a Bird for less!”
The Thunderbird name was still associated with luxury, and making it ‘affordable’ was a huge hit for Mr and Mrs Middle Class.
For a fair comparison from ’76 to ’77, you’ve got to take the Elite into account as well, since the 1977 Thunderbird was more of a direct replacement for the ’76 Elite than the ’76 T-Bird. But I’m sure that ’77 T-Bird sales were still a significant increase over the ’76 Elite and ’76 T-Bird combined. I think the ’76 Elite was around 150K.
I think a big factor, already noted by tomcatt630, was the perceived exclusivity of the Thunderbird nameplate. People were thrilled that they could afford to buy a car that said “Thunderbird” on it. The same thing happened with the Grand Prix when Pontiac decontented it in 1976, finally equipping and pricing it as a “midsize personal luxury coupe” (think Monte Carlo) rather than “a smaller, slightly downmarket interpretation of the fullsize personal luxury coupe” (think Toronado and Riviera).
To the extent that the ’77 Thunderbird cut into sales of LTD or LTD II coupes, overall LTD sales were up for ’77 compared to ’76, and the ’77 LTD II outsold the ’76 Torino overall (not sure how the numbers would fall if you just looked at coupes only). Jerry-rigged as their lineup may have been, Ford did a pretty good job in ’77 of working with what they had.
What also hurt LTD II sales was producers of Starsky and Hutch refused to ‘trade in’ the Gran Torino for one. Ford had a stripe package* for the II that mimmicked the ‘Tomato’, but was no go for Aaron Spelling. Motor Trend hinted at such a scenario.
*Can be seen in pics from 1977 Chicago Auto Show.
I can hear it now “pics or it didn’t happen”
In this blog page about S&H Torino, there is a pic of the LTD II stripe package that didnt get on the show.
http://phscollectorcarworld.blogspot.com/2012/07/starsky-hutch-torino.html#!/2012/07/starsky-hutch-torino.html
Here a better pic of the never seen on TV “S&H” LTD II:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1977_Ford_LTD_II.jpg
One of the early CCs featured a MkI Fiesta with Starsky and Hutch-style striping which the Fiesta’s shape forced to be carried all the way to the back and constrained in width. With the CC example’s Minilites, it would’ve been a massive improvement in style and more than solved Glaser’s complaints about the Torino’s handling.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CC-26-007-800.jpg
My ex-mother-in-law had an LTD II, not quite that old but I would guess probably an 80-ish or so? I always wondered why it had the “II” on it, as far as I knew they only had one LTD. Now it all makes sense.
I was a child during this time. My uncle owned a Ford dealership and always had a fully equipped larger LTD for his wife and a Thunderbird for himself. He would only keep the LTD for a couple of thousand miles so I got to see many different ones. Although LTD did not have many of the bells and whistles of our family’s Buick’s and Cadillac’s the LTD was every bit as quiet, if not more, and rode just as good. I found the larger LTD’s to be very handsome especially with the extra trim.
“Trim & sporty?” Were they smoking the interior trims or something?
What nerve on the part of Ford. Trying to tell us having a choice between two crappy cars is a better idea than a completely new, state-of-the-art full-sized car from “some car maker”.
I had a ’78 LTDII and I’m going to go against the grain here at CC and say it was one of the best full size cars I’ve had out of a lot of others (including a ’75 Malibu Classic). It was in early ’80s and we needed a car to haul three kids around; found one with low miles from an older gent cheap and in great shape, except worn out shocks (maybe they were just stock from other comments). Replaced the shocks with off-road hd ones for light pickups (they called them gas charged back then) and after putting in the lowest temp thermostat and still getting spark knock with the timing set normal, threw it away and was able to crank-up the timing quite a bit and it would still run cool. Living in warm Oregon the heater put out good heat. These two alterations transformed the handling to where you could make fast lane changes with hardly any sway and the gas mileage went from around 12-14mpg to 18-19 on the highway with the 351. It also had a great highway rush to 90mph. The kids in the back seat loved the room after a Mazda and Valiant and Mom the air conditioner. I also like the looks, but then I’m from the old school. Did I also tell you I liked the ’72 Torino, the ’61 Lancer and the ’67 Cortina? All great cars.
styling wise I actually liked the LTD II better than the regular LTD’s of the same period, how much lighter was the LTD II’s were compared to the regular LTD’s? For the regular LTD’s of this generation I much prefer the 1973-74 styling over the 1975-78.
I remember a TV campaign that Ford ran in 1977 with LTD owners that claimed to get 20+ mpg in normal driving. I think they may have been forced to drop it since the only way a 1977 LTD could get over 20 mpg would be coasting downhill with the motor turned off. They also featured a lot of ads claiming the virtues of “road hugging weight”, which they mysteriously did not continue when they downsized in 1979.
My second car (after a V8-powered Pinto) was a 1977 Ford LTD Landau 2-door with a 460. Great car – I never should have sold it when it needed a new radiator while I was in college.
In a “sort of” example of the CC effect, I saw an LTD II-based Cougar coupe in traffic yesterday (not a Thunderbird-based Cougar XR7, but an LTD II-based “regular Cougar” coupe; I am certain of this because I got a clear look at the back end of the car). Can’t remember the last time I saw one here in Massachusetts.
I once worked for a wealthy, overweight gentleman we’ll call “Uncle Ken” (even though that is his real name). When Ken got up to 280 pounds he splurged $5000 for a week at an upscale weight-loss clinic somewhere in the Carolinas. After a week of dieting, exercise, wheat-grass smoothies, and swapping weight-loss tips with the mother of KC from KC & the Sunshine Band, Ken came back a whopping 10 pounds lighter. His fitness vay-cay had shrunk his bulk only very slightly… and had done so at the rate of $500/lb.
The LTD II was “trimmer and sportier” the way Uncle Ken was trimmer and sportier following his week at the fat farm.