(first posted 5/18/2017) With Part One of this Low Production series having focused on Chevrolet, it only seems natural to turn our attention to its long-time rival, Ford. As with Chevrolet, we are looking at the timespan of 1946 to 1995.
One huge item of note for Ford as well as future installments is the automakers were not consistent in how they recorded their sales. Where Chevrolet would break down production numbers by engine, Ford has generally done so by body style. It’s difficult to paint the same picture using different paints and canvases, but we’re giving it our best shot.
There has been no pretense of this series being all-encompassing; rather, it’s to point out a few surprises to go along with those cars we likely would have suspected. As before, production volumes of less than 1,000 are the focus, with two minor exceptions for this Ford installment.
1946 shown
1948 Super Deluxe Sportsman convertible
Production: 28
With the post-war years being a sellers market for automobiles, there were still some that never achieved sales popularity. Reasons for that are many, but in the case of this Ford, its price of $2,282 was almost twice the price of a Deluxe Six two-door coupe at $1,154.
Another reason for the paltry sales numbers is because Ford was focused on the nearly all-new 1949 models, introduced in June 1948, rendering the 1948 model year to be somewhat abbreviated. As proof of this, the Super Deluxe Sportsman convertible had sales of 2,274 for 1947.
However, things tend to go full-circle. A 1948 Super Deluxe Sportsman convertible sold at auction in 2009 for $275,000.
1956 Crown Victoria Skyliner
Production: 603
A Crown Victoria whose frontal section of roof was replaced with green-tinted plexiglass, this could have been considered the ancestor to the moonroof. While these looked good, and were a boon to the narcissist who wanted to be seen, the reality was the plexiglass showed itself to be horrendous for passengers on sunny days.
This option came about in 1954; 1,999 were sold in 1955. It seems its ability to broil was quickly known and it disappeared after 1956. Mercury had a similar option, one we will likely see later.
1960 Custom 300
Production: 572 (sedan), 302 (two-door)
It doesn’t take much to figure out a car will have low production if the factory brochures for taxicabs don’t even make any reference to its existence. Such is the case for the 1960 Ford Custom.
Courtesy of Sally Sublette.
At least the salesman’s reference has mention of it. Otherwise, it might seem the 1960 Ford Custom 300 would be the stuff of urban legend. Or maybe not…
1961 Custom 300
Production: 303 (sedan), 49 (two-door)
Undoubtedly conceived in the same philosophy as the 1960 Custom 300, production dropped for 1961. No doubt these stripped Custom 300s made this basic Fairlane look downright opulent.
While they were pretty barren, it’s unlikely they came as stripped as the one seen here.
1965 Falcon Futura five-passenger convertible
Production: 124
Chalk this one up as a fluke of sorts; the five-passenger version would have reflected a console. The six-passenger Futura convertible had a production run of 6,191. It goes to show that once upon a time people thought consoles were wasteful and superfluous.
However, to show all is not a fluke, the 1965 Falcon Sprint convertible had a production run of only 300.
1967 Falcon shown
1970 Falcon Futura wagon
Production: 1,005
By 1970, the Falcon had lived its life and it was being supplanted by the new Maverick, itself a car that used the Falcon’s platform extensively.
None of the 1970 Falcons sold in large volume; the most popular was a four-door sedan like this one that sold a meager 5,300 units. Factoring in the less popular wagon with the upper tier Futura trim, it’s easy to see why barely 1,000 of them were produced.
1975 shown; there is no discernible difference
1977 Custom 500 Ranch Wagon
Production: 1,406
For years, Ford was king of the hill when it came to full-sized wagons. And for 1977, they still had nothing to sneeze at as the LTD and Country Squire wagons sold nearly 91,000 units between them.
Yet, like in 1960 and 1961, you know something is amiss of there is no reference to a particular model in the brochures. But, searching further, there was reference to the Custom 500 wagon in a specific brochure; it just wasn’t a brochure that you would readily find at the dealership.
While this brochure is also from 1975, it’s safe to figure the Ranch Wagon didn’t go upscale any for 1977. Sales for the Ranch Wagon were 6,900 for 1975 and dropped to 4,600 for 1976. The trend of this LTD sub-series wagon simply dropped further for 1977. It was discontinued for 1978.
1978 shown
1979 LTD II S hardtop coupe
Production: 834
For 1979, Ford had the new full-sized LTD sitting in showrooms next to the old, mid-sized LTD II. The new full-sized LTD cost around $600 more but weighed 300 pounds less when comparing base two-door models.
This is what happens when Junior outweighs his Pappy as the LTD II S two-door had sold 9,000 examples for 1978. Times were changing. Mostly.
Which leads us to…
1979 shown
1980 LTD S two-door sedan
Production: 553
Not all Panther cars were wildly popular. The S-series for 1980 was likely an extension of the fleet sales intent seen previously (there was no two-door “S” series in 1979 nor 1981) combined with the economy in the United States at this time being in the toilet. Further, let us not forget the Panther cars hit the ground with somewhat of a thud upon their introduction in 1979.
Might this be the most rare Panther platform car of all?
Stay tuned for our next installment; there is still a lot to cover.
I had no idea you could get a vinyl roof on an LTD Country Squire. I’ve never seen one.
Secondly, that 1980 LTD S 2-door is really one of the most unfortunate looking cars ever produced. The 2-door body style was already awkward looking, but the single headlamps made it even worse.
A Granada with Gigantism.
A friend’s dad had one with a vinyl top. Brand new right from Ford
The single headlight (per side) did have one advantage: The hood creases lined up with the grille and headlights. That’s not the case with the wider quad headlight (two per side) version. It’s as if the quad headlight was an afterthought, after the hood had already been designed. The Mercury Marquis had a different hood and it lined up perfectly with the quad headlights.
I vote in firm favour of the single-headlamp setup on the box Panthers. With a bit of cleanup work, it’s a tidy and cogent design.
(see animation here)
Excellent work Daniel!
I made the same observations last year, with your Mercury pickup article.
“Ford loved their parking lights inset into grilles, for decades. See the Mustang II, and 1979 LTD. I thought the embedded parking lights, made the nose and grilles unnecessarily untidy in appearance.”
http://www.torinocobra.com/production_numbers.htm
While far in excess of your 1000 unit limit, I was rather surprised to see how few Gran Torino Broughams were sold in 1975-76. Around the 3-4000 mark is still pretty rare.
I guess the Elite saw to that.
Also, minor correction, the glass roof first appeared in 1954 as the Crestline Skyliner.
Fixed.
My imposed limit of 1,000 copies has been a toughie as many other cars, like you point out, aren’t exactly plentiful.
On the flip side, the 1,000 has been tough as variations on the same car in the same model year, due primarily to trim, has been an issue for me. Pontiac had that with several cars during the 1980s and there is an example of this from Plymouth, as we’ll see tomorrow.
Loving this series, Jason. Plymouth next?
My hometown, McKeesport, PA used Ranch Wagons as patrol cars in the mid 70s, just like the illustration here. They didn’t have paramedics then, and the police did most of the accident/crime-related ambulance work themselves, supplemented by a couple of funeral directors.
Also, with all the vinyl and landau effects removed, it really shows what an ungainly beast the coupe body was, especially compared to the Chevy B body.
The Mon Valley tradition of the funeral directors running routine “EMS” calls before the late 70’s (then, really just horizontal taxi rides, in red and white “Ghostbusters” Cadillac ambulances, no fancy BLS or ALS stuff) used to “scare” me. My thought was, “Do they REALLY have an incentive to get me to the hospital on time?!? ” Plus, Mortuary staff aren’t known as fast drivers…. ? ???
I know what you mean – especially because many of the ambulances converted to hearses in a flash.
I remember an early 70s Insurance industry ad that pointed out how a soldier injured in Vietnam would be in an emergency hospital faster than an American injured in an auto accident.
My Father had one of those 572 1960 Custom 300 sedans . It was issued to him at his “Government Job” at the State Of Florida in 1964, In 1965 he bought a repossessed 1965 Falcon 2 door fro FOMOC Credit who had an office in his building. He saw it in the lot one day and picked it up for $1200. As rare as the 65 Falcon Convertibles were the 1965 Mercury Comet version is pretty much the same car (I bought one used in 1969) They made 6,035 (over double the Park Lane convertible production and 1,373 more than Monterey convertible production the same year)I would guess this was because Mercury did not have their version of the Mustang as the Cougar was two years away (1967). I was going to ramble on but the reply started to take the shape of an article so I will save that for another time.
I remember the mid 1975 re-intro of Custom 500 during depths of recession.
But wasn’t it Canada only in 76-78? The ’75 C-500 still had the fancy trunk trim panel of the LTD, just not the name.
In the 1960 sales guide page, criticism of the ’60 Chevy is funny. “It’s easy to see through flimsy disguise [of ’59 body]” and “rear tail lights look like left over ’58 [parts]”
Sounds like a fashion show critique.
Odd also, is the critique mentions the ‘bat wing’ fins on the Chevy, when the new Ford has them too!
The Custom 500 hung around in Canada through 1981. The 1979-’81s were known as “LTD Custom 500”, equivalent to the LTD ‘S’ in the U.S.
1981 was the end of the line for the Canadian market low-trim full-sizers – the Custom 500, Mercury Marquis Meteor, Chevy Bel Air and Pontiac Laurentian all departed at the same time.
The Encyclopedia of American Cars shows Ford having a Custom 500 from 1964 to 1977…at least in the U.S. market. Oddly (?) the Custom 500 was always a 2 or 4 door sedan, never a wagon, while it’s wagon equivalent carried the Ranch Wagon name.
In the U.S. (Canada was different), my understanding is as follows:
–The Custom 500 was fleet only in 1976-77.
–For 1978, the Custom 500 was replaced by a fleet-specific variation of the LTD called the LTD ‘S’.
–From 1970 onward, the Custom 500 (as well as the 1978 LTD ‘S’) came only as a four-door car. Any two-door production shown after 1969 is cars destined for export to Canada.
As for the Ranch Wagon: From 1955 to 1968, Ford marketed its full-size station wagons as distinct models from its regular full-size lineup (in other words, the Country Squire was the “Ford Country Squire”, not the “Ford Galaxie Country Squire” or “Ford LTD Country Squire”). After some shuffling of model names in the early years, they eventually settled on a lineup where the Ranch Wagon was the cheapest version, the Country Sedan was in the middle, and the Country Squire was the most expensive version. After 1964, the Ranch Wagon was the station wagon equivalent to the Custom.
Starting in 1969, the wagons began to be marketed as part of the regular full-size models (in other words, the Country Squire was now the “Ford LTD Country Squire”). At this point, the Ranch Wagon became part of the Custom lineup, but it still also carried the “Ranch Wagon” name.
In 1973, Ford introduced a base LTD wagon slotted in between the Galaxie 500 Country Squire and the LTD Country Squire, the first full-size Ford wagon in recent memory not to carry a distinctive wagon-only model name.
It is my understanding that Ford dropped the Ranch Wagon and Country Sedan names after the 1974 model year, leaving the Country Squire as the only wagon with a distinctive wagon-only model name. The Standard Catalog of American Cars continues to identify the Custom 500 (and later LTD ‘S’) wagon as the “Ranch Wagon” all the way through 1978, however.
In the second-to-last paragraph of that post, “in between the Galaxie 500 Country Squire and the LTD Country Squire” should say “in between the Galaxie 500 Country Sedan and the LTD Country Squire”.
For completeness sake, for most of the ’70s in the smaller sizes they referred to the Ford Gran Torino wagon and Ford Gran Torino Squire, while the Pinto wagon with woodgrain was badged Pinto Squire but fairly consistently referred to in literature as “Pinto Wagon With Squire Option”.
Actually that naming convention started in 1968.
I actually like the 1980 LTD “S” nose treatment better than the deluxe version. The turn signals in the grille are an interesting touch. Here’s a slightly better look…
I thought I was the only one. This front end looked like a Ford, the 4 headlight front end looked like an Oldsmobile.
I had the same thought, Just as the R body Newport was “aping” Buick.
I believe the lamps in the grille are parking lights only – the turn signals are in the fender caps.
Looks like 1978-80 Granada.
There is a resemblance but I think the styling works much better on the larger LTD.
+1 the stacked headlights/amber marker lights on the 78-80 Granada never sat well with me.
That twin headlights front end treatment was always quite rare, even when new, but just this week I was watching a re-run of the series VEGAS….and nearly all the late 70s full-sized Fords in the show had that front end design. One scene had 3 different examples in 1 shot. I wonder if a majority were fleet sales?
In 1979, there were two LTD trim levels, base and Landau. Base models (the successor to the pre-1975 Galaxie 500) had the two-headlight front end treatment. Landau models (the successor to the pre-1975 LTD, and which had hidden headlights in 1975-78) had the four-headlight front end treatment. A bottom-rung, fleet-only trim level that had been offered in 1978, the LTD ‘S’ (the successor to the pre-1978 Custom 500), was not offered in 1979. The LTD II also came in a similar ‘S’ trim, and Ford apparently decided to press the LTD II ‘S’ as the fleet sales model this year.
In 1980, the LTD Landau was replaced by the LTD Crown Victoria. Both the base and Crown Victoria had the four-headlight front end treatment (note that this is different from 1979, when the base had the two headlight front end treatment). With the demise of the LTD II, the LTD ‘S’ re-appeared, and it got the two headlight front end treatment. For this one year, the LTD ‘S’ was apparently sold to the general public, not fleet-only, as it was featured in the regular full-size Ford brochure.
For 1981, the LTD ‘S’ went back to being a fleet-only model, a role it would continue in for many years. I don’t know if 1981 and later LTD ‘S’ models kept the two headlight front end treatment. If they did, they couldn’t have kept it much beyond 1981.
“1981 and later LTD ‘S’ models…”
LTD S name ended in ’82. For 1983-91, all Panther Fords were called LTD Crown Victoria.
PI/Taxis were “LTD-CV”, but no standard vinyl top. Another thing to get used to; seeing ‘Crown Vic’ labeled cabs/cop cars the first year.
My friends parents bought a low-line 1989 CV and it was called a Crown Victoria S.
FYI this is Canada we are talking about,.
‘Tomcatt630’ is obviously correct that all Ford-branded Panthers from 1983 on were badged under the LTD Crown Victoria name, so my implication that the LTD ‘S’ name continued for many years beyond 1981 was wrong. If it was a Panther, from 1983 on it had to be the “LTD Crown Victoria [something]”, not the “LTD [something]”.
That having been said, I am under the impression that the ‘S’ nomenclature did continue for many years beyond 1981, albeit with the phrase “Crown Victoria” added to the name from 1983 on. I checked my copy of the Standard Catalog, which only runs through 1986, and it does show these cars as the LTD Crown Victoria ‘S’ through at least 1986. There may not have been any ‘S’ badging on the cars, but according to the Standard Catalog, ‘S’ is what they were called.
One other note from the Standard Catalog: The specific ‘S’ model discussed in this article for having a shockingly low production figure is the 1980 2-door version. According to the Standard Catalog, 1980 was the only year that the Panther ‘S’ came as a 2-door.
Note that in 1980, the ‘S’ was apparently not a fleet-only model, but was sold to the general public. In 1981 and later years, it became fleet-only (in the U.S., anyway; Canada may have been different). That may be part of the reason a 2-door was offered in 1980 only.
Me too, Actually. It looks “Fordish”
The Mercury version of the Plexiglass-roof Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria Skyliner was called the Sun Valley, and if you go back far enough in the Cohort, you’ll find one, nicely restored and displayed at a small-town car show, sponsored by a pizza parlor. It was a sunny day but I did not ask to sit in it under that bright sun!
My other experience with the cars similar to those in this article was a 1975 Ford Ranch Wagon that my police department bought as a watch commander’s car to carry special tactical weapons, but that idea was scrapped when it was found that they would fit in the trunk of the midsize Dodge Coronet. The Ford wagon went into the regular patrol fleet, pressed into service as a utility vehicle when needed. The 1975 Fords all had the 460 engine and the wagon drank more heavily than the sedans. The wagon survived longer than did the sedans because it wasn’t as popular, and ran up the miles slowly.
Here is a Sun Valley from Australia, photographed last year.
Roger628 is correct! The Plexiglas roof did first appear on the 1954 Ford and also on the 1954 Mercury. For the Ford, the jungle was sung, “It’s the top! it’s the top! It’s the car with the transparent top! The new Skyliner’s here, from Ford.”
The Ford was as Roger 628 says, called the SKYLINER while the Mercury was called the SUN VALLEY.
Good going, Roger, on your data!
Of note, in the same model year of 1954 in France, the new Citroen models featured an optional full Plexiglas roof. I have no idea of how many were osld or for how many years this option was offered. Quelle dommage!
My very first car was a 1960 Ford Custom 300 2-door sedan. Had no idea it was that rare.
I had a 68 Ford Falcon Futura wagon. It was identical to the 69 and 70 versions. The strange thing about them was that there was no Ford badging at all.No Falcon badges either. Just a Futura badge on each rear fender and one on the glovebox door. It was almost like Ford didn’t want admit that they built it. Strange.
Didn’t the ’66-’70 Falcon and Fairlane share the same station wagon body, but with the Falcon riding a shorter wheelbase ahead of the cowl?
Didn’t make sense then & probably why both GM and Chrysler dropped their compact wagons once their intermediates came out.
Wagons are more expensive to re-tool, so some keep same bodyshell longer. Like the last Taurus wagon keeping the ovoid look into the 2000’s.
Indeed. But I was talking about the compact and intermediate wagons sharing the same body – there was no cargo-carrying difference. That was redundant and surely depressed the Falcon wagon sales…
There’s no difference between the length of the wheel and cowl, they both use the same exact 113″ wheelbase bodyshell, the Falcon front clip is about 2″ shorter in overhang than the Fairlane
Wow, that’s even more shameless than I remembered.
On the other hand, Byron Boukamp, a product planner at Chrysler in the 60s into the 80s said that when they were developing the F-Body Volare/Aspen, their research showed the demographics for A-Body Valiant/Dart and B-Body Satellite/Coronet buyers were virtually the same, and the original idea was for the F-body to replace both moving forward. That, with a more complete downsized “big” car offering might have put them in a better place in the mid to late 70s.
Reminds me of the early Falcon / Comet wagons using the shorter Falcon sedan wheelbase with a Comet front clip.
Having two or more related models that used different wheelbases for sedans share a common wagon body with a common wheelbase wasn’t that unusual. Typically, though, it involve two models in the same size class, and the common wheelbase would be one used for sedans by one of the models involved, usually the highest-volume model. What Ford did with the Falcon and Fairlane was strange in that 1) the two models involved weren’t in the same size class, 2) the common wagon body was on its own unique wheelbase, not shared with any of the equivalent sedans, and 3) the model that figured to be by far the higher-volume of the two (the Fairlane) was stuck with a wheelbase that was shorter than normal for its class.
Other examples which are more along the lines of the early Falcon and Comet:
–Chrysler did the same thing with its 1963-66 A-body wagons. Dart wagons rode the shorter Valiant wheelbase.
–For much of the 1960s and 1970s, full-size Mercury wagons shared a common body with full-size Fords, using the same wheelbase as the Ford wagons, even though pre-Panther full-size Mercury sedans usually rode a longer wheelbase than their Ford counterparts.
–From the late 1950s to the end of wagon production in 1977, Chrysler typically built all of their full-size C-body wagons across all brands off a common body, even though there were usually differences in wheelbase among the various brands’ sedans. From 1965 to 1973, for example, all C-body wagons were built off of what was normally Dodge’s wheelbase, while all 1974-77 C-body wagons were built off of what was normally Chrysler’s wheelbase.
–For many years up through 1972, Pontiac’s full-size B-body cars were built off of two different wheelbases. But until 1970 a wagon body only existed in the shorter length; wagons badged under long-wheelbase model names actually had the short wheelbase. Then, from 1971-76 Pontiac shared its full-size wagon platform with Buick and Olds. Wagons now used a longer wheelbase than any other full-size Pontiac.
–Going back a bit further, after GM slightly downsized some of its full-size cars in 1961, the 1961-64 Pontiac wagons used the same wheelbase as Chevrolet, 119 inches. All of the short-wheelbase full-size Pontiacs actually used this wheelbase in 1961, but all except the wagons gained an inch the following year. From 1962-64, only the wagons shared a wheelbase with their Chevy counterparts.
“Didn’t the ’66-’70 Falcon and Fairlane share the same station wagon body, but with the Falcon riding a shorter wheelbase ahead of the cowl?”
The wheelbase was actually the same, the two just had different front clips. The wagon body was on a unique wheelbase that was sized in between the wheelbases normally used by the Falcon and Fairlane.
“probably why both GM and Chrysler dropped their compact wagons once their intermediates came out.”
GM and Chrysler didn’t immediately drop their compact wagons when their intermediate wagons came out, though. Both sold compact and intermediate wagons simultaneously for a couple of years (Chevrolet from 1964-67, Plymouth and Dodge from 1965-66; in both cases, the compact wagon was continued until the end of the then-current styling cycle, then dropped). At the time the ’66 Falcon and Fairlane were introduced, GM and Chrysler were each selling wagons in both sizes, which may have made Ford reluctant to just completely drop the Falcon wagon at that point.
“Wagons are more expensive to re-tool, so some keep same bodyshell longer. Like the last Taurus wagon keeping the ovoid look into the 2000’s.”
I think the idea wasn’t so much to keep the same bodyshell longer, but to reduce tooling costs by allowing the two models to share the same body. Without this, a Falcon wagon may not have been economically feasible. Hold that thought, though….
” That was redundant and surely depressed the Falcon wagon sales…”
I’ve always seen the Fairlane wagon as really getting the raw end of the deal. In order to make a Falcon wagon possible, the Fairlane was saddled with a wagon body that was smaller than normal intermediate size. And due to manufacturers’ tendency to keep wagon bodyshells longer – as mentioned above – the Fairlane/Torino was stuck with this undersized body until 1971. By that time the Falcon as a whole was gone, never mind the Falcon wagon.
Yes, should have made it clearer that GM and Chrysler dropped their compact wagons once their current bodies were out of production. + three years to change over the same class of bodies was very unusual back then.
A friend in high school drove the early 70 Falcon of his parents. Those were rare because they were only built during calendar 1969. They had the sedan, but still I never knew they were as rare as they are.
Wow, from about 1957-62 Ford’s model names were a mess. Custom, Custom 300, Fairlane, Fairlane 500, Galaxie, Galaxie 500, most of which swapped in and out of the rotation with not much of an observable pattern.
Then to top it all off, added LTD and Torino later, 😉
That’s good to know about the Falcon ceasing production in calendar year 1969. I suppose it was to open a factory for the Maverick that debuted in CY69?
I understand it was also because certain federal regs were to take effect 1/1/70 and Ford did not want to pay to update the old Falcon with the Maverick sedan so close to production. After 1/1/70, the 70 1/2 Falcon was a decontented strippo Fairlane that held he fort until the Maverick sedan showed up.
From past discussion here, it was a requirement for an ignition lock, which would have required Ford to move the ignition from the dashboard to the steering column.
Which makes it doubly odd that they tooled up a pillared two-door for half a model year, to fill a four-door model gap. Triply, when you consider they could’ve just swapped the Fairlane dash into the “real” Falcon, or dropped the two-door Falcon when the Maverick coupe was ready, the wagon at the end of the model year since it wouldn’t be replaced, and stockpiled 4-door sedans to last until the Maverick sedan was ready.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem too cost effective to go to the trouble of making a Fairlane-based Falcon just to bridge the cap between 01/01/1970 (the day the old, compact Falcon no longer met federal regulations, seemingly for nothing more than the ignition switch location and horn ring) and September, 1970 when the subcompact Pinto arrived.
Until the the Pinto hit showrooms, the Maverick (only available as a 2-door for 1970) was marketed as Ford’s subcompact, Beetle-fighter. It wasn’t until after the Pinto that the Maverick was moved up to its actual Falcon-replacement compact slot (with an accompanying 4-door model).
You’d have thought moving the ignition switch to the column and getting rid of the horn ring on the old Falcon to keep it in production would have been much cheaper than coming up with the 1970 1/2 Fairlane-based Falcon coupe for the brief nine months until the Pinto arrived.
OTOH, maybe it was all just some marketing shenanigans by Ford. I would wager that, originally, the 1970 Fairlane 500 was really supposed to be a Torino, with the Fairlane name assigned to a low-line Torino pillared coupe/sedan/station wagon. It would certainly have seemed to make more sense.
But then, some marketing genius decided to save the pennies it would have taken to qualify the ‘real’ Falcon compact for production after January 1st for the rest of the model year by cancelling it and, instead, renamed the Fairlane coupe as a Falcon.
It’s one of many “why did they” questions I’d like to know. At 1970 Chicago Auto Show, Ford promoted the 70.5 Falcon, with separate brochures handed out. Then ‘bam’, gone in Oct.
Maverick showed up on April 17, 1969.
At the time federal regulations were based on the calendar year not model year. So it was possible to produce a car with the XX model year designation that didn’t meet XX year standards by producing it in XX-1 calendar year.
They went all Galaxie in ’62 with the launch of the intermediate Fairlane, then brought back the stripper Custom brand in ’63 – no doubt Galaxie 500 XL drivers weren’t too happy seeing “their” brand on taxis and police cruisers.
Of course Plymouth followed suit in ’65 with their Fury I/II/III nonsense.
Yeah, happened to a lot of former high trim names. Like Caprice, Crown Victoria, Monaco, Gran Fury, Bel Air and Impala were reduced to fleet line specials.
I had recently rediscovered J.P. Cavanaugh’s piece on the unmarked-lexeme “standard” cars – today it seems so logical to have one unifying model name (Galaxie, Fury) for all cars sharing a bodyshell and division with further demarcations for trim level (Galaxie 300, Galaxie 500, Galaxie LTD for example) but the idea of the “standard Chevy” died hard, it seems, among the generations who bought them new at retail.
As I’ve mentioned before, it took Chevrolet until 1986 to unify all B-body Chevys under the Caprice nameplate and even then the trim levels stacked like Discworld dwarf patronymics*; Caprice, Caprice Classic, Caprice Classic Brougham, Caprice Classic Brougham LS.
(*”After a few generations you get Glod Glodsonssonssonssonssonsson”.)
Whoops, forgot the link to the “Final Ford”.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1986-ford-ltd-crown-victoria-the-final-ford/
The 1960-61 Custom 300 came up in another thread a couple of months back.
The salesman’s reference depicted in the article compares the Custom 300 to the Chevrolet Biscayne Fleetmaster, which is listed in the Encyclopedia of American Cars as having been available in both 1959 and 1960, and shown in the Standard Catalog of American Cars in 1960 only. The only production breakout in either source is 3,000 for 1960 (shown in the Encyclopedia).
As best as we could figure, the Biscayne Fleetmaster and 1960-61 Custom 300 were a short-lived attempt to market an ultra-low-end full size model variation specifically for the fleet market, probably in reaction to the soft economy of the 1958-61 period. Perhaps Chevy introduced the Biscayne Fleetmaster for ’59, so Ford decided they had to have one too, and the ’60 Custom 300 was the result.
Neither model appears to have sold well. They may have been, as Jason put it in the earlier thread, too austere even for the fleet market. If your budget was really that cut to the bone, it probably made more sense to just buy a Falcon. Still, while that production figure of 3,000 for the ’60 Biscayne Fleetmaster seems reasonable, the published figures for the ’60 and ’61 Custom 300 seem almost implausible.
They were probably product-planned in 1958 when Studebaker was having a minor sensation with the Scotsman.
I wonder if the Kingsley Inn in the taxicab ad is the same Kingsley Inn on Woodward Ave south of Long Lake (soon to become a Double Tree)?
See the advertisement for the 1970 Ford
Falcon? The lady modelling the car looks shockingly like my Grade 4 French teacher.
And she drove……. an identical Ford Falcon, albeit in red.
Maybe the car was cleverly engineered to appeal to dowdy near-middle-age teachers with glasses.
I will always equate those 1980 two headlight LTDs with the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope. As these were the typical escort cars used by the Ontario Provincial Police during the Marathon in the summer/Fall of 1980. TV footage always showed those LTDs as the backdrop behind Terry on otherwise lonely stretches of desolate highway.
Another pic…
This talk of stripper full size Fords brings this to mind:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1959_Ford/1959_Ford_Brochure_1/1959%20Ford-07.html
6 inches,huh? Tom’s delightful companion should disregard his fishing stories too…
It’s 6 inches longer than the ’58 and “This Much” longer than Tom’s old Ford. Which could be a Model A for all we know.
It makes sense that the Falcon convertible mostly sold front benches after the Mustang came out, because passenger capacity is the only reason *anyone* would prefer a dowdy Falcon instead of a suave Mustang. Convertible buyers went Mustang 10:1 over Falcon, and 95 percent of Mustang convertibles were bucket seat.
Mustang was the hottest car in the country. A number of those Falcon convertibles probably went to Mustang prospects who couldn’t get a Mustang or couldn’t pass up a great deal on a Falcon. There probably wasn’t anyone who wanted a Falcon but got stuck with a Mustang.
That was my thought as well. It would be interesting to see the numbers on 5 vs 6 passenger Falcons before the Mustang was introduced.
For 1963, production of bench seat two-door Falcon Futura convertibles was about the same as the total of Futuras with optional buckets and Sprints with standard buckets.
http://westcoastfalcons.com/wp-content/uploads/1963-FORD-FALCON-PRODUCTION-USA-1.pdf
In 1976 I purchased a moderately rusty 1967 Ford Custom 500 for $325. This car had a 390 two barrel, three speed automatic, heat, and pushbutton AM radio. Surprisingly fast. Seated six teenagers. A car I wish I had back.
The 79-91 Crown Vic’s make the awesomest looking donks. There is a few nice ones I see cruising around by ware I live. You can here them comming a mile away nice hip hop playing.
While this CC doesn’t appear to list rare equipment options for the more popular models, I wonder how many of Ford’s mid-70s luxury-compact Granadas or Monarchs came with a 3-speed manual column-shift?
I’ve only seen one! To my best recollection, it was in a two-door, six-cylinder Monarch.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Again, such stripped-out, six cylinder-engined cars could be found on foreign markets where US or Canadian-made cars were very expensive to begin with. In Israel owning an American car of any type was prestigious enough. You also bought into the (then) legendary reliability and quality. When you add to this the fact that the national speed limit was 50 MPH (yes. Not that you could or wanted to go much faster on the roads we had in 1960) and that – even back then – fuel was significantly more expensive than in the US and a strippo six starts to make sense. My father had a Canadian Dodge Kingsway ordered just like that: flat six, 3 on the tree, heater, radio, basic vinyl for the seats and rubber mats for carpet. That was it. And his was not atypical; here’s our friends’ 61 Galaxy: again, six, 3 on the tree etc. etc.
By the early ’60s, manual-shifts in full-size cars were still not that rare here. People in rural areas and those needing a new car in a hurry wanted them.
In 1963, my dad needed a ‘family-size’ car when he got back to the US after being stationed in Spain.
He bought a black six-cylinder 63 Chevy Biscayne or Belair, with manual-shift and manual steering, which he wound up hating.
But by the early ’70s, while stick-shifts could still be seen in low-price US compacts like the AMC Hornet, Plymouth Valiant, Chevy Nova, and Ford Maverick, the option had become extremely rare in mid or full-size American sedans, and typically wasn’t offered in anything advertised with any ‘luxury’ aspirations.
Ford introduced the Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch in the US as luxury-compacts, even lamely comparing them to the smaller Mercedes.
Here, because of the recent oil-crisis, the six wasn’t that rare in those cars – just the manual column-shift. The only one I saw, wasn’t in a stripper. It did have power-steering and air-conditioning.
I wonder how many American Granadas (there was a European Granada at the time) and Monarchs were sold in Israel?
Happy Motoring, Mark
Mark, we had very few Granadas (US or European) but a reasonable number of Fairmonts (and anyone growing in the 80s will remember them as police cars – see below, somewhere on Highway 1 facing Jerusalem I believe). The Ford dealer for Israel actually offered the Fairmont as the “big” car, above the German/English Cortina, the Israeli assembled Escort and lastly the Fiesta – purely because the European Granada was more expensive than the Fairmont. The bigger cars were special order only…
Mom and Dad’s first new car was a 63 Impala with three on the tree.
A lot of low-production models didn’t seem so scarce, you’d see ’em around and then only later learn that there were only a few built.
Like a buddy once pointed out, sure there were only 500 built, but since there were at least three in town we didn’t think anything of it.
I didn’t think that a ’60 Custom 300 was a particularly rare car… but maybe I didn’t realize exactly what a 300 was and it was some other strippo models that were so common? But to me, the scarcest nugget found in this article would have to be the 1960 Fleetmaster mentioned in the 1960 Product Comparison News Flash.
Speaking of the News Flash, I guess I don’t see the mentioned leftover ’58 in the ’60 Chev, but okay.
As to the cheapo 2-dr ’79 Ford being particularly scarce, there were a few around. Of course that’d bring us back to the first paragraph of this comment.
But I do particularly recall an even more scarce 2-dr version than pictured… same car but with a front vent window. I recall an exhaustive hunt for the glass Seems like finally the solution was to convert the door to non-vent glass.
I understand having a “unified” model name, just it tooks some getting used to seeing ’86 Caprice taxis, complete with the Fluer d’ lis [sp?] hood ornament.
From luxo to fleet-o.
Wow! I had no idea that the stripper ’60 Ford Custom 300 my Dad bought new was such a rare vehicle! That was the last cheapo car he ever owned except for a couple of Pinto commuter cars. Lucky for me he traded the Ford off on a nice ’62 Olds wagon before I got my license.
my dad had a soft spot for cheap, unloved and otherwise disabled cars. he ended up with used 1969 full size ford wagon. musta been a special order. blue outside, blue vinyl inside. straight 6 3sp column manual. non power steering. non assist brakes. no ac. manual windows. OOH. it did have an AM radio waay the heck over there on the left edge of the drivers instrument pod. 0-60 in 30 seconds. had to slip the clutch like mad to pull away from a standstill. A true representation of Detroit muscle. wonder how many of that option set made it down the assy. line?
Despite seeing my cringey comments on yesterday’s rerun, I really enjoy this series. I’m still fascinated by these ultra-stripped fleet specials like the Custom 300 and Biscayne Fleetmaster – they were within $25 of the next models up, and the basic Fairlanes and Biscaynes were already so stripped out, there wasn’t much to cut.
But I guess there were fleet buyers who just wanted to shave every last nickel, and Ford and Chevy were happy to oblige the folks who didn’t care if there was no passenger-side sun visor, and suchlike.
A bit intriguing then Chevrolet called it the Biscayne Fleetmaster, they could have dusted off the Delray nameplate who was the lower-trim model in 1958.
And speaking of rarities, the Canadian 1955 Crown Victoria was also available for the Meteor marque. I guess they might be even more rarer than the 1955 Ford Crown Victoria.
http://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/Ford-Canada/Meteor/1955%20Meteor%20Brochure/slides/1955_Meteor-04.html
My Dad had a ’73 Ranch Wagon, which replaced his ’69 Country Squire, but was actually better equipped. Seemed back then so many full sized cars were still being sold that they offered a whole range of full size models, which seems to have gone away in the late 70’s. Before that, you could still buy a stripper model full sized car if you mostly wanted size but willing to dial the luxury down a bit.
300 series Fords are what showed up here locally assembled the higher trim models werent on offer but generally 300 was the allotment for most manufacturers though we got canadian Fords like everting else, cars of this era were anything but luxurious they were big with V8 engines but few toys inside for the price a vauxhall Cresta was better appointed, and those were import only when the GMH Premier showed up it made the local assembly Belaire look really bare bones.