In Part 1 of this series, our big game (and I do mean big) was 1970-1973 GM full-sized cars with a three-on-the-tree transmission. We came back with our unicorn bags, if not overflowing, at least filled enough for 1,300+ words and over 100 comments.
This time, we will be training our sights on full-sized Fords from the same period. Fair warning: For whatever reason, the survival rate of these early ’70s full-sized Fords is vanishingly low (they are among Paul’s least favorite cars for a reason), especially when compared to their GM counterparts which are still (relatively) abundant.
Ford
Prior to 1970, Fords equipped with the 4-barrel “Thunder Jet” 429 were available with a four-on-the-floor, making it one of the last full-sized muscle cars (which was also one of the reasons I chose 1970 as the cutoff for my Unicorn Hunt). The 429/4-speed combo was supposedly available on all 1969 full-size Ford models, even the LTD and Country Squire wagon.
For 1970, the 3-on-the-tree was the sole manual transmission on offer. While Chevy limited their three-speed to just the six-cylinder Bel Air, Ford offered their manual on every engine up to the 390, and on every model, meaning that it was possible to get an LTD or even a Country Squire with a three-on-the-tree. Perhaps we will find some interesting combinations?
1970 Ford LTD
I found this 1970 LTD with a 351 and a 3-speed on YouTube. I couldn’t find any proper photos, so we will have to make do with video frame grabs. This one supposedly had the same owner from 1970 to 2014.
Options on this model are sparse but do include an electric clock ($16), power steering ($105), an AM radio ($61), and wheel covers ($26), so it is not a total stripper (to say nothing of the extra standard equipment you got on an LTD). A base 1970 Custom 500 4-door sedan listed for $2,872 (about $23,500 in 2023). This LTD sedan, with options, would have stickered for $3,621 (about $29,500), so clearly the three-on-the-three was a choice and not an economic necessity. Or to put it more pointedly, who would have ordered a car with vacuum-operated headlight covers. but without an automatic transmission?
Unlike most of these other manual-transmissioned unicorns which offer tantalizingly few clues as to their origin stories, this bizarre LTD actually has some documentation (more of which can be seen in the linked video). As you can see from the sales order above, the buyer (who paid cash, or brought their own financing) was able to negotiate the price all the way down to $3,015, a discount of almost $600, or a hefty 16% off the original sticker price.
So it appears that the buyer was given a considerable discount to take an otherwise unsellable car off the dealer’s hands. But what dealer would have ordered such a strange car in the first place? Perhaps a mistake on a factory order form that wasn’t caught until the car showed up? I’ll leave it to the commenters to further speculate.
In any case, there is no malaise going on here. The 351 and three-speed make for a potent burnout machine, as demonstrated above.
1971 would be the last year the SyncroMesh was available in full-sized Fords, with the SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic (yes, Ford really still called it that) becoming standard in 1972.
1971 Ford LTD Convertible with 3-speed transmission
My next find will have to be filed as a unicorn sighting that got away. I found a blog post from 2014 discussing a 1971 Ford LTD Convertible with a 351 and a 3-speed manual that the writer had seen on eBay. While the original eBay auction is long gone (irretrievably so, despite my best efforts), the author did include one photo from the original auction, which I have included above.
Mercury
For the 1970 model year, A 3-speed manual was the standard transmission on the Monterey, Monterey Custom, Maurader, and Colony Park full-sized Mercury models (the C6 automatic was standard on the Marquis and Marquis Brougham). By 1971, the Marauder was gone, and the Colony Park now had the C6 as standard equipment, leaving only the Monterey and Monterey Custom as the remaining shift-yourself models. Like Ford, an automatic was standard on all full-sized Mercurys starting in 1972.
1970 Mercury Monterey with 3-speed manual transmission
While only God and Kevin Marti likely know for sure, the number of 1970 and 1971 full-sized Mercs equipped with a three-on-the-three has to be minuscule. But could it actually be zero? After several hours of searching, I was starting to think so, when I struck gold with this 1970 Monterey with few options and a 3-speed transmission.
The seller claims that it has power steering and brakes, but that doesn’t look like a power brake booster to me.
With only 17,000 miles, not only is it a rarity, but it is a veritable time capsule. The chrome wheel moldings, assuming they are factory, would indicate that is a Monterey Custom. Assuming power steering is its only option, the base price would have been $3,635, or about $30,000 in 2023. By the time you factor in the additional standard equipment (like the 390 V8), you are within a few bucks of a comparable Ford LTD, which really underscores the problem Mercury faced for decades.
Alas, my search for 1971 full-sized Mercurys with three pedals bore no fruit, but such is the life of a unicorn hunter.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion to this series in Part 3. Believe it or not, the best is yet to come!
Sometime back, like six or seven years ago, somebody left a comment about a fully loaded ’71 LTD sedan ordered by the wife or mother of a Ford dealer. The only thing this LTD didn’t have was an automatic and the build combination was such the person making the comment (who appeared to have inside knowledge) stated it was such an oddball for Ford, permission to manufacture had to be ran rather high up the chain.
I’ve seen both the black ’70 and blue ’71 convertible in other online venues. Given all the mentions of ’71 Fords here over the years, might this be the ultimate one?
The Mercury makes no sense whatsoever. It’s not unlike the comment yesterday about the zero option Chrysler Newport…seems like one was buying the name and a slightly longer wheelbase.
Small world alert…the link to the Mercury ad featured other similar Mercurys below the ad. One was for a blue/white ’69 Monterey which I drove and wrote up several years ago. The then owner is somebody I will be seeing in about 90 minutes when I get to work. It’s such a small world at times.
My dad worked at a Ford dealer doing a bunch of odd jobs back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and he has mentioned a few “oddball” cars that were on the lot. One of them was a ’69 LTD special ordered with a 429 four speed; he said it was (I believe) red with a white interior. You mentioned that as an available powertrain option, so I figured I’d mention that at least one was out there, although it’s almost certainly long gone by now being a Michigan car.
I think Ford was the only Big 3 automaker to develop a 3 speed full-synchromesh transmission, so perhaps they had some incentive to make it widely available to keep the factory at profitable capacity, but even so I can’t imagine it was economically practical to make a 3 on the tree available on full-size cars by the late 1960s. Can you imagine anyone coming into a Big 3 showroom in 1970 and insisting their new full-sizer be equipped with column mounted 3 speed manual rather than automatic or 4 speed floor shift or they walk?
While it seems like a stretch today, there were many drivers that grew up with 3 speeds over the previous 20 or 30 years who were still on the road and still preferred them.
Neighborhood friend’s dad got a ’70 LTD sedan in Sept. of ’69. Was like seeing a concept car in my 8 y/o eyes. Then started seeing more LTD’s and become more ‘common’.
The ’70 LTD sedan was like a Custom 500 with hide-away lights. Caprice still had some ‘exclusivity’ for a while.
A high school friend’s parents had a red ’68 Country Sedan (Ford’s mid level trim option similar to a Country Squire but w/o the fake wood). Car had a 390 2v, 3 speed manual & limited slip diff.
This particular powertrain choice wouldn’t have been unusual for a farmer, but the parent who bought this car was a town dentist.
We’ll never know why the Doc ordered his Ford this way, but his choice of powertrain made an otherwise rather ordinary car a real hoot to cruise around in after high school games. Prime spots for most entertaining experience were the wayback dual facing seats.
We didn’t know the term drifting back then, but that’s pretty much what it was. I can almost smell rubber fumes coming in through the rear window again.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll repeat it here: In the summer of 1971 I was a car jockey for the service department at Towson Ford, my primary job being to drive the cars being brought in for service up on the roof-top parking area. This building was built in the 1920s or so, and the ramp up to the roof involved two very tight 90 degree turns, designed for Model A’s and such.
One morning a fine ’69 LTD with “390” engine call outs was in the service lane. After it was written up by the service writer, it was my turn to hop in and drive it off. As I opened the door, I could see it had the premium interior, with the “panty cloth” upholstery.
I slid in behind the seat and…whoa! This thing had a three on the tree! I was gobsmacked. And when I started it up and pulled out, it was painfully obvious that it had…manual steering! It was so hard getting that big boat through that tight turn, slipping the clutch gently. I assumed that the p/s had died; which is why it was in the shop. So after I parked it, i popped the hood: no p/s pump. And of course the brakes were unassisted too, but that was no big deal.
When I brought the car down in the late afternoon for the customer, I got to hand it over to him: a very tough-looking old guy, not surprisingly. Like a former Marine drill Sargent.
It looked just like the black one at the top of this post, but in 1969 guise.
Speaking of unicorns, I like the ’71 Galaxie 500 that Gator Mcklusky drove in the movie “White Lightning”. It was a 429 4 speed on the floor that could transform to an automatic on the column and back to a 4 on the floor.
The cars used in that movie were all Custom or Galaxie 500’s with a column automatic. You could tell in some scenes where he parked the car or pulled out. If you saw Burt Reynolds rowing through the gears or the money shot of the engine and all its chrome glory notice that you never saw the rest of the car. That was a low budget movie with a similar story line to the Dukes of Hazard.
Couple thoughts from yesterday and today…
“Depression babies” were in their mid 40s by 1970. Perhaps their fears of “one more thing to break” had waned by then.
Automatic transmissions for the “low-priced three” were nearing 20 years old by this point and I would think that as they came to be more prevalent, the distrust for them had decreased, and the durability was improved.
By the mid-1970s, the take rate for manual transmissions in mid-size/intermediate cars was pretty darn low – probably well under 10% – that it’s almost surprising that the GM A/G body cars could still get a manual transmission into the early 80s.
That sort of tracks with my family car history. In 1964 my parents’ new 64 Valiant with automatic and AC was unusually well equipped. By 74 the same options on my uncle’s Dart were the norm, and my parents had a Volvo 164. FWIW most of my family drove compacts, intermediates, or imports by the time I was old enough to know.
From a ten year old USA Today column:
Male drivers outnumbered women drivers from the moment the first Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line in 1908, the year the automobile became popular, and through most of the last century. In the 1950s, when only about half of adult women had driver’s licenses…But the gap gradually closed. By 1995, men with driver’s licenses slightly outnumbered women, 89.2 million to 87.4 million. By 2010, 105.7 million women had licenses, compared with 104.3 million men.
12 Nov 2012
In my family my mom got her drivers license in 1970 when she was in her early-40s, and she insisted that our next new car have an auto trans. Our new ’70 Fairlane wagon came equipped with a 250/C4.
Late 1969, my father ordered a 1970 Fairlane 500 wagon with a 3 speed manual, power tailgate, and no other options. He wanted the six, but it came with the 302. I was 5 years old and still remember going with him to Don Comer Ford in Portsmouth, VA to pick it up. He had the car until March 1981 when he purchased an Escort wagon because the gearbox on the Fairlane was broken and the car was terribly rusted, though the 302 still ran strong at over 200,000 miles. I was a stupid boy who couldn’t master the 3 speed manual, and my father had neither the time or patience to deal with a stupid son. He never owned a car with an automatic transmission until he purchased a 1987 demonstrator Taurus LX.
Lighten up on yourself, Troy. There was a kid in my 8th grade gym class who absolutely could not do jumping jacks. He just didn’t have the coordination to do them no matter how hard the coaches tried to help him out. The thing is, he was whip smart and, as I recall, became a very successful lawyer.
Lots of coordination required to operate a manual trans, and a column mounted shifter IMHO is awkward to operate compared to a floor shift. I dare say at least quarter of 16-year-olds today could not learn how to operate a clutch/3-on-the-tree no matter how hard they tried.
Into the early 60’s, it was my impression that Ford owners were a pretty traditional lot, and that 3 speeds were found more often in Fords than in the competition. I think that difference started to shrink after the 1965 models.
Marianne and I recently watched a 1969 heist movie starring Telly Savalas, called MacKenna’s Gold. The plot involved finding and stealing some long-forgotten gold previously stolen by nazis in WWII. The con job required someone to buy an American car in Germany that could double as an official US military sedan. They used a black 1968 Ford sedan. I cannot find photos on the IMCDB, but it was clear in a couple of scenes that it was a manual transmission.
I certainly never saw one of these unicorns, whether in Ford or Mercury form. I am pretty sure that the newest Ford 3-on-the-tree I ever drove was a 1978(?) Ford pickup bought by my friend’s father/my mentor Howard. I forget if he got it new or used, but it was fairly new and bright red. It also had manual steering, and was a real bear to wrestle with.
It is my memory that Ford put syncro on 1st gear for 1964. I know Chrysler was several years behind on that front, and I am not sure about GM.
My brother had a beater 67 full size Ford wagon, 390 and a 3 speed trans. The thing shuddered on every take off. It had a very tall rear gear which would seem more for an automatic or a 4 spd stick.
We had an epic snow storm in 1975 that started with freezing rain. It started in the afternoon. On his way home from work the bottom of the car was coated in ice. All that transmission linkage was encased in ice, unable to shift and stuck in third gear. Lots of clutch slipping at every stop sign and stop light to get home. Luckily he had a heated garage to thaw it out. I had my own experience in that storm. I was driving to work that afternoon, very icy roads and I’m thinking this is a dumb idea. A jack knifed semi blocked the freeway, that was the final straw, I am heading back home. I did have a problem though, when we were routed of the freeway I was able to turn off on a side road and head towards home. As I was taking the right turn I suddenly found I could only turn the wheel so far before it stopped. My friend worked at a service station down the very road I just turned onto. I got to the station and discovered the wheel wells of my lowly Pinto sedan were filled with ice totally surrounding the tires. Luckily the service bays were open so I could slide my car in and start thawing it out. I been thru many storms here in Minnesota since then. Many with much more snow but never one that had so much ice before the 12 inches of snow piled on top of it. It was a real mess to clean up.
I decided to check my memory and see if I could find any information on the snow storm I talked about in the above post. Wikipedia even has a page on this storm, Great Storm of 1975.
While this comment doesn’t refer to full size Ford cars, I think it’s of interest to the group;
In the mid 1980s I visited a friend who was a very good salesman at the Ford dealer I once worked at. It was kind of a slow day and he mentioned they had just taken in a bunch of identical cars from the GSA [Government Services Administration].
My memory of what these cars were may not be exact, I remember them as being a Fairmont with the Ghia trim level, something I can’t find any evidence of today. The cars were Fairmont sedans, but had an upscale tan interior with thick cut carpeting and split front power seats, power windows, and stereo radios. Outside the cars were all tan with brown vinyl roof [and I remember Ghia emblems on the roof sail panels]. These cars [there must have been close to a dozen, possibly more] looked like a luxury LTD except they were Fairmonts.
Now for the reason I’ve posted this here: Every one of these cars had 3-speed manual transmissions with floor shift [no console]. My friend said someone had made a mistake in the order, but he didn’t know if it was from the GSA or Ford. He said they were trying to wholesale them out, but not even the wholesalers were interested because of the transmission and shifter on the floor.
“The chrome wheel moldings, assuming they are factory, would indicate that is a Monterey Custom.”
I don’t think this was a Monterey Custom. My dad’s ‘70 base Monterey was like this car; no body side molding, but yes, it came with chrome wheel moldings.
Yes, it’s rare to find a 3-speed manual with V-8 in a full size American car. Too bad the 3-speed manual with overdrive — the kind that required pushing and pulling a knob under the dash to engage and disengage the OD, wasn’t offered as well. I imagine a big V-8 with such a transmission would have made an interesting performer. When was this type of transmission last offered as an option?
I remember reading Paul’s article about replacing the standard 3-speed in his F-100 with such a unit and learning that the OD, properly operated offered great flexibility.
Ford offered three-speed plus overdrive on full-size cars through 1967, only with the 240 and 289. It looks like you could have overdrive on a full-size Mercury in 1961, but the ’62 and ’63 brochures only mention it as an option for the Meteor.
Our family had a ’69 Ford Country Squire with the 351 (front disc brakes but otherwise pretty basic) and a ’73 Country Sedan with the 400 (loaded compared to the Squire, with AM/FM, air conditioning (first car with it) power locks (but manual windows) and trailer towing package.
Our neighbor’s wife drove a late 60’s Ford Fairlane wagon, which had the 3 on the tree. This would have been the early 70’s and it seemed odd even then, but the few times I rode in the car she seemed pretty good with it. Don’t know when even the mid-sized cars came with automatic standard (early 70’s?).
About 1986 or 1987 I was test driving a variety of cars, far more than I ever have since, and one of the cars was a Taurus MT5 wagon. My friends thought I was nuts, and even my parents had moved on from their ’78 Caprice Classic wagon by driving sedans…my Dad had an ’86 Dodge 600 which got totalled by my sister in ’89, replaced by the first of 3 Sables my Dad bought in a row…all of them automatic (my Dad was done with manuals by then, his last was an ’80 Dodge Omni). I think the MT5 had a 4 cylinder; all my Dad’s Sables were 6’s (2 3.0, and 1 3.6 litre). I didn’t buy the MT5 (wonder what my friends would have done if I had? I think the combination of a wagon with a manual was a bit odd, but I did have another friend (different circle) who bought a new Dodge minivan with the 5 speed…he later got a 2.8 litre Passat with the 5 speed also.