This is one of the first full-size 1970s Ford wagon I’ve seen, which showed up in a Melbourne classic car show. It is probably as close as I will come to seeing one of my childhood Matchbox toy cars come to life:
This is the Matchbox car in question, a Mercury Villager. It seems to have the surrounds for the fake wood paneling, but obviously that is beyond the scope of a simple diecast toy. The ‘flexible’ scale of the Matchbox car does not give any impression of the actual size of the car, relative to others, because all of the cars have to fit in the same size packet. In the background is a cement mixer truck, which is actually shorter than this Mercury.
If you noticed in the opening shot, there was a Morris Mini hiding behind the Ford. The contrast is pretty striking, nearly twice the length, nearly four times the weight and eight times the engine capacity! Double the number of seats, at least.
It looks like this is a Californian car, which would be a good place to source one with a mild climate, no salt and plenty sold there originally. I suppose that this means it may not have the best engine option, as they often weren’t available in California. I also don’t know exactly what year this is, though it belongs to the 1975-1978 era. Is there much more than grille minutiae to distinguish them?
I do know that by this time Ford had stopped importing the full-size US cars. Because of the growth of the local Fairlane, the last one they brought in was the 1972 – I will do a feature on this car soon(-ish).
The baroque, broughamy details of the Country Squire don’t do anything for me, neither does the fake wood. Ford Australia tried this for a short period only in 1964-65, but only managed to sell 1,198 of the Falcon Squire wagon.
The closest local equivalent was the Fairmont station wagon, which was the highest trim level and came standard with the two-way tailgate that was otherwise optional. The wheelbase was 116″, a 5″ stretch over the standard sedan and shared with the more luxurious Fairlane. Family friends had one of these when I was growing up, to haul their four boys.
This show is one where you never know what you are going to come across. It is an everyone-welcome affair that raises money for the Peter MacCallum cancer research and treatment hospital here in Melbourne, and it is always well-attended.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
I have that same green Villager wagon, bought about 50 yrs ago to provide auto interest to my HO railroad, all still stored awaiting reconstruction in our next basement. Ford was THE wagon king well into the ’80s, though my favorite wagons are C-body Mopars of ’69 to ’77.
Like that “lil, Morris”!
The matchbox villager is actually the Cougar villager, built on the mid-size Torino platform, not the full size platform of the pictured country squire. I always found it strange that Marchbox – still a British company at the time – casted a one-year-only, low-volume American wagon.
Some years earlier, they produced a very similiar green wagon, called the “Mercury Commuter” in Lesney’s brochure.
That car was my absolute favourite Matchbox car, along with a dark blue Iso Grifo and a red-goldish M-B 220 SE.
Wonder why they gave both US-wagons almost the same colour.
A decade later they also did a Sable wagon, with the original standard issue being white.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. The Ford station wagon pictured is almost exactly like the Ford station wagon my mom owned and I learned to drive in. Her’s was a 1975 and the only difference is the 1975 didn’t have the headlights that closed or had covers that came down.
Back when I was a child (I’m 61 now), I was a member of the Matchbox Collectors Club. One newsletter editorial explained how Matchbox/Lesney designed their miniatures. They also explained that by the time they chose a vehicle to model, and did the engineering work to render it in the small scale, the vehicle was replaced by an updated version that may not look the same, styling-wise (he gave as as an example, the Chevrolet Vega. By the time Matchbox would’ve released one, the ’74 Vega with its new bumpers and taillights would’ve hit the streets, making the Matchbox version sort of obsolete.)
If you couldn’t take it with you in this monster, you didn’t need it. Oh how I wish they still made those, incorporating all the improvements over the decades.
Best specimens in those photos:
Original British Mini — Approx. 1965, as it has front vent windows.
(Dad’s ’61 Austin 850, had the original sliding window format).
Sunbeam Alpine — with rear-slanted fins (’59-’63)
American Land Barges .
I miss ’em .
I don’t want one but I sure loved them back in my youth .
-Nate
I love the color on that Green 72 Ford.
I’d take mine in “wagon”, Sans Wood, In that green.
One minor nit however is that the green Ford is a ‘71, not a ‘72.
Didn’t this version of the Ford wagon debut in 1973 rather than 1975?
My Dad bought a new ’73 Ranch wagon to replace his ’69 Country Squire, it had the same body panels as these.
It was his first air conditioned car, also first with AM/FM stereo and trailer towing package (we had a 20′ pop-top camper back then…didn’t really need it but the transmission cooler probably helped with all the backing up and going forward trying to place the camper in non-drive-thru sites. Dad even drove the car around our backyard, circling around an apple tree (used to be an orchard despite being near downtown Manassas VA) so he didn’t have to back the trailer up our steep narrow driveway. It had power locks but crank windows (except of course the rear window which I think was always power).
Dad liked filling up what he called “the well” which was the underfloor storage where the 2 jumpseats would be except he always ordered the 6 rather than 8 passenger model.
We had it up to the autumn of ’78 when Dad traded it for a “leftover” ’78 Caprice Classic wagon. He looked at the downsized ’79 Country Squire, don’t remember what it was but there was something about it that he didn’t like, and GM was over their clamshell tailgate (after ’76) which he didn’t like.
The thing I really remember was the sound of the car…no, not the engine, but things like the power locks (that were loud and convincing) and the turn signals were really loud (good for seniors with bad hearing who might forget to cancel them for not hearing the loud relay clicking sound. Maybe because it had the trailer towing package it had heavy duty relays?
It was a nice car but Dad got it right before the ’73 gas crisis, he didn’t like the fuel economy of the 400 2V and even traded his manual transmission 2nd car for another small car but with automatic so that my Mother could also drive it instead of the wagon…she learned to drive a Chrysler WIndsor with semiautomatic but was never comfortable driving anything without an automatic.
I too havecthe same matchbox wagon. If memory serves me correct the tailgate folds down on this one.