A view southbound on Continental Boulevard, through the western half of Frederick Law Olmstead Jr.’s Station Square, while M5445 Light Jade 1977 Ford LTD ponderously shudders rightward onto Burns Street westbound.
On Saturday, I brought the family home from COVID isolation – two weeks at the shore in a mostly fully-equipped and winterized beach house, but with extra-added fevers, coughing, loneliness, and nights filled with worry – and took the older boy to synagogue hebrew school on Sunday, where the synagogue elders organized a Covid-19 testing facility! I and my son, in the cold wet morning after the drive home, had rapid covid tests completely gratis and tested Negative! Finally. So maybe that’s done.
I used the unfamiliar respite from the fruit of my loins for two precious hours to load the car with farmer’s market perishables, and little did I know I would encounter a Queens ‘Imperishable’ – like Kochab and Mizar for the ancient Egyptians, the automotive touchstone – well, more like a fully-charged capacitor in the picture tube control electronics of an old console Zenith – a green – specifically Light Jade, Ford Reference M5445, Ditzler PPG 2840, DuPont 44107L – 1977 LTD Landau, which I’d encountered exactly three years previously one block away in the dead of New York City winter.
Idling like a black smoker in a seafloor volcanic vent on Queens Boulevard in December 2018.
Captain of Engineers MacDonald, in warmer climes.
In the fall of 2018, I’d passed the car parked on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, and then around Thanksgiving once in motion in the eastbound express lanes, announcing its bellowing V8 presence despite the extremely efficient sound insulation of my own thirty-nine-year newer chariot. And then, one frozen morning, I heard it idling in the eastbound local access carriageway, parked next to the statue of Captain Gerald MacDonald (for whom the park is named).
EPA Mileage chart, 1977.
You could smell the car a regulation short city block away, like a Salish potlatch, a flood basalt under a coal province, like someone idling a ’39 Lincoln Zephyr on Queens Boulevard in the winter of 1983. (I was thinking of myself at the age of seven, as my hebrew school-bound son was at the time) The smell of unburnt hydrocarbons was choking. The driver was a tired doorman, who briefly rolled the window down – it smelled just as bad inside as outside – and told me he had gotten the car in New Rochelle recently, and that he needed to sleep. Well, he’s still driving it.
Parked in the taxi stand by the subway elevator, the tired patriarch lumbers into wet traffic.
I could have cut him off. But then there would have been no photographs.
He merges in!
And memories, memories, misty water-colored memories of the way we were.
Never been to that area, but it looks like a nice Sunday drive! Interesting to see how different cities zone things- mid-to-high rises are very rare in this neighborhood but seem to be more plentiful there.
Glad you and your family are COVID-free.
Congrats on the negative! 🙂
Yeah, I had one of those battleships. Bad memories, although not necessarily all the car’s fault. I had just unloaded [without much equity :(] a ’78 Accord I’d only had for a few months. The salesman had lied to me, although not about what you might be thinking. -laugh- I’d asked about insurance cost, & he said that since it was a compact & safe car my insurance should go down (single male, 26-yr-old). Wronnng.
Since the Accord was selling like hot cakes, Honda was putting all their parts into making new cars, consequently replacements were scarce & high as a cat’s back. My insurance went *UP* $500 a year, & at what I was making at the time, I simply couldn’t afford it. :(:( So I traded it back in (at a loss) & got the only acceptable used car they had on the lot, this one. 4-dr Medium Tan Metallic, 351/2V, the usual. It did have a built-in CB radio, though. (Also a POJ, compared to thing like Robyn, Midland, or Cobra). The thing ate me alive on gas, but at least I could afford the INsho’nce!
[[I kept it less than a year, until I could get back home to south GA & find a Toyota dealer in Tallahassee who had a lemon-yellow 2-dr ’79 Corolla 4-spd. Insurance was good, gas mileage was great, & fun to drive. Got some bad gas (station’s tanks had been vandalized with sand) about a month after I bought it. They pumped two coffee cups of sand out of the tank, plus 3 filters full, to get it to run right again. I figured the engine would lunch at 60k if I was lucky. I drove that car for 7 yrs/106,000 miles till I traded it in on an ’86 Tercel wagon; when I got rid of it not one corner of the car was square with any other. I loved that car. :)]]
The old Ford, though, despite being Detroit-thirsty & a mechanical monster, rode well, was great for long trips, & kept my wallet from being paper-thin twice a year. For what it was it was good enough, but state-of-the-art had already jumped over it a couple of times. 🙂
That’s about the best description of these cars I’ve ever read. Anvil reliability, smooth, smooth ride, terrible gas mileage and primitive engineering, even for 1977.
A nice surprise to see this out and about in NYC winter!
Color it cream yellow and it would look like the first drivers ed car I drove back in high school. I don’t remember a whole lot about it except that it was quiet and comfortable and handled reasonably well in spite of it’s size. (My major point of comparison being my brother’s ‘70 Plymouth Fury with it’s bias ply tires!)
The other students could tell how well the driver was doing by how much the instructor read his newspaper. I suppose I did pretty well, because I remember hearing a fair amount of pages turning while I was at the wheel. One lesson, though, there was a curve in the road where I came in a little hot. I heard the newspaper go down and the instructor say “Relax your foot, son.” (Although in a fairly calm manner.) To this day, I can’t approach that curve without hearing those words in my head.
My driver’s ed car from the same era was a 1977 Bonneville Brougham. I remember thinking how much easier it was to drive and park the Bonneville (as a 16 year old) than the other land yachts in the family at the time, including a 1973 Dodge Polara and similar 1977 Galaxie 500. The alternate learning car for us was an Isuzu, which school administration thought more high school kids would drive after getting their licenses. Looking back now when doing two-lane rural roads passing exercises fully loaded with a driver, teacher, and 3 other students, being stuck in the Isuzu in those days was incredibly dangerous…. the Bonne would pass with ease!
Forest Hills… I went to a Joan Baez concert there at the Tennis Stadium in 1963 and a few years later started riding through that town twice daily on the LIRR as a Long Island / Manhattan commuter. Baez’s special guest was Bob Dylan. The town looks like it has not changed much (which is nice to see).
This link below is from 1964. They apparently came to Forest Hills more than once.
We’re three blocks from the stadium, and I have a tape of Joan Jett, and Pete Townshend/Roger Daltrey, recorded through my living room window from the concert seven years ago. I walk past the stadium every day to the subway/LIRR.
Out of curiosity, your last name of Plaut – are you related to W. Gunther Plaut, the reform rabbi, or Richard Plant, the Columbia professor? (or maybe even Manfred and/or Selma Plaut, of Fulda, Germany)?
Early in R. L. Plaut’s terrific COAL series, he mentions church attendance in high school and a church wedding for his first marriage, so I’d be surprised if a rabbi were a family member. (I supposedly had a rabbi ancestor myself, but you wouldn’t guess so from my surname.)
Hello davidjoseph1,
Regarding those you named above, I do not think they’re relations.
My paternal great grandparents were from Frankfurt Germany for sure.
My knowledge of the Plaut forebears is limited because my father was banished from the family fold when he eloped to the Glenn Isle Casino in the late 1930s with a beautiful blonde fashion model who was Catholic.
The banishment was life long.
My father did not appear to have any regrets.
We, the three issues of that marriage, were raised as Presbyterians because it was the closest church to our home.
After my mother died in the early 1990s and my father flew up to visit us in NJ from Florida, I played a pre-war recording of the Glenn Miller Band at the Casino.
He cried.
I have some genealogical information on the Plauts – which actually is an interesting family – because we’re related by marriage. If you’re ever interested drop me a line.
I loved the Glenn Miller radio remote. I knew he played a lot at the Glen Island Casino, but I had never paid attention to just where it was. I can only imagine how it would have transported your father back to his youth.
I believe that the stereo effect on this clip was created after the fact by some audiophile wizardry. There are actually a few genuine stereo recordings from that period that came from the band’s work in film. Optical technology was used in film recording and music was recorded on two tracks that were blended with a third track for vocal dialog for a single mono sound track for theater releases. A handful of genuine stereo recordings of a few of the big bands’ film performances have been preserved. I did some research on this awhile back and found it truly fascinating.
https://jpcavanaugh.com/2021/09/03/artie-shaw-in-stereo-in-1939/
Great pictures! Didn’t Broughams all have the concealed headlamps though?
Interestingly enough (for me), the first car I rode in in the USA, age 12, that I remember, was a 1976 or 77 Ford LTD–very similar to this one, but it was a taxicab. Without concealed headlights.
I couldn’t have known then, but the cab took us right by the Forest Hills exit of the LIE.
My family took a LTD taxi from Port Authority (in Manhattan) to Port Jeff in Long Island, 50 miles away. It was cold and grey and dusk when we got in the cab. It was a long ride at the end of a long day at the end of a long trip, a C-130, then a C-141, then a Greyhound (all three “firsts” for me)
At least the LTD had a roomy back seat, good heat, and was very quiet.
C-141 – From McGuire in Lakehurst?
C-141 TO McGuire in central Jersey, from Torrejon, Spain (outside Madrid)
My great aunt lived in a Forest Hills apt. near the tennis club for over 50 years, until Alzheimer’s hit. My mother remembered riding in her husband’s rumble seat to Coney Island, eating raw oysters, and being sick on the way back.
Her funeral was there in ’82 (with overflights from JFK), and thankfully, her son arranged a limo to get us to Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn and back to the tennis club for a meal. Block after block of boarded-up tenement houses in sight of the Manhattan skyline. I suppose that area has been rebuilt.
I’ve driven in NYC only once, a dozen years ago, when my SIL’s brother lived in Brooklyn near the Bridge. Several major roads had uncomfortably narrow lanes to squeeze in more cars. I doubt they were that way that in the 70s when cars were wider.
The BQE through Brooklyn Heights has been re-laned with the Robert Moses – era triple carriageways consolidated into dual carriageways from Manhattan bridge down past the Brooklyn bridge to Carroll gardens. But people are driving in the breakdown lane.
I’m from upstate and did not enjoy driving on the 1920s era planned highways because of the narrow lanes, but after 20 years I guess I got used to it.
Not only are all the tenements near the river in Brooklyn and or Queens gentrified, or replaced with high-rises, but the gentrification is sweeping North from morrisania into University Heights in the Bronx. The city is a very different place than it was in 1982.
NYC was in a state of decline during my NY era, 1977-1986. The South Bronx was synonymous with urban blight, and parts of Brooklyn were not much better. The city painted (literally) windows on the boarded windows, complete with flowers on the sill, on the abandoned buildings on the Cross Bronx Expwy.
Due to a cancelled flight, I spent a night in Queens in 2017. My hotel was in Long Island City, an area that was not alien to me, as I was familiar with neighboring Astoria, as well as Flushing, both in Queens, back in the 70s/80s.
I though perhaps I had been beamed to another city. Where there were industrial sites, several abandoned and underused, there were hotels, condos, and even nice restaurants. Definitely very different from the NYC of 1977-86.
Thanks for including the EPA Mileage chart. Interesting to note that the biggest engine on the LTD gets the best mileage. And the Honda Civic got better city mileage than the highway mileage of the Mercury Bobcat (rebadged Pinto). Malaise era indeed!
Yes, how fascinating that you could pile on another 100 cubic inches of torque and only lose 1 mpg in the bargain. 460 4 bbl for the win!
The 460 probably came with a lower (numerically) axle ratio than the other engines. I can remember a Mustang II ad with 34 mpg, so I’m surprised the Bobcat is in the 20s.
Yes, there is something about that EPA list.
In 1977, the Mustang II (car of interest to me…lol) was 24/34. So was Pinto.
Most 1976 GM and Ford full-size cars with the standard 350 (GM, various versions) and 351 were 12/18, 13/19. I think the Nova was advertised 18/24 (standard).
1976 Aspen/Volare was 19/27 for the 2dr or 4dr, and 18/30 for the wagon.
The Honda seems correct at 27/39. I think Datsun B210 and Chevette were similar.
My driver’s ed car was the Mercury version – a low trim 1975 Marquis sedan.
These were background scenery when I was young. I didn’t know anyone who owned one from after 1973 or 74, but they were still very common on the streets. When these were old enough to be good used cars for a college kid, there were still lots of Mopar sedans out there that were 1) cheaper and 2) more interesting to me, so I never got tempted to own one.
One correction – thinking back, one of my roommates during senior year had a father who owned a high trim LTD Landau that was maybe a 77 or 78, baby blue with navy roof/interior and fender skirts! I might have ridden in it once, I don’t remember.
In the seventies like the last big Chevy Impala, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of these. They were everywhere, even after the oil crisis gas spike.
Being a Ford family, we had more than a few of these cars. Various trims. Galaxie, LTD, LTD Brougham, they all looked alike and drove alike. We called them “road whales” and preferred racing around in my Valiant, my brother’s Valiant, and my little brother’s Valiant. Or our cousin’s Pinto and Club Wagon. The LTDs were for our parents, not us.
Then they got passed down to us. To say we beat them up and mistreated them like rented mules would be correct. We’d cram our skinny selves into these road whales and laugh about being Carl Malden on the TV show, “The Streets of San Francisco”. Incredibly, we never crashed any of them. They were our best set of wheels at the time, so we didn’t try to destroy them – but these cars went unloved.
It’s hard to imagine for us that these cars had any appeal. Yet, Ford sold a million of them nearly every year. “Road hugging weight” – blah, blah, blah. We didn’t care, they got us where we needed to go.
A lot of these old Fords weren’t loved much, and frankly, I still can’t fathom any sweet memory from them either. Unfair.
For whatever reason I always thought this gen (’76-’78) and the ’71-’72 were the quintessential LTD’s of my youth. They seemed to be everywhere in the middle class. Somehow many of us learned to pilot them safely, but these days I can’t imagine having to.
Well photographed and well narrated. But that car…echk. The only close-to-redeeming thing about it is its paint colour. All the way back to when I was a very little kid (like, child-seat age) and they were new and all over the place, I have just never, ever liked these; not even when flossied up with Mercury and gingerbread. Bunch of awkward, discordant lines, curves, and angles all carelessly thrown together with whatever Ford considered a Better Idea—i.e., cheaper—than chewing gum.
(To be perfectly fair about it, I hold a similarly dim view of the ’71-’76 GM B-bodies, etc.)
Boy, do these pictures bring back memories! Way back in the mid-1980s, I lived in Forest Hills for six months. My daily commute into Manhattan involved a 15 minute walk past the old stadium, though the arch on Continental Avenue pictured above, to the 71st Street subway stop at Queens Blvd.
The area appears to have changed little since then, right down to the plethora of 1970s LTDs on the streets. Also popular were all kinds of GM A, B and C bodies from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Midnight Auto Supply, Inc. seemed to harvest parts from the local fleet on an almost nightly basis and I would often walk by cars that had been intact the previous day and discover missing wheelcovers, antennas, and, in the case of my own 1984 Regal, front bumpers, on my birthday, no less.
These days catalytic converters are the new hotness.
In my extensive walks in the neighborhood, I see five remaining 1977 to 1996 GM B-bodies, and three of those belong to a guy a block away from the yeshiva who also has a motionless LTD and an Alfa Romeo Giuletta in his Archie Bunker driveway. There is a dead 85 crown Vic parked on Greenway North in Forest Hills Gardens right next to Union turnpike the car has tags but I haven’t seen it move in a decade and there are two Lincoln Continentals and Town cars from the 1980s and ’70s between woodhaven boulevard and Union turnpike.
I think you can figure out the depreciation from there.
That MPG chart is fun, it points out something that always made me scratch my head at the time. Note the 351 full size Ford gets 11 and the V6 Bobcat gets 15. This was pretty common. Here you are with enough money to buy a new car. Unless you drive 1000 miles a week, are you going to pick a tiny subcompact over a big comfortable full size for 4 MPG? But people obsessed on it. Akin to the “go into hock for 30k because of gas savings” mentality.
Oh dear god! I’m having flashbacks! My paternal grandmother had an almost identical car. Same color except her’s was a ’78 and had the vacuum operated hideaway headlamps. (Which sometimes didn’t close all the way giving it a lazy eye look.
She’d bought it new in 1978, seven years before I was born and drove it all the way through 1998. I hated that car with a passion. I thought it was the ugliest thing I’d ever laid eyes on. I can remember going to the mall and sitting in the floor so no one would see me in it.
Nice ! I live in the area. There are quite a few interesting old vehicles to be seen around there from time to time. I spotted a swell 49 Chrysler Coupe on Yellowstone Boulevard a few weeks ago and there was a White ’32 Studebaker parked on the street around the corner for several years.
I bet the owner of the LTD was chowing down at the T Bone diner when that car was parked.
I shot that Windsor about 6 weeks ago. There was the 1960 T-Bird at the same corner during the height of covid lockdown that I shot the day my wife’s grandmother died in April of 2020. I’ll probably put together that corner as a post in a few weeks.
Sorry to hear of your wife’s loss.. I saw that T-Bird a while back. Aqua and white as I recall. I wonder if someone who lives on that block is a collector/dealer. Looking forward to your write up.
There’s a multi family home on 110th Ave / 63rd Drive that usually has interesting vehicles in the driveway and out front. Recently spotted a ’51 Plymouth, a ’62 Cadillac a Trabant and he occasionally has had restored vintage John Deere tractor out front.