Swapping the front clip of a Ford Fairlane or LTD onto a shorter-wheelbase Falcon is nothing unusual in Australia; the same applies to Statesman/Caprice clips on Holden utes. Just five minutes before I saw this “LTD Wagon”, I saw a similar creation using the front of a Fairlane. But when I took a second look at this patina-heavy, I realized something was very off about it.
To Curbsiders from places other than Australia and New Zealand, you may just be thinking this is just another ungainly wagon from the same country that brought you the poorly proportioned Holden Brougham or the exceedingly long Holden Crewman. But you’ll recall from last week that a 1972-79 Ford Falcon XA/XB/XC wagon should look…
…like this, complete with coke bottle contours and styling and proportions very reminiscent of a contemporary Torino. Note how the C-pillar and door meet the wheel arch. There isn’t a gaping chasm between door and rear wheel arch like the featured car.
Here’s a better look. The most obvious explanation is that this is an old hearse from a time before they were designed to look like the Popemobile. But there are no other modifications like a raised roof or a modified glasshouse.
One thing is for sure: Ford didn’t offer an LTD Wagon in its Australian showrooms. The 1976-79 P6 LTD may have been the Broughamiest Brougham ever manufactured in Australia, especially in special edition Silver Monarch trim. This front end would not have looked out of place on, say, a Mercury or a Chrysler.
There’s something cool about putting a fancy front end on a plain-jane ute or wagon like this owner has done: look at the Rancheros and LTD II wagons wearing Thunderbird front clips. But I remain puzzled as to why this Falcon wagon has been stretched in a manner that manages to make the wagon look so awkwardly long and yet so minutely stretched at the same time. Any ideas?
A shot of the interior would probably have answered your question. Did you look inside?
I’m guessing it was a hearse.
The overall silhouette looks good to me; it is the ridiculously short doors, especially the rear doors coupled with that long rear glass that make it odd. All in all, though, it’s presentable and probably useful too.
To my US eyes, that grille strongly resembles the offspring of a 1st generation Chrysler Cordoba and a Rolls Royce.
The entire front clip is very Cordoba-esque. Which came first?
For a several decades, Ford Australia and Holden often built the saloons with two different wheelbases and estates in longer wheelbase. The rear passenger doors are of same length and interchangeable between shorter and longer wheelbases. The rear wings are stretched forward to fill in the gap betweeen wheel openings and rear doors. Not elegant but cost effective solution for limited production in Australia and New Zealand.
However, the stretch in this aforementioned estate is pretty extreme.
I saw this P6 LTD one day when travelling through the Outback in 1987 and was thoroughly confused because I knew no four-door version of Chrysler Cordoba existed. The petrohead in my tour group clarified it up for me.
The P6 LTD was built on an even longer wheelbase with a unique rear door that was also longer. So this era Falcon platform had three wheelbases.
Standard length- Falcon sedan and hardtop coupe.
Extended length- Falcon wagon, ute and panel van, Fairlaine sedan
Long wheelbase- LTD sedan.
This hearse uses the normal Falcon back door, so it is built off the station wagon wheel base and body with the LTD front clip fitted.
A bit of Sunday morning information overload, lol!
All true and correct! It is worth noting though they there were three variations of rear doors:
– Falcon sedans had the standard door with a curved upper window frame
– Falcon wagons and Fairlane sedans had the same door skin as the Falcon, but with a straightened upper window frame
– LTD’s had their own special rear door skins, which were longer than the Falcon/Fairlane doors.
The Falcon and Fairlane models from ’72 all had the coke bottle rear door style until the XC models, when the up kick in the door was reduced to give a more formal look. The revised LTD, which introduced the Rolls Royce style grille, kept its longer coke-bottle look for skins. I guess Ford figured it was not really worth changing and the extra length of the LTD lessened the coke bottle look anyway.
Another fascinating fact is that the XA/B/C Utes all used the doors off the Falcon/Landau hardtop coupe. That’s right, long frameless windows in coupe doors on a ute! Looked very stylish and given that Ford Australia invented the ‘coupe utility’ I suppose it was very appropriate!
Thanks, Glen H and Ashley, for additional information about Australian cars. Much appreciated!
I am thinking about XD Falcon and ZJ Fairlane, which are loosely influenced by European Ford Granada. Both have same rear passenger door shape albeit slightly different window frames. You can notice the extension in Fairlane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1982_Ford_LTD_%28FC%29_sedan_%282015-05-29%29_03.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1979_Ford_Fairmont_%28XD%29_Ghia_sedan_%282010-12-10%29_01.jpg
And Holden VL Commodore had two lengths. The image isn’t that great, but you can see the small extension in VL Statesman.
http://www.uniquecarposters.com/images/page/68_1_L_holden-vl-expanded.jpg
Heya Oliver. There was no such thing as a VL Statesman. That poster is just a bit of fantasy from an illustrator creating some of his own variations of a theme. Some of those models are real. A lot of them are not. There was only ever a VL four door sedan and wagon. All the two door models, including the ute, on that poster are straight from the imagination – no two door models were ever made (though an Opel Monza or two was privately imported to be made into a ‘Monzadore’, at least with the earlier VK model). The Statesman nameplate had disappeared by the time the VL was released (last seen on the HQ-HZ based WB Stateman in 1984), and was not ressurected until the VN Commodore-based VQ model in 1990.
To me, this looks like an early 70s Chevy Malibu that’s been pulled at both ends. (I almost missed that HUGE area between the trailing edge of the rear door and the forward edge of the rear wheel well.)
I’ve seen that Australian LTD front end before, and it looks amazing like a U.S. Chrysler Cordoba front end.
And count me as a fan of front clip “mix and match”.
To me the front end looks similar to a AMC Matador and the rear end looks like a early/mid 70’s Ford Gran Torino
Maybe the rear is from a Falcon ute, with roof added? The proportions and overhang look right.
I’d also guess ex-hearse, although most of the ones I’ve seen have had 2 doors only. I think would be unusual to see a raised-roof hearse from that era too.
The other possibility is a three-year airport taxi. I saw a 1971 model converted for one of the airlines (in this post: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake-really-rare-wagons/ ), but a third seat would be likely visible if that was the case and the amount of extra wheelbase is on the small side for this option. Note that the standard wagon was available with a rear-facing third seat, neighbours had one when I was growing up.
From the photos, it sure looks like it has plenty of leg and knee room in the rear seat, which is positioned properly relative to the tailgate in a conventional station wagon. The fading of the paint below the rear side window is curiously suggestive of lots of bodywork there to conceal a stretch job. The overall effect is rather like what Douglas Aircraft and Boeing did to their DC-9 and 727-100 to make the MD-80 and 737-800.
I think you mean the 737-100, as the 727 was a trijet though it shared the basic 707 fuselage. The 737-200 is my favorite as it always seemed to have the most acceleration on takeoff. I hear pilots liked it too.
Perhaps a coroner’s car? If I recall, Quicy drove a wagon when he was at work
It was a hearse there were many done this way some were even exported to NZ Ive seen several online recently biggest clue is the extended flower rack on top, ugly and ungainly to drive its a bit like those extended wheelbase high roof wheelchair taxis Ford made.
I don’t know the answer, but a quick GIS for hearse-Ford-Australia provided a delightful set of images, most of them being configurations new to these American eyes.
This Wiki picture and its caption seem to say these sorts of conversions aren’t uncommon in Oz:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1971_Ford_XY_Falcon_hearse_(5304426501).jpg
A few years ago I checked out a P6 Landau which was probably built by Ford Australia. It had the XA-B Landau body with the more formal side window but the entire front clip from a P6 LTD bolted on. Interestingly the chassis number was just a whole bunch of zeroes and all of the codes on the ID plate were zeroes also.
We concluded it was built as a prototype by the factory to see what a P6 Landau looked like and was then procured by someone from Ford and registered instead of being crushed.
p.s It looked awful.
Now there’s a mythical beast. Despite its awfulness, no temptation to buy?
Not a chance. The guy was asking $5000 which was probably a fair price at the time but it had a lot of rust in weird places that wasn’t normal for a Falcon. We concluded that being a prototype it probably missed out on several production processes such as rustproofing.
Plus it really looked hideous. The XA-B Landaus looked fantastic with the hidden lamps and full width grille, sort of like an Aussie Thunderbird. But this thing was all wrong with the sleek coupe body and the very formal, upright front end of the P6 LTD. Side view was the worst because the nose was far too long and the blunt profile of the grille and heavy chrome bumpers all combined to create a Frankensteins monster of a car.
Ex hearse for sure. Fairlane’s & LTD’s were the choice for this sort of car right up to recent times.
My Dad’s last ride was in one of the last of the LTD hearse’s from around 2005.
I have seen a couple of hearse’s done on the Chrysler 300C, makes for an impressive vehicle
Hearse- the roof rails are a dead giveaway.
“dead giveaway” LOL
ha ha Glen, good one. Also, here is the feature cars twin:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiefordadverts/8608610597/
also the area from the front end of the doors to the rear of the car from the side view looks like a 1971-72 Ford full sized wagon
Interesting stretch – and a gander at google showed another 4 stretched the same way. The oddest stretch I’ve seen on a Falcon hearse is the one pictured below that was for sale here in NZ a couple years ago. It’s a ’77 Falcon with a P6 front clip, and the stretch is in the D-pillar! I guess it meant they could keep the factory side glass, but still looked a little unusual…!
That actually works better. Nice find.
Thats how Holden built their LB coroners HD vans both of them, they lengthened the back a foot behind the axle
It’s a hearse. A quick google image search of ‘XC Falcon Hearse’ answers the question with many pictures showing the extra extra extra bodywork between the rear doors and wheelarch. They just went the extra mile and added the LTD clip.
I’m always surprised when I see an Australian Ford wagon with the Magic Doorgate and it opens door-wise the opposite way from a US car. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, but there is always that initial disconnect between eyes and brain.
HI guys, this is actually my car and I have only just found this post.
We bought it already like this but with a coffin floor. It was a working hearse and Morgue vehicle. We have the snap in curtains that close of the back of the car.
The wagon was stretched at the carriage builders after it left the warehouse but before going to the owner, who was a funeral home. They stretched it and welded the roof together with lead weld so the roof has rusted along those lines.
A coffin floor was installed, the radio removed and the horn unplugged. The lights were also rigged up to be on high beam when turned on. We have since fixed those items ready for road use as a family car. The P6 LTD front end was attached to make the car look more like a Rolls Royce for a more somber and regal look for funerals.
We removed the coffin floor to put in seats, as we have 5 kids. The back seat has a wide gap from the back of the front seat to the bottom section of the back seat which is great for putting things in like the kids toys and bags etc.
We found a hidden fold down seat for the back of the wagon that has two more seats and my husband retro fitted that updating the materials it was made from and adding seat belts. The people sitting in this seat look out the back window.
You mentioned the rust and since the original post we have taken the car off the road to fix this. It needs a new roof– as the lead welds have damaged the roof beyond patch repair. We have had to source two new wagons for this.
It needs new A-pillars and I think something around the fire wall. It needs some new panels for the lower rear quarters and overall a good old clean up. It will be going black.
Thankyou for commenting on my hearse, I love her and looked for quite a while for a hearse that was big enough (Holden’s aren’t, and i was raised in a Holden family, my husband is a ford man) and affordable for us change over to accommodate seats.