Some older cars can just make you smile, by virtue of styling cues from a bygone era, flashy chrome, vibrant colors, endearing quirkiness, or maybe all of those things. Some cars just look happy. This is not such a car. This stripped-down, full-size Ford rolling slowly down a highway on a hot summer afternoon presents an expression of dour seriousness. No fluffy frivolity here; this car has a job to do, and it’s doing it, with as little fuss and fanfare as possible. Both full-size sedans and bare-bones cars have virtually disappeared from the car market in recent decades, which makes this sighting rather unexpected… still not happy, but certainly unexpected.
Stripped-down cars weren’t necessarily cheap cars. A Ford Custom like the one above wasn’t cheap in absolute terms (at $2,350 it cost 18% more than a base model Falcon), but it shined when measured in dollars-per-pound. The Custom was a full-sized car – identical in measurement to a Galaxie 500, but with absolutely no frills. For buyers needing a big vehicle at minimal cost, cars like the Custom were perfect. Or at least they were acceptable.
Ford’s Custom nameplate dated from 1949, but had somewhat of a sporadic history in the company’s 1950s lineup. After a brief hiatus, the Custom re-emerged in 1957, filling the role as Ford’s base trim model – a role it served for three years before another hiatus.
For 1964, Ford again reintroduced the Custom, filling a similar role as the ’57 model – a no-frills car offered as a 2-door or 4-door sedan. 1964 Fords featured a new design, and they were completely redesigned again for ’65, making this single model year instantly identifiable. On a dressed-up Galaxie, this design can seem somewhat busy, but with the Custom’s lack of ornamentation, one can see it’s a rather clean shape.
Ford Custom buyers fell into a few discrete categories. Many were sold to police departments or taxi companies, with Ford offering numerous police configurations in 2-doors, 4-doors and wagons with a 6-cyl. and several V-8 engine options. Taxi packages were offered only as 6-cyl. 4-doors.
Another significant market was that of business fleets. Companies that purchased fleet cars in the 1960s sought conservative, fuss-free, full-size sedans – cars that would imply that a good business decision was made in the vehicle’s purchase. And nothing too showy that would cause customers to wonder just how their money was really being spent.
A third group would also buy these cars: Cheapskates. Such people presumably needed a full-size car, but had no appetite for unnecessary superficialities that came along with buying a Galaxie for $160 more.
It’s unclear just what share of Ford Custom’s output was consumed by each of these three groups, but it is generally thought that police and taxi buyers made the bulk of the base Custom sales, while the slightly less austere Custom 500 (featuring additional chrome trim, upgraded interiors, carpet and armrests for instance) took the bulk of business and cheapskate sales.
Source of production figures: “Standard Catalog of Ford, 1903-1998” Note: Does not include wagons. Revised with updated 1974 data courtesy of CC reader MCT.
Regardless, Ford sold nearly 100,000 base Customs in 1964, and another 90,000 Custom 500s. While that pales to the 591,000 Galaxies produced that year, it still shows that stripped-down full-size cars had quite a following. This yielded enough of a market that Ford offered a bargain “Custom” version of its full-size cars for the next 14 years. After the mid-1960s, however, the concept of a stripped-down full-size sedan began to lose some appeal. Ford’s output of Customs diminished nearly every year from 1966 through 1978 (for the last four years, Custom was only offered to fleet customers).
It’s hard to tell just what this base Custom 2-door’s purpose was early in its life, though my guess is that this was a non-police vehicle (due to the dealer sticker on the trunk lid, which would have been rare for a police car, and the lack of a spotlight). Dual exhausts suggest a V-8 under the hood (4 different V-8s were available, in addition to the standard Six), though the current engine isn’t necessarily what came from the factory.
I spotted this car on Interstate 90 in eastern South Dakota, a stretch of highway whose speed limit is 80 miles per hour. The Ford, however, was traveling about 20 mph slower than most traffic. This difference in speed made it tough to take a full range of photos, but only one picture is necessary to take a mental journey back to the past. After all, stark austerity – the type of austerity as defined by this Ford – is awfully uncommon in modern times.
It’s a bit impressive to see someone keeping the faith of austerity alive. This side profile shows the Custom’s painted (instead of chromed) window frames and the lack of side trim brightwork. This isn’t exactly a happy face, but it gets the job done. And when it comes to stripped-down cars, that’s pretty much the purpose.
Photographed in Hanson County, South Dakota in July, 2018.
Related Reading:
Cohort Outtake: 1964 Ford Custom Two-Door Sedan – Change Is Not Always An Improvement Paul N
Note: a rerun of an older post.
A Ford oddity of this era was their continued production of a Galaxy 500 two door post sedan. They made them thru 1964, long after Chevy dropped their top series two door post. Ford seems to have done a good job of selling that type of full size car.
We forget that a lot of the standard features on cars today were extra cost items on older cars. I remember being in a new 58 Ford and the owner had a flashlight he used to backup at night. My dad had a 52 Ford he bought new that didn’t even have a radio. Today an automatic and AC and power windows are standard features.
In Canada, the Custom was also offered as a 2-door hardtop until the 1970s as shown in these pictures from the 1971 and 1973 Canadian full-size Ford brochures.
https://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/Ford-Canada/Ford-Canada%20Cars/1971%20Ford%20Full%20Size%20-%20Canada/slides/1971%20Ford%20Full%20Size%20Brochure%20%28Cdn%29%2012-13.html
https://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/Ford-Canada/Ford-Canada%20Cars/1973%20Ford%20Full%20Size%20-%20Canada/slides/1973%20Ford%20Full%20Size%20%28Cdn%29-16-17.html
The `64 Ford Custom 4 door sedan will forever immortalized as the Mayberry sheriff`s car on The Andy Griffith Show.
Ford Custom = Chevy Biscayne Custom 500 = Bel Air Galaxie 500 = Impala The pricing and features of these three pairs are extremely close.
The Custom may have been 18% more than a Falcon, about $350, and the Custom 500 another $100 but a company that had invested in training quality sales and service people and was interested in keeping them happy the extra $450 for the Custom 500 seems like a smart investment. And, by 1964 depending on what part of the country you were in a V-8 with air was almost a necessity.
And how much more the Custom was compared to the mid-size Fairlane?
My mother’s former 1967 Chevy Bel Air looks rather dour when photographed in black and white on a winter day, especially after my brother removed the then-unfashionable dog dish hub caps. (He also jacked up the rear end.)
Look at those skinny tires!
Sticker prices are meaningless for large fleet buys. I imagine fleet buyers were a significant portion of stripper sales. While taxi & police units are mentioned, another significant purchaser of such vehicles were the federal and state governments for administrative use motor pools. Lord knows I drove enough of this type of vehicle that were GSA purchases. Usually the only option on the older units was the base automatic transmission.
As to dealer stickers, even fleet cars hit the market eventually as used units. Federal GSA units were normally purchased by dealers and wholesalers after which they generally ended up on the retail market. The original GSA standard I remember was that a car would auctioned after 7 years OR 70k miles. As reliability improved, the GSA standard evolved to 7 years AND 70k miles.
This change resulted in some odd Military Police fleets. MP cars run a lot of miles. Many administrative use cars – especially VIP cars – aged out at very low miles. Since motor pools had limited authorization for VIP cars, they’d often give them to the MPs near the end of their age-out period to run up the miles. Once they hit the requisite mileage and age, they could be turned in and replaced with new units. In the motor pool, you could see stripper MP Fords next to the occasional deluxe VIP car. If it was a Ford it would be a loaded LTD or perhaps even a Mercury.
The original economics of stripper fleets was based on used cars not having much resale value after a few years. Stripper purchases made sense because the car was considered used up by the time it was rotated out of the fleet. As cars became both more expensive and more reliable, economics changed. Fleet buyers – even the GSA – started looking at resale value. Demand for strippers dropped off as fleet cost calculations began to favor purchase of better equipped cars that would provide better resale.
Being retired, my knowledge of current fleet practices is dated and may no longer be correct. However it does go a long way to explaining the drop in stripper sales without any corresponding drop in fleet sizes. If anything, government fleets have grown. The advent of Uber & Lyft may have shrunk the taxi market though.