The 1965 Ford LTD was an ambitious move upmarket for the Ford brand, and it was a big success. But that didn’t translate to the limousine version by Lehmann-Peterson; only 13 were ever made. Those out of date wide whitewalls probably didn’t help either.
Why is it sitting so high, air suspension maybe? As ungainly a looking car as you`ll ever see.
Reinforced frame & and the high wall tires look like bullet proof type .
I think I remember these cars. What were they thinking with those wide WWs?
Well it’s _different_ .
-Nate
1963 seemed to the big year when all the manufacturers shifted from (moderately) wide whites to white stripe tires.
How did every brand get the same thinner whites, overnight ?!
1962 was the model year for the industry change to narrower whitewalls although IIRC some 1961 models (e.g., the Impala SS) introduced the new narrower style.
Is that a hardtop limo?? If so, must be the one and only ever tried, well, in the postwar era at least.
Notice the headlamps, they have covers…evidently they are from the 1965 NASCAR models.
A true Ford LTD Ltd.
I can’t see anyone choosing one of these over a Continental sedan, which wouldn’t have as much rear legroom, but would probably be less expensive and more robust.
An odd idea. The wide whitewalls are a definite no. However, why even do such a thing a a LWB Ford. Perhaps for foreign markets. Have seen pics of these before. Never an explanation why.
Not terrible in my opinion but the price/prestige ratio compared with a stretched or standard Continental mustve made it a poor choice. Looks almost Soviet in a way
Yeah, very strange. I mean, what well-off person would want to be ferried around in a stretched Ford, even a top-of-the-line model, as opposed to a Continental with some caché.
I wonder if this was some kind of commissioned modification that a Ford exec (like Iacocca, the guy who came up with the LTD in the first place) wanted done just to test the water.
He would do it ~two decades later with the short-lived, Lebaron-based K-car limousine so there was precedence for it.
You may be right.
Some period promo shots show the car with normal whitewalls, so I suspect that this is a modern picture of a restored car parked in front of a place that was (or could have been) used as a background in 1965. I don’t understand why some people insist on putting fat whitewalls on cars that never came with them and look odd when so-equipped.
I have seen a few photos of these over the years but have never gotten interested enough to dig into the story more deeply.
Some of us just like wide white wall tires .
I’m on the fence about these but in general I like them wider than narrower .
-Nate
Could be they just don’t know that whitewall widths changed over the years. Or maybe they were the only whitewalls in the right size they could get locally.
Whitewalls aside, anyone else think these look more like light truck tyres? All that sidewall height and width. I guess you’d have to (or should) uprate the tyre size for carrying more passengers.
If it’s a relatively recent photo, I can see the wide-whitewalls and tall tires being the closest the restorer could find that matched the original spec tires. As someone else mentioned, it’s certainly no lightweight.
The height of the tires and wide-whitewalls lends me to believe they were targeted more at some kind of luxury car restoration from the twenties like, say, a Duesenberg. The owner figured, “what the hell. If those tires are good enough for a Duesey, they would certainly be fine on a ’65 LTD limo”.
Reproduction passenger car tires are readily available in correct sizes and load carrying capacity for this car, and with a appropriate-for-era whitewall width. I believe the later Duesenbergs were still rolling on 17 inch wheels.
It seems that many people just grab for the poofy wide whitewalls when restoring any vehicle from the 1930’s-60’s (and even much later on luxury cars). This sees them showing up on workaday pickups, fleet models, cheap economy cars, and other places they probably weren’t originally to be found. That’s always a bit jarring to me. But I can’t picture a stock 1953-54 Studebaker Starliner without wide whitewalls.
And yeah, I’m agree with most of the others. The wide whites aren’t working for me. The crisp, sharp-folded look of the 1965 Ford box would be better served by a much narrower whitewall. I think I might take the car much more seriously so equipped.
J.P. – Ditto, wide whites on anything later than ’61 have always sort of made me wretch. FWIW, I’ve deduced that you and I are about the same age, and suspect our reactions are pretty typical of our vintage.
I agree with the idea that Iacocca would have lobbied to get some of these built as a marketing tie in for the new LTD. “Not only is it quieter than a Rolls, it could also be converted into a convincing limousine!”
There were often limos built out of Pontiacs, Buicks, etc, but these were usually built as six door “airport limos,” people transporters, not prestige machines. This Ford is a proper four door design. Not a bad design, but most buyers of limos were not trying to impress their clients with how thrifty their choice was.
It would definitely be in Iacocca’s character. I remember a quote from someone who worked around Iacocca at Ford and the joke was, “give Iacocca a blank check, and he’ll do anything”.
If true, it would make an interesting connection between Iacocca and that other flamboyant auto exec of the time, John DeLorean. Supposedly, one of the things that got him fired from GM (although DeLorean always maintained he ‘quit’), was some kind of shady sideline around that time where he was involved with (and getting kickbacks on the side) converting Cadillacs into limousines.
With that level of factory backing, it would’ve made more sense for L-P to start with untrimmed 4-door post sedans and trim them out as LTDs in their shop rather than solve how (and why) to stretch a pillarless 4-door hardtop.
Well, the Continental 4-door was a pillarless hardtop.
In fact, I wonder what the probability might be that someone with deep pockets decided, “I want a limousine, and I want it to be a Ford product, but I hate suicide doors!”, so the brand-new, top-of-the-line LTD hardtop got the nod. Or at least that’s what Lehmann-Peterson was hoping.
Superior certainly built a few Pontiacs for Funeral homes.
They seemed to be a popular make for those businesses in my part of Canada. In fact, I remember Superior having an office in Red Deer, Alberta in the sixties as they marketed limos and hearses.
According to everything I’ve read about these, the idea was to offer these to municipalities and government agencies who would find an L-P Lincoln too ostentatious, but they weren’t interested.
I can imagine the clearance – and heft – needed to open those long rear doors necessitated by keeping the original B-pillar didn’t help, either.
There was one of these limousines who have appeared in an episode of the first season of Mission Impossible.
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_174459-Ford-LTD-Stretched-Limousine-1966.html
I couldn’t resist to wonder what if Lehmann-Petersen had followed the same path then Ghia did when they built the Imperial limousines by stretching the Imperial convertible body to build an LTD limousine?
Also on a off-topic sidenote, there was some coachbuilder in Brazil who did stretched limousines of the Brazilian Galaxie/LTD/Landau like this one shown in the Italian movie
“Non c’è due senza quattro” known in English as “Double Trouble” with Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill.
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_217444-Ford-LTD-Landau-Stretched-Limousine-1976.html
Great pull! Thanks for sharing
The spotlights also make this particular car look ridiculous. The original car is considerably more handsome:
You are right about those mirrors. They make me wonder of the car was meant for overseas. Can’t tell if it’s LHD…
65 LTD marked Fords move into upscale luxury which was a good move in some ways, but also would pull MERCURY customers away much like Chrysler moving down with Newport, further weakening DeSoto. But the Lehman limos couldn’t be a success! Anyone buying a limo, would go for Lincoln, Cadillac, Imperial. Those 13 probably went to Ford family or execs. Still, looks impressive. Thanks for sharing this post. 😎 .
Call me odd but I’ll take one. A slight stance/ tire change and that is a beautiful car. Not sure about the business model though
I don’t think it will add much value, but it was Lehmann-Peterson, not Petersen. Also a kid of Peter, but somewhere else.
If someone in the previous comments has stated the following, I apologize for repeating this, the stretched Ford LTDs and also Mercury Park Lanes were not done by Lehmann-Peterson. They were done by Andy Hotton’s DST, Dearborn Steel and Tubing.
http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/a/aha/aha.htm
From the information in the above link: “But the project that really got Hotton started in the limousine business was the design and fabrication of a series of 85 1965-66 Ford LTD and Mercury Park Lane stretches that were sold through authorized Ford and Mercury dealers in the mid 1960’s. It’s unknown as to how many limos were LTDs and how many were Park Lanes, although a couple of the Fords are known to exist.”
DST also did the ’64 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolts and the ’67 Thunderbird Apollos for Abercrombie & Fitch.