In a recent post that I devoted to station wagons, commenters remarked about the few Fords on display. There was a reason for that. I felt Ford wagons deserved to stand on their own, as they were a dominant force in that segment for years. With that in mind, here’s a gallery of Ford wagons; some in action, some gallantly posing, and some just earning their keep.
Naturally, the ‘57 Ford wagon is my favorite, but all of them are pretty cool. I’m not old enough to remember the earlier models in person, but the 60s & 70s models make me smile whenever they turn up.
Mine too! Our 57 was red and white with red interior. When I was teething, and left alone in the car for a bit (wasn’t seen as criminal then), I couldn’t resist that red padded dash and knawed away on it till my Dad returned. We’d talk about that incident from time to time over the years, while remembering the old family haulers, and he’d always recall 2 things- 1st that it had a “Thunderbird engine,” and 2nd that “and I sold it with your teeth imprints still on that dash.” Good times!!!
As much fun as it is to see the cars (well wagons), the people standing with the cars are fun as well.
The older lady standing in front of the teal woody wagon with her hat and purse. I can see her thinking 💭 “Hurry up Harold, we’ll be late for church!”
The family in front of the red and white 1960 Ford: The eldest son’s body language seems to indicate he’s thinking 💭 “Oh Dad, you wore THAT shirt?!?!”
The family in front of the red 1963 Ford: Dad looks like he’s thinking 💭 “Hurry up and snap the picture! I have a tee time to make.”
The pose of the family in the last picture looks straight out of a Ford ad.
Interesting 🤔 paint on the 1956. I’ve never seen a two tone like that.
Keep up the posts. Interesting stuff.
I love that picture of the lady and the teal Country Squire. The license plate there is a 1957 Michigan plate, and the scene looks like suburban Detroit to me.
She even has the purse, shoes, belt, color matched.It is a pretty car for sure.
That two tone paint on the ’56 was common on the more deluxe Ford models during 1955 and 1956 where the chrome strip starts on the top of the front fender. The dark/light combo could either be like the one shown or reversed. My high school ’55 Ford Fairlane sedan had that two tone with the middle color being white and the rest light blue. I have noticed some new cars, etc. are starting to have two tone paint again with the top usually being black. My wife has a 2021 Nissan Kicks that is kind of a ruby red with black roof. It really helps its appearance.
This is GREAT!!! I was raised in 1950s-60s-70s Ford wagons, and am immediately at home here. I love the Country Squires, the two-tones, the super-wide 1960…..and then the change in the last photo (newest car, latest fashions) is quite something.
#1 seems northern, with the GM car already showing some rear-quarter rust; #2 has an interesting license plate and those full-width bug screens (was this just before US established uniform license plate sizes nationally?), #8 has one of the V8s, and so on. No clearcoat then, but some cars still have their new car shine (perhaps freshly waxed), and so on. I’d love to have any of these as a hobby car…..
The license plate in Picture #2 is from New Jersey, so those folks are a long way from home! It looks like the stacked prefix is R/N, in which case it was Bergen County.
Picture #1 is from Indianapolis. The building in the background is the headquarters of the Lilly Endowment (2801 N. Meridian St.) – I believe the building was built as an insurance company headquarters, and Lilly took it over in the early 1970s.
Modern view and StreetView link below:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/SwAWz3XpWJf41fkV9
Wow, what a sharp eye – I did not notice this, despite having lived and worked within 10 blocks of that place at one time.
The car is almost certainly in the parking lot of a hotel that was built in the late 60’s as Stauffer’s Inn, and later became the Sheraton Meridian. In the last 20 years (if not more) that old hotel has been home to Ivy Tech, which runs several programs out of it. The building across the street had housed a handful of insurance companies, and by 1971 was the headquarters to Elanco (a Lilly company).
Wow, that place hasn’t changed hardly any!
’61 Chev wishes the ’57 Ranch Wagon would quit posing and get going.
Let’s add more wagons on the table, how many North American Escort wagons are still on the road today? And how many of them are “Escort Squire”? I saw some photos of a surviving 1985 Escort Squire with the optional front vent windows. It was the last model year where we could get the Squire package.
https://barnfinds.com/woodgrain-survivor-1985-ford-escort-squire/
And IMCDB have 13 pages of Ford Country Squire screenshots from various movies and tv shows. 😉 https://www.imcdb.org/vehicles_make-Ford_model-Country+Squire.html
Another great set of pictures.
That red/white one with the family standing in front of it…That’s a 1960 Galaxie wagon? Very sharp, and I don’t think I’ve seen many like that before.
I love the last picture, particularly the mom’s look. Clogs! Wide flair denim! A Dorothy Hamill haircut. So classic.
The red 63(?) Squire: That 55 Pontiac across the street looks pretty tired considering it wasn’t all that old at the time.
Back to Ford wagons….my dad had a black 57 Ranch Wagon with an option list consisting of a heater. In the summer, I used to ride in the back with the tailgate window open. Ahhh, I can still smell those exhaust fumes!
The Ben Franklin store in the background of the last image looks exactly the same today as it did 50 years ago:
(Grand Marais, Minnesota)
Amazing research Eric. That is remarkable! You’d think a Walmart somewhere in their area, would have killed them off. Credit to the community, for supporting this store!
Is Mom wearing Earth Shoes…sure looks like it!!
Very popular at this time!!
The “Vdub, fastback” in the pic caught my eye..
We had a couple of Ford wagons in a row, a ’69 Country Squire and a ’73 Ranch Wagon, but they were bought after we moved from the area that had our Ben Franklin (we moved in ’69 from Burlington Vt. to Manassas Va. where we had both wagons at different times).
I went to Thayer elementary school, walked 4 times a day (we had lunch at home) and our Ben Franklin was in a shopping center that abutted our school grounds. For some reason hardly any of the many schools I went to (I say many because we moved a lot and I never finished the same school I started so there were multiples) is still in existence. Yes, I’m 65, but one of my elementary schools, middle schools and high school no longer exist. The school I attended 1st grade in does exist, but it is a parochial school, I tend to think those hang around longer (mine was about 100 years old when I attended in 1964). Only that one and the last high school I attended Sr. year are still around.
I got to drive our Ranch Wagon, which we had till ’78, as I got my license in ’74. By today’s standards, it had average equipment, but it was Dad’s first car with air conditioning, AM/FM stereo, and power locks (had manual windows). Yeah, he bought it just before the first gas crisis, and the 400/2v wasn’t easy on fuel, but it was a nice highway car. It had the trailer towing package, we had a 20 ft pop top camper; Dad had me spell him driving long trips (VA to FL, etc.) with it.
Yeah, Ben Franklin, we almost lived at the one in Burlington…wax lips, toys, you name it. Only thing to top it was a hamburger place in the same shopping center called the Dilley Wagon…we didn’t often get to eat there, but when we did, it was a real treat. Between school, church, that shopping center, and maybe the downtown YMCA, that was pretty much our world from ’65 to ’69 (whoops, grandparents too, but they lived 300 miles away, though we did get to see them most holidays. Never lived within 200 miles of them despite all the moves).
I too love the two tone ’57 two door wagon, the ’57 Sedans were IMO, better looking than the ’59/’59’s were .
I still miss my ’62 Ranch wagon, it was seriously plain jane but ran and ran….
-Nate
Beautiful Buffalo in the background!
Voyageur Colonial was the major intercity carrier in Central Canada through the 1970s. And the GM Buffalo was the backbone of their fleet, through the early ’80s. I rode many of them as a student. This one headed from Toronto to Buffalo, NY, on October 13, 1973.
Funny the quality control issues you’ll often spot out of the blue, on cars from the malaise era. The early ’70s Country Squire in the first pic, appears to have mismatched Di-Noc (darker) on the front passenger door. Was that door a replacement? Or just the Di-Noc? Door alignment looks a bit off as well. Look at the leaks on the parking spot pavement beside the Ford! lol Rust was omnipresent terminal car cancer, here in Canada. We’ve come a long way.
My dad was quite meticulous with preventative maintenance on the cars he drove us in. But I still remember occasional breakdowns in the middle of nowhere, happening once or twice a year. He always kept clamps, spare belts and hoses, and other parts, in the trunk or cargo area of wagons. But he’d still get caught sometimes with unforeseen sources of breakdowns. Besides, the common flat tires. Weak coolant, bad alternators, gas line leaks, etc.
So many ads back then on TV and in newspapers for maintenance specials at the local garages and car centres. You could not skip regular maintenance, without asking for serious trouble. Resourceful or perhaps some overconfident owners, were the folks that took their cars to the middle of nowhere!
Just noticed that. It does look like it was whacked!
I bumped the contrast, so it can be seen more obviously. I remember when Chrysler was forced to replace the prematurely rusty front fenders on 1976 and 1977 Aspens and Volares. The number of them you’d see, here in Ontario, with mismatched front fender paint was quite incredible. Imagine, nearly new cars with noticeably mismatched front fenders. And consistently seeing it in real time, wherever you drove.
Chrysler dealers botching the *repairs*, on their initial botched engineering. That’s how it was back then!
_SO_ true Daniel ! .
I’m still driving my jalopy as far as I can and yes, I carry some spares and a rudimentary tool kit .
Right now the new fan belt (about two months) shows a few loose strands on it’s edge, I need to get a sharp razor blade and trim them off .
-Nate
News stories of people freezing to death overnight in disabled cars, or in blizzards, were still pretty common back then. God awful batteries, when temps used to get genuinely frigid. Or carbon monoxide poisoning from people running cars to keep warm. As they were immobilized by snow.
Driving was potentially more treacherous, in many ways.
Looks like the red 1963 Squire has the 390 engine. Makes for quite the hauler. Recall that all optional Ford V-8’s were named some sort of “Thunderbird” engine. A high school teacher was always bragging about his Galaxie “with the Thunderbird engine” (think it was the 352) like it was some sort of NASCAR racer.
You have to remember that at that time most cars had a six banger or small 2BBL V8 so a 390 with a 4BBL carby really did get up nd go compared to most others .
-Nate
Almost did a double take on some of those looking for relatives. My wife sometime in the 1970s. Even a GM family like hers growing up was afflicted with some type of Ford wagon.
Wow! A Colony Park, that’s the top of the line from Ford. Though the Country Squire was plenty posh and ritzy for most folks. I’m surprised that your future in laws had a ’56 Cadillac hub cap laying around to replace the missing Mercury wheel cover.
I really love the Country Squires in these photos, especially the ’55 ish ones. I have the modern descendant of the ’50’s C.S. a Ford Flex.
My family’s New Orleans home, circa 1968, with Mom’s “Suburban Status Symbol” in the driveway.
You can just make out two little kids in the way back of the Welcome to New Hampshire picture. Not sure if that year had the side-facing 3rd row, but even without it the back was a comm place for the littles to ride. Glad we don’t do that any more for safety reasons, but it sure was fun for us and convenient for the olds. (Fun fact: my parents’ ’67 Saab 95 wagon actually had a rear facing 3rd row!)
Even those who did not like the Ford cars would often purchase a Ford Station wagon.
I can’t imagine piloting that Country Squire in the header. No wonder minivans were a hit!
That ‘60 seems like an awkward design.
And that ‘63 must be brand new. The cars across the street look look 7-8 years older and well worn.