Per my last COAL posting, I had fallen head-over-heels for the family’s Mustang Fastback, but it was now time to get my license and actually start driving cars for real. When I was 12, a new baby brother arrived on the scene, and it was decided, on high, that the family needed to go back to being a “station wagon family”.
The 1958 Ranch Wagon had been sold and a secondhand white 1966 Cadillac had been purchased in the meantime. The Caddy had real seats in the back for us kids, complete with seat belts, and Mom could ferry us around in it. I never really “took” to the car, as it was a purely adult thing, like hard liquor and cigars. It seemed to whet my parents’ appetite for big cars, though. I still had passion for the family Mustang, with its bright red paint and ever-so-slightly cartoonish styling.
Now that the family was station wagon shopping again, the push was for something big and luxurious. The Cadillac had been a trip astray from always owning Fords, so there was really only one choice, once the family re-entered the Ford fold, and also wanted a luxury station wagon. Fortunately, in a sense, the 1973 gas crisis had just hit, so this year-end example, a dealer demonstrator car, was being given away. Two and a half tons of fun, propelled by a 460 engine, was not finding many homes at that moment. Especially as these engines were wheezy for their size, fitted with a complexity of hoses and attachments, and drank fuel at the rate of 8 mpg or less.
The car was very anonymous, but in a totally elegant way. Our car was a twin to the bronze ones pictured here, complete with color-matched wheel covers and a brown interior. It was as if all the identifiers of a Lincoln were stripped away, and the resulting car was squared up and made indistinguishable from some generic car. Then a random front grill and headlight covers were pulled from some upscale J.C.Whitney catalog, and topped with a rather meaningless free-standing hood ornament. Add the requisite monster chrome bumpers, some di-noc, and away you go.
The interior is minimalist-maximum. Cushy, padded, elegant, but devoid of any personality, and garnished with a plastic dashboard containing a cornucopia of squared off elements. The only thing the dashboard can actually tell you is your speed, when you are in drive, and how fast that fuel needle can sweep to “empty”. The rest of it is idiot lights, including the engine temperature. If you need to know the actual temperature, look elsewhere for your wheels. This is about motoring with a minimum of distracting inputs.
The back of the car is a combination of tidy and completely inefficient. The floor is a bit high and the roof a bit low. The multi-way tailgate works nicely. The floor is deep and flat, once the second seat is folded down, and the sides are smooth and clean. The side-facing rear seats are a complete puzzle in so many ways, other than having them to differentiate one from the competition. Less efficient, less comfortable, likely less safe, and seats for two when three could be squeezed in, if they were friendly, in a conventional rear or front-facing seat.
Now that I have completely denigrated just about every aspect of this beast, its time to realize that, in the light of day, none of it mattered much at all. I learned something very important while driving this thing. “Driving” is probably overstating it a bit. “Navigating” is probably a more proper description. But if one takes the driving experience as it is presented to you, then accepting it and rolling with it can be quite satisfactory.
This Lincoln that had been put through the Witness Protection Program was actually a great car, in its own peculiar way. Having driven a ‘29 Packard later in life, the two experiences were not that dissimilar. The way to drive the Mercury is to point it, let it build up steam, plan ahead for braking or turning, and don’t ask too much of it too quickly. Stay within the modest bounds of what the car is actually capable of, and travel is a delightful experience. To exceed its capabilities is to turn the whole thing into a tire-shredding, heaving, slewing obese mass of metal and di-noc. Just don’t go there.
Navigating and parking the thing has to be considered an achievement, especially for a sixteen year old. Again, it is listening to what the machine is telling you it is willing and capable of doing, rather than your asking of it what you might ask of a different car. Learning to work with the car, rather than trying to dictate what I wanted it to do, was a huge revelation in refining my driving skills.
Rolling along was extremely comfortable in a floating, smooth sort of way. One could go all day in it, without effort. I can’t imagine modern stop-and-go traffic in it. That would be a workout. On the other hand, the car would be the biggest, heaviest thing in its lane. Wait up or go around.
This was the car I drove for a while, as I saved my money and considered what I might want to own. For a sixteen year old car-geek, it was not really my style at all. But it was such a magnificent beast. One couldn’t help but smile, as the car rolled down the road, not to be deterred from its destination, nor to be moved from its route and pace. The Hulk was going to go where it intended to go, at its own pace and in its own time. That’s how a big, heavy car rolls.
I learned to respect the machine at the wheel of this thing, but something like this was not for me, once I could make my own decision. I also learned that a car is an entire package of mechanical capabilities, and integration of the capabilities, in comfort and in control, is to be sought out in a car. As to our example, it was sold in order for my parents to buy a ‘77 Cougar, and I moved on to my own car as well. The Cougar was a disaster, and the last new Ford for a while, as a series of Volvos populated their garage. The wagon was actually bought by a used Lincoln dealer, for his family’s car. Lincoln in drag, indeed. But about eight years later, I walked out the front door of my apartment building, across town, and there was the wagon, still wearing the same license plates and appearing in good, if slightly faded, condition. I do not know why it was there, and I only saw it the one time, and never again. It was as if it had just stopped by to say hello, checking in.
These cars never were my thing growing up, but I have to admit that I’m getting more and more fond of ’em as the years go on… and I’ve always been on board with soft, floaty suspensions. Probably the only thing that would make me hurt is the pace at which that 460 could inhale fuel.
Believe it or not, FoMoCo actually made one more wee modification to that instrument cluster so that it gave you a tiny bit less information- probably saving 13 cents in the process… They combined the Temp and Oil lights into one, which now was marked with the slightly vague word: “Engine”. When it illuminated, it was anyone’s guess whether the engine was preparing to go Chernobyl or readying itself to spit connecting rod shrapnel all over the highway… drive for another 15 seconds to get an answer to the question. I believe this change happened in 1974.
When I was in high school I had a 76 Marquis with a 400 that knocked at idle and the “Engine” light would flash to the beat, it was missing a muffler so you really couldn’t hear it unless you had your head under the hood. I fixed it by unplugging the oil pressure sensor. I eventually sold it for 200 bucks and unfortunately for the buyer (another young guy) I “forgot” to plug it back in. He drove it about a month until the block ventilated itself. 35 years later I feel bad about things like that…
About all you can do is to remind yourself it was an honest mistake. At least the buyer got some use out of it, not bad for 200 bucks.
I worked on these when they were new. The ’73 Mercury largely shared a dashboard with the ’73 Ford. I say largely because the two cars had some differences in the top dash pad and passenger side/glove box area. Perhaps the most mystifying difference was use of a different size clock and relocation of a center A/C vent. Why Ford decided it was OK to share the dash, then went to the trouble to make such inconsequential changes that partially undid the benefits of parts sharing was something I never understood.
The comment about getting a great price on one of these triggered another memory. Demand for gas saving cars was so strong, our dealership was trying to unload full size Mercurys and Fords at dealer auctions. In turn, we tried to buy more Mavericks and Pintos. We apprentice mechanics were sometimes tasked with helping the salesmen drive cars to and from the auctions.
Although the exact numbers escape me now, I do recall that on occasion, our sales manager was beside himself in disbelief at the narrow difference in auction price between a Mercury Marquis and a Ford Maverick.
Those 1973 lines for gasoline certainly had an impact!
Ford later spread the Mercury variation of that dash to the Lincoln Continental in ’78-’79, making all three brands look almost alike from behind the wheel. Also, that same basic steering wheel was used in everything from Pintos to Mark Vs to Econolines.
Yes, looks very familiar to me, my Dad had a ’73 Country Sedan he bought new…50 years ago when I started driving, it was one of two cars I had my first driving experience (whoops, aside from driver’s ed cars, mostly large and mid sized GM cars).
He previously had a ’69 Country Squire with the even more driver centric dash, but the Sedan was way better equipped…it had the 400/2v, and first in our family, air conditioning, power locks (manual windows), AM/FM Stereo (no tape nor 8 track) and trailer towing package. The dash was very similar to this Mercury, but the passenger side looks a little different.
He never went for the dual facing rear seat, preferring to have that space for maximum underfloor storage which he always called “the well”. One of my jobs was to try to fit as much as possible down there for trips, since my younger sisters liked to sleep in the back cargo area (didn’t everybody?) and that gave them more room to do so….we didn’t need the extra 2 seats and they were pretty small anyhow. After I got my license I would spell my Dad during long trips, before that I was navigator (still love maps). I remember the loud relay clicking for turn signals (maybe because of the trailer towing package?) and the loud electromagnetic power locks (nothing subtle about them). My Dad used to forget about cancelling turn signals on subsequent cars, but you couldn’t help but hear them on the Sedan (maybe they should have volume controlled turn signal audible especially as hearing gets worse?)
Many people don’t care for brown, but his was a nice metallic brown that looked really nice….it was our first “non-green” wagon (with Irish surname and that color used to be a bit more common). I liked how it looked without the wood panelling of the Squire. Dad kept it till he switched over to a ’78 Chevrolet Caprice Classic wagon (I guess partly due to better fuel mileage, but Dad never kept cars very long back then either).
The Granada’s dashboard was similarly tight-lipped and uniquely in its’ segment there was no gauge-package option, not even for the “European-style” ESS.
My 77 Mercury Marquis has the same dashboard and the same general purpose “engine” light. A terrible idea, but like most Fords of that era, terrible ideas were offset by good ones. Those dash light bulbs were easily replaced through the front of the dash instead of the usual blind groping at the back. So easy one might be tempted to replace then while driving, no worse than tuning the radio.
Oh boy, this one speaks to me on so many levels. First, I remember when these came out. It seemed that all the new cars in my life came from 1972, so 73s were not too common in my life. But a family friend bought a 73 LTD Brougham 2 door which I spent some time in, and it was not unlike the 72 Connie Mark IV that my father drove.
When I took drivers ed in the summer of 1975 my ride was a 75 Mercury Marquis sedan, a low-end model that would have been a Monterey when your family bought your 73. It was a big change from the 74 Luxury LeMans that my mother had, but as you say – you learn a car’s limits and what it likes to do, then go with it.
I continue to maintain that those of us who learned to drive (and parallel park) in cars of this size had an advantage on those who came after us. If you could handle close maneuvers in one of these, you were good in almost anything.
Domestic cars of this era certainly reached maximum length and weight. Still, automatic transmissions, power steering, and power front disk brakes had become standard, if not officially, then almost certainly by default.
Compare with the slightly smaller, less bulky 1967 Chevy Bel Air in which I learned to drive. It was equipped with the 250 Six, 3-on-the-tree, and no assisted steering or brakes, the latter being drums all around. I flunked the PA driver’s test the first time primarily because I couldn’t turn the steering wheel fast enough in a slalom manuever, using the mandated 2nd gear. I got progressively further behind as I passed each pylon and ended up mounting a curb and stalling the engine.
Great story. Boy do I remember those cars. I used to drive my aunt’s new 1966 Impala four-door sedan to the carwash and tidy it up for her – I had my license about a year at that point. My uncle ordered the car with the six, three-speed manual, and no power steering or brakes. It was a handful. Another aunt had a new LTD coupe with the standard 289 and automatic plus power steering, a dream to drive by comparison.
I intermittently drove my own VW Beetle and Dad’s 65 Thunderbird and our two Falcons (one a Ranchero) with the 144 and manual. You really learned to drive a lot of different cars in those days. I think it was highly beneficial to me in the sense that I’ve always adapted to the car I was driving and understood its limitations and strengths. The old Beetles had great limitations but were one of the most enjoyable cars to drive if you respected their limits. The Thunderbird was smooth and quiet and glamorous but had to be treated as the hefty highway cruiser it was. The little Falcons had to be cranked to the limit to get up to speed but they could take a lot of punishment and do the job.
And yes, parallel parking skills were a requirement for every driving test in those days and learning to park a big car (our driver’s training car was a 1965 Plymouth Fury III) added another dimension to your skill set.
Oh, totally agree about learning to drive and park one of these beasts. I learned to parallel park our family’s 1970 Chevy Kingswood wagon as a teenager. This helped me handle a panel van that I’d drive occasionally in a job as an adult.
Great article with lots of laughs. Indeed, these are boring but functional tanks. J.P. sums up the skill one develops when parallel parking this tank. You can park anything. I am monocular. Despite this handicap. I learned to back up medium- and heavy-duty straight trucks with bodies on them. This Mercury would certainly prepare the uninitiated for those maneuvers.
I was frequently driven to high school in my future mother-in-laws 400 ci Ford version of this machine. She was usually running late. Words can’t explain the scary ride dynamics of one these giant wagons when hurried.
The color combo on this one “photo’s” well! One of my high school friends had the Ford Country Squire “sister ship” as one of the family rides.
I think I in it once anyway..lol Was bright red, no body color wheel covers that I recall.I’m thinking it was a “74”.
Nice find! but I’d have to disagree on the “biggest baddest” part… that’s be a Chrysler Town & Country, 1969 to ’73, and the newer version to ’77. Most expensive US wagon iirc, and the mighty 440 for power. We had a green ’72 T & C with rear a/c, what a boat hauler it was!
’72 and ’77 T&C
’72 T&C
And you got some real gauges too…
And a 1974-78 T&C could be made badder still by building the Imperial or New Yorker Brougham wagon that Chrysler never did. I found several of these online.
I always like when people mix & match body panels and trim to create the cars the manufacturers forgot to build, like a ’78 Thunderbird pickup truck (easily built from a Ranchero) or that Buick Skyhawk/Opel Ascona mashup featured here recently.
I drove a ‘77 T&C once back in the day; it was the boss’ wife’s new car. It was impressive in the same way as was the Mercury. Perhaps a bit more nimble and with more “oomph”, and the dashboard appeared less “formal”. But it is all relative, and I would call it roughly a tie. The big clamshell rear-doored Buicks were likely similar, overall. They all arrived in the early ‘70s, just as such a car became an economic burden, rather than something most people aspired to own.
And to think that if it hadn’t been for CAFE we’d all still be driving these. 🙂
I used to deliver wine in an LTD Wagon (is there such a thing?). Back in the early 80s. Anyhow, this car is creepily familiar.
Yes, as “LTD” was downgraded and expanded from the nameplate of the top full-size Ford trim level to that of the whole line, the “LTD Wagon” replaced the “Country Sedan” as the top non-fake-woody wagon from Ford Division. They still kept the distinction of the Country Squire (later “LTD Country Squire”) not officially being “LTD Wagon with Squire Option” as was done with the smaller cars.
A friend of mine had a unique experience with one of these barges. Some how she managed to clip the garage door track as she was backing out of the garage and dropped the whole garage door down on the roof of the car. Some of those single car garage doors are pretty narrow when the finish trim is installed.
As Mercury once proclaimed-‘if Lincoln made a station wagon, this would be it’. A relic from a past age before the proliferation of the faceless SUVs and ‘crossover’.This vehicle has presence and stands out in a crowd. There`s no mistaking it for anything else. I`d kill to own one.
I remember that magazine advertisement. Although it was for a Mercury, the advertisement copy mentioned “Lincoln ” twice as often as “Mercury “, just so nobody would miss the point
Makes me wonder, now as then, why Lincoln didn’t make a station wagon? Chrysler’s New Yorker (or equivalent Town & Country) was available as a wagon, Mercedes-Benz made a wagon, and eventually Cadillac would make a wagon. Of course every luxury brand now makes a utility vehicle or five or ten, and M-B, Buick, and Lexus have luxury minivans in some markets. Why couldn’t luxury and utility mix back then?
These were all over when I was a little kid, and let me please add two things: the beltline upkick aft of the rear doors makes the wagon glass look squinty—I always really hated that—and I never liked the frowny steering wheel centre bar just about every Ford product had in the ’70s.
A dealer of used Lincolns, or a used dealer of Lincolns (or both)?
A used car dealer who specialized in used Lincolns.
The steering wheel in ours had a “rim blow” feature. If you squeezed a piece of rubberized plastic that lined the inside circumference of the steering wheel, the horn sounded (and it honked like a horn from a diesel train engine). My first few drives in the thing were accompanied with a lot of inadvertent honking.
I also never liked those frowny steering wheels — good word to describe them!
The square openings on the IP seemed to mostly be a Ford thing in the 70s.
Bonus: The speedo gives you additional markings for 5 and 115 mph, two very commonly traveled speeds! 🙂
I noticed that too – the distance between 110 and 115 is about the same as that from 40 to 60 mph.
This is where those thermometer speedos had a big advantage; the numbers could be spaced out evenly.
If National Lampoon’s Vacation had been made a decade earlier, I can sure see this being the Griswold family’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster.
Amazing to think of a sixteen year old driving one of these.
Good that you had the sense to drive the vehicle as it was intended, and didn’t try to treat it like a sports car or dragster. Not many young drivers would do that – I know I wouldn’t have! 🙂
You’d quickly learn NOT to floor the accelerator or make sharp turns on these big wagons, as the body roll and fishtailing would transmit the limits rather quickly.
You actually could floor this one, as long as the forward momentum of the car, and the front wheels, were pointed reasonably straight ahead. The power came on slowly, like a freight train or a big ship. Burnouts were not part of the menu. I don’t know if it was a jammed up intake and exhaust, or the settings in the automatic transmission, or maybe all of the above. Also, the car was very heavy and used wide tires with large tire patches, so “peeling out” could not be done (I tried…).
The handling on these things was scary! We talk about just cruising down the highway, floating along like a cloud… Well, I recall driving on the Florida Turnpike one night, two lanes there, and passing another car. I was white-knuckled. Driving one of our Caprice wagons. I loved those things, but the handling was nothing like the cars of today. My Forester now handles like or even better, if I recall correctly, than, say a ’64 GTO.
I had one of these for awhile 20-so years ago; paid $200. No rear brakes (the hardware was all detached & machined up inside the drums), would haul a 1/2 a cord of wood for our stove through the desert on the backroads, w/the front seat all the way forward. Picking up kids at the bus stop by the mailboxes, they’d all clamor to ride in the way-back, as standing on both pedals would make it spin big glorious donuts in the dirt! Was ordered new by a sheriff who spec’d it with the non-smogged Police Interceptor 460, but it was so tired by then that one would never know it. Wonder what ever became of it? No fake wood: looked just like Quincy’s coroner car!
My Mother stopped driving almost a year ago, but almost 50 years ago, she had the Ford equivalent…my Dad was later to buy 3 Mercury Sables in a row, but for wagons, bought qty-2 Fords in a row, a ’69 Country Squire (351) and ’73 Ranch Wagon (400).
My Mother is very petite, 4’8″ and 83lbs, she called both of them “boats”. I only drove the Ranch Wagon, as I didn’t have my license yet when they owned the Country Squire. It was good for towing our 20′ poptop camper (maybe even overqualified) but pretty large to manuver around town. It came with Firestone 500 radials that delaminated in less than 1000 miles…Dad had it up on a lift in a shop for some other reason (probably when he got the hitch installed) and they noticed the problem with the tires. Guess 500 miles is how long they worked before they delaminated?
My Mom lost power on our steep long driveway where we lived in Virginia (we moved around a lot back then, we came from Vermont with the Country Squire, got the Ranch wagon in Virginia, then back up to Vermont) and somehow straddled a drain culvert opposite our place, she was alright but scared…my now deceased youngest sister was only about 3 years old in the passenger seat.
What I remember best was the very loud clicking sound of the turn signal relays…ours had the trailer towing package, which might explain it some, but you had an audible reminder when they were on.
My first car was a 1973 Mercury Montego MX Villager!!! Baby blue with wood grain! What was I thinking??!!
Anyway, we bought it from a small dealer. The original owner towed an Airstream trailer with it, although it only had the 351. However, he did not believe in changing the oil, so it had an engine tick. $900 and it was mine!! I drove it six months before my dad warned me it was done and he didn’t want me stranded. It never failed me and the last time I saw it, the owner was pushing it into a service station! Great article.
Yes, looks very familiar to me, my Dad had a ’73 Country Sedan he bought new…50 years ago when I started driving, it was one of two cars I had my first driving experience (whoops, aside from driver’s ed cars, mostly large and mid sized GM cars).
He previously had a ’69 Country Squire with the even more driver centric dash, but the Sedan was way better equipped…it had the 400/2v, and first in our family, air conditioning, power locks (manual windows), AM/FM Stereo (no tape nor 8 track) and trailer towing package. The dash was very similar to this Mercury, but the passenger side looks a little different.
He never went for the dual facing rear seat, preferring to have that space for maximum underfloor storage which he always called “the well”. One of my jobs was to try to fit as much as possible down there for trips, since my younger sisters liked to sleep in the back cargo area (didn’t everybody?) and that gave them more room to do so….we didn’t need the extra 2 seats and they were pretty small anyhow. After I got my license I would spell my Dad during long trips, before that I was navigator (still love maps). I remember the loud relay clicking for turn signals (maybe because of the trailer towing package?) and the loud electromagnetic power locks (nothing subtle about them). My Dad used to forget about cancelling turn signals on subsequent cars, but you couldn’t help but hear them on the Sedan (maybe they should have volume controlled turn signal audible especially as hearing gets worse?)
Many people don’t care for brown, but his was a nice metallic brown that looked really nice….it was our first “non-green” wagon (with Irish surname and that color used to be a bit more common). I liked how it looked without the wood panelling of the Squire. Dad kept it till he switched over to a ’78 Chevrolet Caprice Classic wagon (I guess partly due to better fuel mileage, but Dad never kept cars very long back then either).
I sound two-faced saying this, but I didn’t really care for these much when they’re plentiful, but now that they aren’t, I really like them. Yes, I’m a bit of a contrarian, and like things that aren’t currently popular, but I think a big part of it is appreciating them as I get older…sports cars that turned my head in the 70’s don’t really do it for me now…Now that I’m an old guy myself, I find myself wanting one of these, partl because they’re comfortable, but also I like cars that can carry a fair amount of stuff…