It was 1987, and conspicuous consumption was in. That’s how come mother toyed with the idea of getting a Mercedes, and I guess it’s how come dad came to be looking at Lincolns to replace his decade-old Cutlass Supreme. Disco Stu hadn’t bought it, so dad and I drove it out to look at a car in Thornton or Arvada or Lakewood or Wheat Ridge or one of those others that used to be a whole lot more far-flung from Denver than I imagine they must now be.
It was a 1980 Lincoln Continental Town Car with 56,000 miles on it. I’d say the seller was straight out of Central Casting, but that’s wrong; the seller wasn’t straight out of anywhere. Quite awhile after American TV sitcoms cut down on openly using cartoonish stereotypes for cheap laffs at the expense of Black people and Native Americans and women and Jews and Asians, gay people were still considered fair game. There were a few stock caricatures, one of which was a grey-haired man, very animated about the face and arms, frequently giggling to himself, and with an exaggerated Southern accent of one kind or another. Think “Gomer Pyle” but in his 60s and more ridiculous than funny, and you’re roughly in the right Naborhood. That was the owner of this Lincoln.
The idea was raised of a trade, and the three of us piled into the Cutlass: me in the back, dad riding shotgun, and Mr. Seller in the driving seat. First thing he did was tilt the steering wheel down until it was vertical, like the yoke in a vintage airplane. People actually do that? I guess. Dad and I fastened our seatbelts, whereupon Mr. Seller held forth with a monologue about how even babies know to reject seatbelts: “I’ll tell you what, if you have ever heard a little one screaming and crying because it is restrained!“. For those keeping score at home, that’s 2/2 Cutlass-lookers bearing anti-seatbelt screeds. And that’s the end of the storyline for the Cutlass; I don’t recall if a trade deal was made or it was offloaded elsewise.
Dad took the Town Car to a service station and they generated a long dot-matrix printout on pin-feed, fan-fold paper—four pages of it, as I recall—listing everything they found wrong with it. Several oil leaks, several faulty sensors and actuators, “air pump not disabling properly”, and on and on and on. I’ll never know why dad bought the car anyhow. Third bum choice in a row; all I can guess is that he hated car-shopping and wished to do as little of it as possible, even if it meant winding up with a bad car. He was exceedingly bright and intelligent, generally thoughtful and wise, and he completely understood the principle and practice of prudent economics—we buy the store-brand butter because it’s every bit as good but costs less because we’re not paying for advertising; we buy the large size of whatever because it costs less overall even though it costs more upfront; we carefully do our research to figure out what product or service will best match the needs at hand, then shop around to find the best price. All of that, but car-shopping and -picking were in his blind spot, as it seems.
For a brief, shining instant, the car seemed exceptionally fine. Dad pulled up outside the house in this luxurious 2-tone thing, Dark Cordovan Metallic over (faded-to-coral) Bittersweet Metallic Moondust. Lincoln Continental Town Car; even its four-word name sounded ritzy, and sister (14) and I (11) ran out to oogle it. That evening we went for ice cream. In the new car, of course. To Toddy’s, of course. Toddy’s was an upscale supermarket of the kind one found in the yuppie ’80s in a neighbourhood like Greenwood Village, about 10 or 15 minutes away from where we lived. Carpeted floors, tasteful lighting, an ice cream bar where you could sit and listen to ’50s tunes off the Seeburg—three plays for two bits, and a giant 2-scoop cone for 50¢, because ’50s nostalgia was also ascendant in the ’80s—and after you’d paid for your groceries they’d disappear into a fireplace-sized window in the front wall. You’d drive round the side and your order would be loaded into your car for you, then you’d drive off. Very posh.
So we drove over to Toddy’s to get ice cream. Boccherini’s Minuet (I’m not making this up, you know) played on the radio as sister and I smirked at each other from opposite ends of the cushy, pillowy, crushed-velour sofa in the back of that dream car, twenny foot long: this is so choice; can you believe this?!
A few years earlier sister had come home from school, walked into our 3,400-square-foot home, and asked mother if we were poor. Mother told her to go outside, look at the house, then come back in and ask again, which sister did. Mother’s attempt at socratic teaching having failed, she asked what made sister think so: her rich classmates in chichi Cherry Creek schools were telling her we must be poor because she didn’t have designer-brand clothes and we lived in a subdivision built all the way back in icky old 1967.
Me, I was in the first of my two years at a snooty (snooty?), snotty (snotty!) private school up in one of the moneyed neighbourhoods off Colorado Boulevard—a “country day school” where young upper-crusters are taught and encouraged to identify, despise, and deniably torture those beneath them. Daily pickups and dropoffs were see-and-be-seen pageants where castes were determined by the hood ornament on money and daddy’s car. Many Mercedeses, plenty of Porsches and Bimmers. High-spec Suburbans and Wagoneers with prominently-displayed decals from Vail and Aspen. Cadillacs and Lincolns…well, they were probably good enough to let the servants drive, so as long as they were recent enough to be presentable they still held enough prestige to leave room below for the untouchables the school used as proof of bighearted charity: the girl whose father drove her to school each day in his Dodge Diplomat yellow taxicab, the one whose dad had a ’75ish Cutlass with green paint brushed and rollered on. Those kids were the only ones without someone below them to scorn. In that context, the Town Car fooled nobody. If you think kids are cruel in general, you’re right; now try wealthy kids, the rich ones below them, and the desperately-wannabes below that lot.
There’s a word in Canadian English: hosey. It’s an adjective; it means something that thinks it’s classy but is actually tacky. It’s not necessarily a pejorative; there are times hosey Chinese food is exactly what’s wanted: wonton soup, egg rolls with bright red sugar-and-cornstarch sauce, sweet-and-sour pork with pineapple chunks and more of that bright red sauce, broccoli beef, –Bits Chopped Small Fried– House Special Chow Mein, and fortune cookies at a restaurant with buzzing neon signs and dragon decor all over the place. But outside the gates of the Country Day School (fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh!), that ’80 Town Car was too old, too American, too passé; trying feebly and failing utterly. Hosey in the worst sense.
Its styling was quite sharp, to my eye; I’ve always liked boxes on wheels, and the origami ’80-’84 Town Cars were that. I liked the headfins and tailfins. I liked how the triangular vent windows lowered before the main ones did when one of the front window switches would be operated. I liked the tall waterfall grille one could almost pokerfacedly call inspired by Rolls Royce (this is what we had before Chinese knockoffs of entire Range Rovers), and I liked the conical centre section of the hood. I liked the aluminum turbine-style wheels. The ’85 rear end rework of the Town Car was a clumsy de-finning disfigurement, and the subsequent models grew progressively uglier as what had been a brand-new bar of soap was iteratively melted.
But sharp styling and a giant trunk are all I’ll give that ’80 Stinkoln Clown Car my father bought. The Cutlass hadn’t been a very good car, but the Town Car was terrible. Just an execrable, pathetic excuse for an automobile in every possible way. It had suffered from previous-owner neglect and mistreatment, there certainly was that—cigarette burns in the upholstery, grille held in by a piece of wire and a length of PVC pipe, the aforementioned long list of mechanical faults—but it’s not at all clear to me that even the most fastidious treatment would’ve made any difference. The thing was full of halfassed engineering further degraded by callous beancounters. It was carelessly thrown together with poor-quality materials and inadequate assembly techniques throughout.
It was a first-yearmobile loaded with stuff that had not been even close to adequately developed or debugged. First year for Ford’s EEC-III engine management system with throttle body fuel injection and electronic ignition advance. There was some good thinking behind some of the details of the DuraSpark III ignition, like a 2-level distributor cap and rotor to maximise the distance between every two consecutive cylinders, so up to 50°(!) of advance could be provided without crossfire under the cap: a neat idea let down by the rest of the system. First year for the digital vacuum fluorescent display dashboard with trip computer—oh yeah, it was a real trip every time it failed and took the speedometer and fuel gauge with it, necessitating another expensive trip to the dealer. First year and might’ve been first model for punch-code keyless entry; the keypad failed at least three times—it wasn’t very waterproof—and the logic module at least twice, at dealer-only prices. First year for the AOD transmission, which began slipping out of 3rd and 4th gears and got rebuilt. First year for a serpentine accessory drive belt. All that stuff failed early and often and expensively.
First year for every part of the body and interior, and many of them fell off and/or apart. The paint faded further, crazed, and flaked off. The driver’s door hinge broke and fell out in three pieces. The vinyl top decayed before our very eyes. The door trim panels pulled right off just by closing the doors until finally the Lincoln dealer(!) resorted to reattaching them with big, ugly sheetmetal screws and flat washers drilled right through the panels. The glovebox latch sometimes didn’t. The power door locks sometimes did nothing but emit a squawk when it was cold out. The vacuum-operated parking brake release sometimes did nothing but hiss like an upset cat. About that: okeh, I guess it’s some kind of cute trick to flip the shift stick from “P” into “D” to pop the parking brake and then back up to “R” to back out of a parking space, but automatic parking brake releases are completely dangerous.
The power windows worked most of the time, except when they didn’t, and there was at least one replacement window motor put in. The remote control for the RH sideview mirror (pull-cables, not electric) would’ve almost worked except it didn’t. Small wonder; the control was in the middle of the dashboard, about three-quarters of a mile plus a door hinge away from the mirror itself. The car had a rash of Ford’s “better ideas” in the steering column vicinity: it had tilt steering, but just the wheel tilted, not any part of the column. The middle of the steering wheel certainly looked like a horn button, and beside it were switches for the cruise control, which might have worked perhaps once or twice in 1980, but—psych!—you had to push the end of the turn signal stalk inward toward the steering column to sound the horn. Real intuitive and easy to remember in an emergency (not).
The rear lap belts were a negligently backward misdesign: the belt pulled out from the inboard side and buckled at the outboard side. Get T-boned or sideswiped hard enough to cave in the sheetmetal? Tough luck, you don’t get to unbuckle. And the buckle was not only outboard but also on very short stub, just barely peeking out from where the seatback met the bottom cushion. “Seatbelts are for pansies! The interior of this car will NOT be crapped up with visible seatbelts!”, said some cigar-chomping, morbidly obese, pasty white Ford executive. Dealers sold extenders for those who had the audacity to want to be able to reach the damn buckle. They were available in black only, and doubled the chances of losing your belt when you needed it because now there were two fail-prone RCF-67 buckles to gamble your life on.
And then there was the “power”train. The car, on a good day, had almost enough moxie to drag an ice cube off an oiled sheet of Teflon. It had been advertised as having the optional 351 engine, and the car’s sluggish performance made dad scoff a few times at the notion of trying to power a car like this with anything less. But that engine this car did not have; it had the standard 302. How did he manage to miss this what was right there on the black-and-yellow VECI label, front and centre in the engine compartment? I’ll tell you how: he didn’t know or care enough about how cars work to know there’s a data label to look for, and he was so scrupulous in his own dealings that it sometimes didn’t occur to him that someone might not be telling him the truth. Plus whatever-all else went into it—dad was just not very good at picking cars.
I don’t know what the rear axle ratio was, but it was high/tall/numerically low. The lame excuse for an engine was rated at 130 MHP—marketing horsepower—in perfect condition at sea level, minus 17 percent for our altitude leaves 108 theoretical horsepower to haul an obese car and its occupants, minus even more of those make-believe horses hobbled by vacuum leaks and other faults. It all made for a 1950s Slip-A-Flo effect from the AOD transmission as the car huffed and puffed its sorry second-gear self uphill from 5,500 feet where we lived. Up I-70 at 30 mph in the right lane with the blinkers going—if the blinkers hadn’t called in sick that day. Are we there yet?
Electrical faults were many and varied and intermittent. It would sometimes just refuse to start. Or refuse to crank. Or up and die. Or refuse to stay running. Or stall at stop signs. It ate several alternators, each of which whined like a turbocharger (in concert with the air pump, which sounded like some kind of droning wind instrument, and the power steering pump, which was practising in hopes of growing up to be a buzz saw). It never needed a starter, though, which is weird given the all that fruitless cranking and the half-baked design of Ford starters of that time. There was a whining radio noise that rose and fell with engine RPMs. It resisted all attempts at repair; the dealer eventually said “Faulty ground in the radio” and quoted some eyewatering price for a replacement. I’m not sure why dad said no; he said yes to every other repair that piece of junk car needed. The car had intermittent wipers in that they decided on their own whether and when to operate—the driver’s wishes didn’t enter into it. But cheer up, eh, the car had what the brochure calls a “fluidic windshield washer system”. As…opposed to…sorry, which other variety?
The audiovisual multimedia turn signal indicator system was kinda cool, though: not only was there a conventional little green arrow-shaped telltale on the dash that would sometimes light up in sync with whichever turn signal was on, but we could also see the turn signal operating by dint of the rest of the car’s lights dimming and brightening in time, and hear it in the blower motor slowing down during the signal’s lit phase and speeding up during the dark phase of the signal cycle.
The automatic headlamps worked, then didn’t. The automatic high/low beam switching didn’t work, then kept not working. The EGR valve ($) and its controller ($$) failed multiple times, causing the engine to stall rather than idle. The ignition lock cylinder failed one day in the Safeway parking lot. It had been fine when mother parked the car to go in, but it refused to accept the key when she came back out. Later that day I threw some tools in my backpack and a car key in my pocket, rode my Raleigh down to the Safeway a mile and half away, and managed to get the cylinder to function by hammering the key into it. I couldn’t legally drive yet; I’d just done it as a proof-of-concept to see if I could cleverly save a tow. Answer was clearly yes as far as it went, but now the key was firmly stuck in the lock and I had to leave. Eventually I was able to yank it out with locking pliers.
The inertia switch decided one fine morning that the car, while parked in the garage overnight, touched only by dust motes, had been hit hard enough to warrant disabling the fuel pump. That was a favourite act, with numerous unpredictable encore presentations. And speaking of repeat performances, the car was missing its front licence plate bracket when dad bought it. A new one was purchased from the dealer and properly affixed with new factory bolts and fasteners to the front bumper so the car could be properly registered. That bracket fell off en route a year or three later, taking the licence plate with it. A(nother) new bracket and set of fasteners were bought and installed, and another set of licence plates with a new number had to be put on.
The A/C compressor emitted alarming crunchy noises from time to time, but miraculously managed to stay in one piece, or at least close enough to keep functioning. The self-diagnostics went haywire on a regular basis, issuing spurious DOOR AJAR or BRAKE LIGHT OUT or WASHER FLUID or OIL PRESSURE warnings at random whim, accompanied by urgent beeping.
One summer day, a hot and sunny one, there were to be errands. A clothes-and-accessories shopping trip for my mother and sister to the stores in and near Cinderella City, a shopping mall in the finest 1960s suburban idiom. Not far from there was Arapahoe Small Engine Repair, one of the shops whence I liked to scavenge mower engines. Could we stop there for five or ten minutes? “If you behave yourself, I’ll think about it”, came the answer. My behaviour was adjudged satisfactory while mother and sister perused the department stores for a couple of hours, because we did eventually stop by the engine place. Mother and sister went across the street to a sandwich shop. I found an interesting engine, an early-production Briggs & Stratton 6B, procured it (maybe $2, maybe $0), went and got the car keys from mother, opened the trunk of the car, put the engine in, and closed the trunk.
With the keys inside. Oh, shit. Shaking and sweating with dread, I went back in the sandwich shop and told mother I’d closed the keys in the trunk. She erupted, right there in public: YOU IDIOT! YOU STUPID, USELESS WASTE OF AIR! IT’S NOT ENOUGH YOU TRASH MY GARAGE WITH YOUR ENGINE PARTS, OH, NO, YOU’VE GOT TO INCONVENIENCE EVERYONE ELSE, TOO, YOU ASSHOLE! She ordered me to sit on the curb behind the car while she and my sister went back in the air-conditioned sandwich shop, and she called my father at work to bring the other key to the car; I was to stay put on the curb until he came. I pulled my T-shirt up to cover my ears so maybe they’d sunburn less.
Eventually dad arrived from downtown and opened the car with his key. The (gut)punchline: the car’s 5-button keypad on the outside of the driver’s door was working that day. The combination was 9-4-2-1-0; punching that would have unlocked the driver’s door, allowing access to the trunk release inside the glovebox. Or adding a 3 to the punch code would have unlocked the other three doors, and punching 5 would have popped the trunk from right outside the car. Oops, I guess we all forgot.
Sister drove us to high school a few times in the Lincoln, and I threw a cap and rotor and plug wires and carburetor cleaner at it in the big auto shop there. Maybe it ran a little better; hard to tell. At least by 1980 Ford had quit playing dumb half-catalyzed games.
I could go on and on and on, but why? It was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad car—inexcusably so—and Ford ought to have been ashamed of themselves, but evidently were not. An across-the-street neighbour seemed to have better luck with his ’83, and my (excellent) writing teacher in high school probably still has his treasured ’81, but my grandparents’ experience with their new ’86 was more akin to ours with the ’80—which finally met its end with a little help from Yours Truly.
In 1991 or so, the 302 started making an ominous clatter that sounded a lot like unlubricated connecting rod bearings. My folks had the car towed (again) to the stealership, whose service department I proceeded to ring and—very sure of myself—I told them it was probably the oil pump. Not the first phone conversation I’d had with them over there at Kumpf Lincoln-Mercury; one of their techs had told me there was a timing switch on the side of the engine control module and suggested I find it and make sure it was in the high-altitude position. When I found no such switch and called back, he said he didn’t know what I was talking about, I didn’t know what I was talking about, there’s no such switch, and stop wasting his time.
This time Kumpf waited most of the day and then, sure ’nuff, turned around and called my folks and said it was the oil pump and the car would need a rebuilt engine for $3,500. Slimy as they were, I can’t really blame them; this goose had been laying a steady supply of golden eggs (golden lemons?) for them. My cocksure diagnosis, whether right or wrong, unintentionally put a stopper in the drain; after years of nothing but constant breakdowns and failures, my folks belatedly decided more than enough was more than enough and turned the car out to pasture by donating it to the high school auto shop. I think it had maybe close to all of 90,000 whole, entire miles on it in the end.
I don’t know what my folks paid for a 7-year-old ’80 Town Car in below-average condition, but I know they had it insured well enough that when mother opened the driver’s door into the path of a ’71 Mercury Montego, the car got repaired including a high-spec repaint of the whole left side, which made the rest of the car look even tattier than it already had. They should’ve taken the insurance money and offloaded the car. Really, they should’ve not bought it in the first place. They’d’ve surely done enormously better buying a Cressida, say. Factor in the enormous amount of money they wasted on constant repairs, and something like a low-miles 240 turbo Volvo starts to look very affordable. Or a prudently-specified GM car with a 3.8-litre V6. Or almost anything else, really, except maybe a V8-6-4-2-0 Cadillac.
With the next car, they jumped in an opposite direction by every possible measure—but their luck didn’t change all that much. Tune in next week!
Postscript: in 2016 while shopping for a replacement car, I took a look at an older gentleman’s low-miles 2011 Mercury Grand marquis. Parts were falling off the interior. The power lock switch pushed right through its hole when I touched it. I had three simultaneous waves: of déjà vu (the feeling I’d seen this before), of vújà de (the feeling I hadn’t seen anything yet), and of nausea. I bought something else instead.
Thank you for the great write-up. Funny the things we remember- I too have been puzzled why Fords always had that strange tilt.
My first boss had an early 80s TC. Muchas problemas. His AOD went out and he sent it to Aamco for a rebuild. He learned the hard way their lifetime “warranty” was a scam (it just covers just certain parts or something,) after it quickly went bad again. And it also had all types of Lucas-like electric issues. For example, it wouldn’t start in the rain, they never found the reason. He tried his best to love that car, but had enough. He replaced it with a Maxima. Betcha the previous land yacht series were bulletproof, unlike these. A shame for they are beautiful in a traditional way.
And these Lincolns remind me of Paul Castellano’s fateful night at Sparks. I think his TC was the latter refreshed version, though., with a bunch of extra bling.
Oog, yeah, Scaamco: the “We admit nothing, your honor; we didn’t do it but we promise we won’t do it again” people. Home of the rattlecan “rebuild”. For a lot of years their marketing line was Half the cars we see don’t need a new transmission!. I guess the real percentage was closer to 75%. And that “lifetime warranty” of theirs meant you got to spend your lifetime fruitlessly trying to get them to honour their slimy warranty. If I remember correctly, one of those things they didn’t admit and swore they didn’t do but promised to stop doing was completely tearing down a transmission, calling the owner and quoting some awful four-figure price for a complete overhault, then if declined, refusing to reassemble the transmission unless paid some other awful price.
Who’s Paul Castellano, and what was his fate?
Never mind, found it. Whee! Yep, that’s a new ’85 or ’86 Town Car in that story.
I’m not sure the previous Lincolns were altogether better; read this book about life and work at the factory where Ford made torque converters (I had it recommended to me here on CC and…yee!)
Pretty sure the “fluidic” term referred to the type of nozzle used on the washer. I remember reading about this way back. The nozzle/orifice/urethra would oscillate when flowing..providing a wider pattern spread. The oscillation was “powered” by the flow. Similar to the way an unrestrained hose will whip back and forth. Prior to this your washers would fire a couple discrete jets. Clearly remember my 72 74 Saab’s had this little turret with two tiny stainless eyeball sockets on the hood…use a pin to clean or re aim
These jets employed the Coando effect, in which a fluid in flow tends to stick to a curved surface. There are flowmeters used in various industries based upon it. In the nozzles, it was used to widely distribute washer fluid.
And yes, we old retired ChemE’s can occasionally be nerds!
Thank you, Jeff! Your comment put me in mind of this 1973 Popular Science article about what appear to be Coando-effect atomisers, and this 1976 followup on an oil burner application of same.
Fluidic washers were all I’ve Ford and Gm cars in the early ‘80s. Instead if a single or dual stream of water that sprayed upward, whilst the wipers smeared the window til it reached the wet portion, the fluidic washers sprayed across the entire by by utilizing a trapped steel ball in the spray path the alternately gets pushed from side to side very quickly, giving the impression of motion
Well, today I learnt, thanks! I found detailed descriptions of these washer nozzles here and here.
Hosey is a word that needs to come south.
The internet has taught me about a world full of people who will claim that their 1960 Corvairs ran for three hundred thousand trouble-free miles, but your story rings truer to me based on my experiences with cars from Detroit. My family only purchased them new by the time I came along though.
Oh, fer sher, and the ’69 Valiants that went 450,000 miles with the original engine using not a drop of oil and getting 30 mpg uphill, etc. Almost all such stories are baloney—almost. Back in my wrecking yard years every nearly-never I would encounter a very old, very high-miles car with virtually all original, apparently un-rebuilt underhood parts: distributor (cap and rotor and all), heater hoses, starter and alternator, carburetor, fuel pump, etc. The last one of these I saw was a ’61 Dodge Lancer, and I would eat my hat with mustard and relish if a Stinkoln Town Car like this ever showed up as such a one.
…what…?
Sorry, what may I explain?
Your post made very little sense.
Though I drove a Town Car with 580,000 miles…original fuel pump, A/C compressor, radiator, and alternator. 2 water pump replacements, one transmission. It was retired due to structural cracking in the frame with over 650,000 miles…still running perfectly. 300,000 on a Panther car at that company was nothing noteworthy. Highest I saw on a box-body was a 1990 Grand Marquis, retired due to rust just over 400K.
Very fine. We’re not contradicting each other; your anecdotes don’t invalidate mine any more than mine invalidate yours.
When I think of the 1980-89 Town Car gen, I think now of the Lincoln Lawyer with Matthew McConaughey.
https://oldcarmemories.com/the-lincoln-lawyer-and-the-1986-town-car-with-soul/
Chuckled all the way through this. EEC III was horrifying. EEC IV, SBDS, and NGS Star tester were a Godsend for those that wished to learn how they worked. The engineer in this paper (https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/861030/) served as one of my instructors at the Ford Technical Training School in Southborough MA. Throughout all my training there in the ’90s, all the instructors were Ford Engineers. There was a serious push then to reduce warranty costs by improving product and training techs to reduce or eliminate the use of the diagnostic shotgun of parts. Actually getting certified in EEC V was difficult, in my class only 3 of us out of 12 passed. Part of the program implemented broke warranty repair down by system, and a dealership, based on its size was required to have a certain number of techs factory certified in each system in order to submit and be paid for warranty repairs. The training for techs was free to the tech, a mix of CD-based and online preliminary courses (this was in the mid ’90s!). These would be followed by hands-on instruction and certification at a regional training center with the previously mentioned engineers. The dealerships were required to pay you for the training, all of it. If you had any ambition, you could go from an oil change kid to a Master Tech if you had the talent. Master Tech status required certification in every system and passing ASE tests on your own. Ford would have a yearly all expenses paid cruise for certified Master Techs. It truly was a great time to work in a dealership, you were finally respected for your knowledge and skill. Sadly the Firestone (low tire specification) debacle and Jack the Knife came along (spending profits on trying to become the biggest auto manufacturer on the planet) buying Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover. The Ford engineers/instructors were replaced with contracted teachers from UTI as they retired, and a lifetime of product knowledge slowly bled away.
I wondered if you might get a laugh out of this, or perhaps a scream. Or maybe an “Eek!” (or should that be “EEC!”?).
Sounds like you got a top-notch education when it was still possible. It’s sad when those in charge of preserving tribal knowledge fail to see its importance—or its fragility; once it’s extinct it cannot be retrieved, only built up anew from scratch.
EEeeeec III was rough. I vaguely remember a diagnostic harness for the ignition system that was something like a breakout box that allowed you to pinout the circuitry and take voltage readings, Dark times indeed, as the transition to digital control was a painful one. But for me, anything that would get rid of the variable venturi carburetor was welcome.
I don’t know much about the Ford Variable Venturi carb, except that nobody likes it and (if I understand correctly) it was meant to work on a principle similar to that of the SU carburettors with their much better reputation and fanbase. What were the problems with the VV? How much of the issue was down to strangulation (super-lean) jetting and calibration to squeak the cars past the federal emissions type-approval tests so they’d be legal for first sale; how much was due to poor design, how much due to poor construction…? (Wanna write an article on the subject?)
From the wiki, the last sentence is crucial, and I dispute the claim of “worked well” in the second to last sentence:
The EEC-II controlled air-fuel ratio via the Ford proprietary model 7200 Variable Venturi (VV) Carburetor. This was the last carburetor designed and built by Ford US. It was considered to be the pinnacle of carburetor design. Air-fuel ratio was controlled by a stepper motor that operated a rack which moved a pintle that opened and closed the float bowl vent. When closed, no air could enter the bowl, causing the fuel mixture to be lean. When open, the fuel mixture was rich. While this carburetor worked well, it was extremely expensive to manufacture. Each carburetor was hand-calibrated in a pressure controlled room.
Check out this page (http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/1985-1986-fuel-system-adjustments.html), scroll down to the 7200 VV adjustments, and note the use of a dial indicator for choke adjustment. It is the stuff of nightmares. Carbs to me are something of a vacuum mechanical rube goldberg device already. Adding an ECU to the mix is just insane. I’d fuel inject my snowblower if it were available.
Love this body style of Town Car but wouldn’t touch one from pre-1985 when the 5.0 got fuel injection. And I still wish the factory had offered these without any vinyl toupee on top.
If we cross our eyes, squint, and drink Kool-Aid*, we can go along with the fiction that the subject ’80 had “fuel injection”. But whether we call it “Central Fuel Injection” like Ford or “Throttle Body Injection” like GM or any of whatever other marketing names were applied, I still prefer to think of it as a “pressurized-fuel carburetor”. My grandparents’ ’86 Town Car had (real) fuel injection, and certainly ran better, but still not great.
*Make mine a double, and put it in a dirty glass. Grrrr.
You would think GM would have learned “something” when after the Town Car, Crown Victoria, and Grand Marquis got “real” fuel injection in the mid 80s they actually started beating GM in magazine tests where say the Town Car and the Cadillac Brougham would go head to head.
Instead GM customers got the dang Olds 307 V8 carrying an eQudraJet into the 1990s.
Thought they got EFI for 83?
Throttle-body “fuel injection” from ’80-’84. Port fuel injection ’85+.
Nothing wrong with TBI. (Especially in 1983.)
Daniel: On the snootiness/snobbines/etc of kids, our across the street neighbor was a GM man, whereas my Dad was a Mopar fan. The neighbor always got a new Chevy every 3-4 years, while we were a little more spaced out, and it was rubbed in our faces. The ultimate revenge came on the day when the neighbor drove up a new Caprice, but my Dad drove home an optioned out Chrysler New Yorker! More engine, more options, and for once, no “nyah. nyah, my dad got a new car and yours didn’t!” 🙂
Watching your parents’ car buying process has become almost painful. 🙂 It is easy to see why most who could afford it were new car buyers back then.
My father had one (an 80 Town Coupe) for 4 or 5 years, from the fall of 1979 to late 84 or early 85. He had started with a lease then must have bought it. I hated that car even though it had none of the problems of the one in your family.
It was ugly. It was the first of his Lincolns that did not “feel like quality”, if you know what I mean. The structure was a little shuddery, the interior hardware was cheap, and it just didn’t feel like a Lincoln. And it was ugly. His was white with that cherry-popsickle red velour inside. I didn’t spend much time around it and the only problem I really remember was when one of his Bic lighters slid atop the dash and plopped down into the defroster outlet during a hard stop. It stayed there.
It’s also where the idea of “more luxury features just means more stuff to break” comes from. My dad very much subscribed to that mindset, to this day I think of cloth seats and FM radio as nice little extras.
Almost? I apologise for falling short; I’ll try harder.
I think I might have an inkling or two, yes.
Ours had a brick-red interior as shown in some of the found photos in this post, but I also saw some of the cherry-popsicle (or we might call it “bordello red”) variety.
This was a good read and a reminder of how much cars serve as status symbols for the upwardly mobile, or those who wish to look upwardly mobile, anyway. Around the time period in which this COAL is set, my folks were in the same boat. But they bought a four or five year old Audi 5000. It was a really nice looking car, stately, big as a whale, and it did well in the snow. I don’t think it had a lot of mechanical troubles, but they didn’t keep it all that long, maybe two or three years.
No one in my family ever bought a Lincoln, but my grandparents owned a number of Caddys before switching to Lexus (which was a wise move). The Caddys I remember were mostly from the shrunken era, and they felt really ornate and old-fashioned compared to the Camcords my family started to buy from the 90s onward. I haven’t seen a Towncar from the 80s in many, many years now. I guess now we know why.
Ahh, yes, the Audi 5000 around that time! My main recall of those is that the parents of a classmate with whom I carpooled had two of them. Each in its turn went away awhile, and came back with a new warning printed near the gearstick, telling the driver to step on the brake in order to shift out of Park.
Well done Mr Stern. Really enjoy your remembrances, your ability to recall the details, AND convey them so well is a great talent. One can feel the nuance of the cars.
Thanks kindly, Dan! I’ll strive to keep to the same standard in future instalments.
Great writeup of a terrible car, Daniel. The dashboard pic you used really captures the essence of American luxury at that time, at least as done by Ford: lots of buttons and doodads that look cheap and feel cheaper.
Having grown up in Boulder, I can relate to coming from a middle class family in an affluent town. My family’s bargain basement Aries was certainly a step down from the Audis, Saabs, Volvos, along with the well-equipped Cherokees, Troopers, and Monteros that dominated Boulder in those days.
Right? Like, a double-throw momentary rocker switch to raise and lower the antenna. Why does there need to be a switch, especially in a car that not only releases the park brake automatically, but does not provide for it to be released manually? Just raise it and lower the aerial when the radio’s turned on and off!
Same with the “Premium Sound” switch, a chrome pull-knob just like the headlamp switch, with a little round green light next to it. Pull to make the sound a little less tinny, push to make it a little more tinny. Why does that need to be there? Sure, take the money for the optional Premium Sound, make your dashboard callout and have your little green light—and switch it on and off with the radio. Maybe the point was to be able to switch it on and off to show your neighbours the Joneses you’d spent extra money for it.
Boulder used to have some excellent wrecking yards, years ago. Also a fantastic hot dog restaurant, Mustard’s Last Stand, which was still there last time I visited in 2015, and according to the interwebs is still a going concern.
I laughed out loud on reading your mom’s reply of “go outside and look at the house” when asked by sister if you were poor. You likely can thank her for your terrific writing style.
Glad you enjoyed it! I actually attribute my storytelling skill more to my father; from my mother I got my mouth (too big) and my temper (too quick).
LOL One of these town car lived on my mates front lawn for a while he was storing it for its owner still wearing US plates it had zero chance of ever being complied the roof and A pillars were crunchy under the vinyl and it was well worn I guess it was a flash car in a cheap and chintzy way when new, it was a runner but quite gutless according to its owner likely the road hugging weight was to blame who knows it left under its own steam several weeks later and by now will probably be wrecked for parts it had been flagged at entry so properly made rust repairs are required and need to be certified before it could be complied and nobody would be insane enough for that kind of spend.
I’m sorry your mother treated you so poorly.
Yes, echoing that sentiment here. Such verbal abuse should not be tolerated. I’m glad you are able to recollect the occasion and share it with us.
I have a soft spot for these, I rented an ’82 for our wedding day car. I still have the keys to that car (insert not my fault euphemism here).
Your experience, and that of your folks, with this 1980 example, is one for the books. What could go wrong did, and more.
Thanks, Lee. There was more, it got heavily worse—but I survived. That doesn’t make it okeh, it just means here I am.
As to the car: I am sure I left out a lot of anecdotes, but as I say, they all start to sound alike. Your still-got-the-keys story sounds unusual, though; how did you wind up still having the keys to a rental car this many years on?
Thanks for that. I wish it had been different, but…here I am! :·)
It was the Malaise Era for a lot more reasons than one.
I try to avoid the childish Chevy-Ford thing, but the early Panthers really felt cheap and crappy to me. GM had engineered their ’77 downsized cars to the standards of the ’70s, for better or for worse. They could afford to do it right. But Ford couldn’t, as the time period when the Panthers were first developed was a dark time at Ford, having barely escaped bankruptcy in 1979 (or 1980?).
Undoubtedly this led to lots of cut corners. The result was cars like this. It took Donald Petersen’s “Quality is Job #1” program a few years later to turn things around. And it really did make a difference, even if it was hardly Toyota-level quality.
Another stellar read, Daniel.
I would agree with your conclusions, but would argue that the Panther’s problems were not so much affected by Ford’s finances so much as they were a cause of them. Ford earned 2.2 billion bucks in 1978, which would have been the year the Panther (Ford & Mercury) debuted, and it had done pretty well in 1976-77 too when the car was in development. I would argue that they just lacked some of the ability that GM still had at that time and were being as poorly run as they had been in a long time. All of which is all the more damning of the early Panther because Ford couldn’t blame the result on being poor.
Yes, the timeline supports that.
My understanding is that big-car-lover HFII was very resistant to having to downsize, but it was obviously necessary once GM did. “The fish stinks from the head down” undoubtedly applies to one extent or another. His heart obviously wasn’t in it.
I just pondered this issue a bit more, and the challenge/problem that Ford faced with developing the Panthers is obvious: significantly lower volume than GM by which to amortize them, hence the need to do it for less money (and there’s no doubt Ford spent considerably less on them than GM did on the ’77 downsizing). And not only lower compared to GM but the big car market had shrunk significantly.
In 1976, for example, GM produced some 1.4 million big cars; Ford only 644k; or 46%.
Back in 1964, although Ford’s percentage as compared to GM’s volume of big cars was only 35%, the absolute numbers were significantly higher: a bit over a million still.
The secular decline of the big car market combined with the growing complexity of cars was a double whammy, and undoubtedly led to a lot of shortcuts. GM started falling into this trap too, soon enough.
In addition to your good observations I would add CAFE. When GM started the project that would become the 1977 B body, it was probably 1973-74. Efficiency was obviously a goal, but there was no artificial target to hit until over half way through the project.
The CAFE law was passed in 1975 and slated to go into effect for 1979 models so it jumped up high on the list of criteria Ford had to design for from the outset. And Ford’s history of overweight designs showed up even then – the 79 LTD was only about 150 pounds lighter than the 77 Caprice despite being on a 2 inch shorter wheelbase.
The CAFE B Bodies showed up in 1980 and were a fairly substantial redesign – the Caprice lost about 300 pounds. The 1980+ cars I don’t think have been as highly regarded from a quality standpoint as the 77-79. The 80 Caprice was still a better car in almost every way than the 80 LTD, but I don’t think the margin was as great as in 1979.
It was more like 100 lb, Jim, and it was not a good thing. Things like the rear brakes became under engineered for a large car.
Many 1977-79 GM B-bodies ended up with TH200s, which were the direct result of trying to improve efficiency for CAFE. Other changes to lighten the cars were the lighter but weaker Oldsmobile windowed engine blocks and the use of Aluminum hoods. The 1980 and newer models were more likely to use the smaller and weaker 7.5″ rear axles. However, when I worked in the auto service industry, the 80s B-bodies had a excellent reputation for longevity, despite their lighter construction.
Vince, the Turbo 200 was an instant swap out and the small brakes were so bad we switched to Oldsmobile for taxis.
My reply was just to show that the 1977 B-bodies had design compromises for CAFE incorporated, not just the 1980 models. I am not disputing the TH200 couldn’t be swapped out, but it was a junk transmission that never should have been installed, especially in 350 powered cars (like our old 79 Delta 88). If you compare the 77 B-Body to a 77 Colonnade, it’s clear to see the B-body had lots of weight savings designed into it, including a lighter chassis.
FWIW on the brakes, 77-90 B-Body sedans had either the 11″ rotors and 9.5″ drums or 12″ rotors and the 11″ rear drum brakes depending on the options selected. Only station wagons and police cars always came with the larger brakes. All of our B-Body sedans had the small 11″ front brakes and the small 9.5″ drums, including our Oldsmobiles (1978,1979 and 1985). For us, only the wagons had the 12″ rotors and the 11″ drums.
“(and there’s no doubt Ford spent considerably less on them than GM did on the ’77 downsizing)”
I don’t understand this at all. Firstly, because I don’t know what various bits and pieces Ford based the “Panther” on. Perhaps it was a clean-sheet design (not likely). In that unlikely case, Ford should have spent far more than GM.
The ’77 “downsized” GM cars were largely a matter of putting a stodgy square body onto a lightly-reworked ’76 “A-body” chassis, and using a bunch of blue-colored “metric” bolts in the process. How much could GM have spent to re-body something they’d been making across four brand names since late 1972?
Your comment shows how little you know about what really goes into a car. But we already knew that. And I don’t have the time to explain it to you.
The comment of the ’77 B-bodies being a new body dropped onto a Colonnade chassis is continually stated by Schurkey. It is false. I have in the past shown that they were two completely different chassis designs that shared some suspension components, yet it still gets post time and time again.
Ford may have simply had too many irons in the fire. Between 1978 and 1983, they overhauled their entire lineup, while introducing FIVE completely new platforms (Fox, Panther, Escort, Tempo, Ranger) along with new engines (2.3 OHV, 1.6 OHC) and transmissions (ATX, M5OD, AOD).
When I graduated from engineering school in 1977, I had a job offer from Ford. It had been my dream to work in the auto industry, but when I went to Dearborn for the interview, and saw the rusty cars and piles of dirty snow on the streets, and the Mavericks and Granada’s in the employee parking lots and test labs, it was just too depressing. A few years later I did buy a 1978 Ford, and pretty much everything worked and fit and finish were very good for the time, and for the price point. But it was German, a Fiesta.
Edit: My 1986 Ranger was fine, so Ford really did turn things around. And so far, knock on wood, my 2020 domestic Ford is trouble-free and functions as it should.
Wow, your parent’s car luck couldn’t have been much worse.
My folks were not without mishaps, but generally their cars gave decent service for several years before becoming an issue.
I had a ’76 Cutlass coupe that treated me well before becoming a rust problem at the end. My folk’s had a ’78 Caprice that was a family favorite for 15 years, and is still remembered fondly – it literally never had a major repair, and outside of a crack prone dash pad the cosmetics held up through teen drivers and years of outdoor parking.
I do recall the early Panthers were pretty crappy, their AOD transmissions especially so. As the ’80s progressed and GM’s reputation soured, three Panthers worked their way through the family, an ’87, an ’89 and a ’90 – all were pretty decent cars.
I lived by Ying’s for several years and it had the absolute worst Chinese food. It’s funny that I find constant posts about it on the Vintage Seattle Facebook including YUM! YUM! it wasn’t… it was sort of like the place you go when you know you should like Chinese food but you actually don’t. The modern equivalent would be Panda Express. BLEECCHHH! OK Daniel – no reference to a Pioneer SuperTuner this week!
I lived not far from Yings for awhile, too. You’re right, of course, it was not at all gourmet fare; if that was what was wanted, it wasn’t far away (Chiang’s, to name just one). But just like sometimes it’s gotta be a Filet-o’-Fish from McDonald’s, or a box of macaroni and cheese, sometimes it had to be Ying’s.
Panda Express: I disagree. That’s a different kind of food altogether. Ying’s was the average circa-1967 American’s idea of Chinese food, served as only at Ying’s for decades afterward. Unique-to-Ying’s go-get-it versions of this.
Panda Express (which we used to call “Pandemic Express”, but I guess not any more) is more in the mall food court/stuff yer face/pick four items category, same no matter where in the land you might find it.
Chiang’s is still going strong. Even though I don’t live in the neighborhood anymore, I stop by occasionally for takeout. I’m glad to see the locals are patronizing Chiang’s during the pandemic. I really like the food and the owners are wonderful.
I’m also trying to patronise restaurants I hope will survive the present troubles. I’m no longer in Seattle, so I’ll send you on a mission: go here. You won’t regret it!
One of the things I’ve heard a number of times over the years is things like “X car” was such a POS it always had electrical problems, we had to replace the alternator X times.
While it is certainly reasonable to blame that first alternator on the mfg, it is not reasonable to automatically blame the mfg of the automobile for the string of replacement units that followed and the electrical problems they created like the turn signals causing the other lights to dim and the fan to slow down.
The basic “rebuilt” rotating electrical unit from that era and now is just a collection of used parts that seemed to be working when they decided they needed to build a given unit.
Additionally for GM and Ford vehicles the alternators were originally produced with a wide variety of outputs using the same case and other parts for many years. Something with more accessories would get the higher output versions while the base/lesser models got lower output units. The interchange system lumped many close outputs together, while some (many) re-builders or stores would consolidate even further. So it was the luck of the draw as to the output of any given unit on the shelf and if it was actually suitable for the intended application.
So between the two things you had bearings that started to squeal or diodes that would fail after a couple of weeks, since they were older than the ones they replaced, or an alternator that couldn’t keep up with demand because it was undersized for the application.
The “premium” or “lifetime warranty” units were usually no better, often the store just charged you an extra $5-10 for the same “standard” unit to cover the number of people who managed to keep the car, the necessary paperwork and remember they got the lifetime unit when it did fail.
I pretty distinctly remember him saying that the car was brought back to the Lincoln dealer for repairs. I did not get the impression his dad was buying alternators from “the store” and installing them himself. Quite the contrary.
Unfortunately the dealers often bought the same junk you found on the parts store shelves if it was a customer pay job, of course they got billed out at the same price as the one from the one that they would have bought from Ford.
Ford / Lincoln dealers use non-factory parts?
Yes, many dealers, no matter what the brand would buy things like reman alternators, water pumps, brake shoes and the like from a local/national distributor to pad their profits when it wasn’t warranty work. Mighty is what Daniel is noting one of the replacement units was and their stuff in general was cheap and crappy in that era.
For reman items it isn’t like the mfg has their own rebuilding facilities, they contract with a 3rd party or parties to do it for them. They may set higher standards like “requiring” replacement of certain parts.
There’s a good way to get people to keep coming back for more of the same cars… /s
I’m getting the impression that someone believes Fords are just as good as other cars, while semi-acknowledging that you’re still more likely to have an awful ownership experience with one.
At least one of them was a “Mighty” brand factory-reman item. There’s not much to argue here—Yes, “remanufactured” parts are often garbage. And my folks’ ’80 had an appetite for alternators. It wasn’t either/or; they both contributed.
Buying a “rebuilt” alternator is a waste of money, but the alternators on early Panthers failed all the time. We sold loads of them and they were ordered from the Ford dealer. Dad hated any electric part that was “rebuilt,” and for good reason.
Like Daniel noted, when there was any other draw in the system, the interior lights would dim. The turn signals made them flicker.
A lot of people use “rebuilt” and “remanufactured” interchangeably, but they’re not the same.
I’ve had very good results with rebuilt parts—that is: a single item (carburetor, starter, alternator, steering gearbox, A/C compressor, etc) carefully disassembled and properly cleaned, inspected, worn or damaged or consumable parts renewed and upgraded as applicable using parts of at least original quality, reassembled, and refinished as appropriate by an individual(s) who know what they are doing. Harder to find locally now than in the past, but can still be had with a little looking and shipping or schlepping.
It’s factory-remanufactured parts that are so often so poor. As Scoutdude says, there’s massive over-consolidation of parts that really properly do have different characteristics, the parts get abusively cleaned (anticorrosion coating on metal parts gone and not replaced), thrown together from numerous mixmatched originals all jumbled up, poor-quality replacements/consumables, etc.
There’s still a lot of factory-reman out there, but now these are losing ground to the knockoff/copycat parts almost all brought in from China and promoted as “100% New!”. That industry has been pricing factory-reman out of the market. There’s a range of quality, and I am dependably informed that range at least sometimes goes well up into acceptable territory; since they got the hang of metal surface finishes and treatments their bearings and motors and gears and shafts and such don’t self-destruct any more.
I’ve not lately, praise Gladys, bought enough auto parts to have much personal experience, but I do keep pretty close eyes on the aftermarket OE-lookalike headlamps and other vehicle lighting equipment coming out of those parts of the Chinese auto parts industry. I tend to use that as a proxy for other kinds of auto parts. Through that lens (heh): the best of it is getting better, but still not equal to OE, and the worst of it is still godawful.
Are you sure you don’t have the definitions backward?
Rebuilt used to mean just that, rebuilt and any parts they were still within spec regarding wear were reused.
Remanufactured meant that any component they showed ANY wear or deviated from new spec in any way was replaced with a new component.
Certainly that’s how it is in the Porsche world when it comes to engines, and definitely as far as Factory Remanufactured. Buy a factory reman engine and you pretty much have a new one, with maybe the case being reused.
I’m quite sure I don’t have the definitions backward, but it doesn’t much matter how right I might be (hover your mouse over what you find at the link, for the second caption), because squishy terminology is endemic to many sectors of the auto-enthusiast world. People call an air cleaner the “breather” (wrong), people talk about “RHD” and “LHD” headlamps (wrong), and people have a variety of definitions, many of which conflict with each other and with fact, for things like “rebuilt” and “remanufactured” parts.
“Build” = a worker or small group of workers constructing one of something on a workbench.
“Rebuild” = do that same thing, but start with an already-assembled part.
“Manufacture” = a production line in a factory constructing many of something.
“Remanufacture” = do that same thing, but start with a barrel of already-assembled parts.
Outfits like Jasper have upped the game, but factory-reman engines in general have had a bad reputation for many years (Smokey Yunick had salty words about them in many a Popular Science “Say Smokey…” column, for example).
There’s nothing intrinsic to the concept of a mass-production renovation process (i.e., factory remanufacturing) that necessarily means the result will be poor—it’s all in the decisions made about how it’s done. If the incoming parts are cleaned and handled appropriately rather than abusively; if standards for allowable wear are appropriately stringent; if consolidation is limited to those differences that truly don’t matter, while differences that do matter are respected and maintained; if all new parts installed are of good quality, and if the work is done by people who adequately know and understand what they’re doing, using appropriate tools, supplies, and processes, then the result can be perfectly good. The problem is, many of these “ifs” are often not met because the overwhelming priorities is minimum cost, fastest throughput, and maximum profit.
The obverse is true, too; there’s nothing inherent to the concept of a bench rebuild of a single part that guarantees a good result. The same “ifs” apply here—the rebuilder needs to know and understand what they’re doing, handle and clean the part and its components appropriately rather than abusively, new parts installed have to be of good quality, etc, or the result will be junk. It works the same whether we’re building one starter (alternator, engine, whatever) or ten thousand of them.
I don’t know what exactly the little cartoon link thing was supposed to show me but looking further it appears that internationally the definitions are different and that a “remanufactured” product actually does have an industry definition in other parts of the world, it is one that is reworked to a spec as good as or better than the original product and containing the same warranty and further marked as such and by whom. Just taking the old part apart and putting it back together does not qualify. North America doesn’t seem to necessarily subscribe to the same thing, hence parts produced here and sold as remanufactured may well be inferior to a similar remanufactured part produced elsewhere.
I’m certainly not making up my own definitions, took care to not phrase my question to you to be at all insulting or derogatory, and left open the possibility that you may have honestly made an error, surely one day there will be a first instance of that. But whatever, I learned my lesson, moving on.
https://clepa.eu/mediaroom/remanufacturing-associations-agree-international-industry-definition/
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/07/14/2014-16339/guides-for-the-rebuilt-reconditioned-and-other-used-automobile-parts-industry
Oops-sorry, Jim, I wasn’t clear: I meant my link to the XKCD cartoon to poke fun at myself, not at you.
I don’t say you’re making up terms, I took no offence nor insult at your comment, and I’m just as wrong just as often as everyone else. Your links demonstrate the nub of the problem: no strong definitions and slack adherence to even the weak definitions for these terms as used here.
My buddy (still has) a 1995 F150 which needed a starter; I was helping him replace it (though probably more in terms of companionship, he’s a very good mechanic though as he’s in the same profession as I (also never a mechanic)). However the mistake we made was getting the part from Autozone, as rebuilt.
The good news of course is that the F150 is so tall that we didn’t even need to jack it up to get underneath to the starter. The bad news was that each of the starters we got failed to work at all. One time the counter guy hooked up one of the starters that had failed to a setup and “proved” to us that it was good, of course the difference being that his setup lacked the ring gear of the truck, so there was no load…and it ran just fine, but wouldn’t turn under the load. We went back for 8 starters before finding one that would work (OK, we’re slow learners).
A few years later my brother-in-law had an E150 Van that needed a starter, and I told him this story to get him to get a part elsewhere…well, he ran into the same problem. Apparently the place that tests the parts doesn’t do so under a load, and the parts are prone to fail such they won’t deliver the torque needed to turn the ring gear…which I think is the whole point of a starter…who cares if it spins when disconnected from the load?….you buy it to start your car, not to wave it in the air and show it can rotate absent the load?
Back to the subject, in general my Father had pretty good luck with his car purchases, but he was also a frequent trader, buying new (pretty much, though he bought some used 2nd cars, primary car was always bought new since he got out of college in 1956). However he got bit badly when he bought a 1984 Pontiac Sunbird new….interestingly my sister had bought the same model earlier that year and had better luck, but despite being dealer maintained per schedule, it went through 2 engines in 80k miles, plus having lots of other smaller problems like bad power steering hoses, electrical (light switch) issues….It even broke its timing belt when it was just about new (maybe a couple hundred miles on it) when we were on a rare trip to Dallas. He’d dropped my (younger) sisters and I off at 6 flags park and picked us up in a different (rental) car….and we had to stay an extra day to get the timing belt replaced. My youngest sister inherited it as a school car and it kept breaking down, and finally threw a rod, so he junked the car in 1988 or so (only 4 years old!) after the engine had previously been replaced at about 40k miles (don’t remember the reason, but dealer determined it was needed). This car went a long way towards making my sister avoid American cars, she only owned Japanese cars the rest of her life (unfortunately passed away from Ovarian Cancer at age 37).
Speaking from direct personal experience of early Panther cars, was first, they had horrid electrical systems. The AOD was horrible and the engines were horrible. The GM B-bodies were superior in every metric which is why we used them as taxis. There is no emotion in choosing a car for a taxi. It has to be durable and reliable. We tried a couple of Panthers but they were so problematic we only ever had two. One was later cop with a Canadian spec 351. If I kept it out OD and in 3, it was a pretty nice car, but nowhere near as fast as a 9C1.
My Stinkolin Clown Car was a ’79 Colony Park which was a piece of crap too. Though not nearly as bad as the Lincoln you described. It had the EEC II (?) with the non-feedback VV carburetor. Maybe it did have a feedback carb, I can’t remember. Now THAT was a piece of crap! I eventually replaced it with the old Dura-Spark system (distributor, module, 2150 Autolite carb). I won’t even begin to address the other crappy features like the auto-climate control that didn’t work.
About the only thing I liked was it did not have the auto parking brake release.
About the time I worked the bugs out of it it was totaled (good riddance). Fortunately nobody was hurt.
I had it towed to the house so I could yank the drive train and other salable items from the car.
The weekend before the car was towed to the junk yard we hosted wake, complete with BBQ and all the trimmings. 35 people showed up (some I didn’t even know) and we all had one helluva good time.
All the while Ford was playing around with EEC, GM had its superb HEI. I always wondered why Ford couldn’t do something similar.
Not to nitpick, but HEI was an ignition system, while EEC was an engine control system. GM’s equivilent to that was the CCC (Computer Command Control) which was used introduced in 1980 (California) and 1981 Federally. This included the electronic feedback Q-jet (E4ME). We didn’t get the CCC in Canada due to our lax emission laws which allowed our cars to run without ECMs and computer controlled carburetors until much later in the decade. Ford did have its Dura Spark I and II ignitions systems, which were not quiet as advanced as the HEI system and somewhat less integrated, but still a good design nonetheless. I outlined the differences in my ignition article series.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-electronic-ignition-losing-the-points-part-3/
You are correct, of course, Vince. The emission laws here were indeed lax. The RCMP 9C1’s we had all had no cat, dual exhaust and an AIR pump. They ran very nicely, too.
GM’s HEI was the cat’s meow for its time. Whenever I repaired one (which was rare) the first place I looked was under the ignition module. Most of the failed/ intermittent modules had the dried up heat transfer paste under it. I don’t think I ever replaced the pick-up.
The feedback Q-Jet to me was better (?) than either the VV or the feedback VV carbs. Like comparing junk to junk.
Ford got it right with the EEC IV – sequential fuel injection system. I owned 3 Fords with that set up and never had a lick of trouble. Mercury was the first to get the EECII. I guess Ford figured Mercury owners could afford repairs or didn’t keep their cars long enough.
I had a new ’79 Country sedan (company car) with the Dura-Spark ignition and the non-feedback VV carburetor. JUNK! I swapped it with an associate for his ’77 Country Sedan.
Strangely enough, I owned a 1979 Ford LTD with Dura-spark and VV carb. Neither gave me any trouble for 130,000 miles, other than the module failing at 105,000. So, JUNK is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Especially, with a free company car. I’m sure you drove it like you owned it too. Anecdotes, are not Data.
Another fantastic read Daniel. Your family seemed to have not the best luck with cars. The cars my parents bought were all good for the most part, other than our ’79 Fairmont. It was much like your families Lincoln, a car that was always having problems. Our Fairmont also required it’s 302 to be replaced after about 100,000 miles, which was the straw that finally caused my dad to dump that turd. My uncle bought it on the cheap, planning on putting a new engine in it, but instead it mostly sat in his yard for a year or so until he cut his losses and scrapped the car at all of 8 years old.
Very interesting article. I owned an early 80s TC as a used beater , although I let an employee drive it. The car was definitely built to a price point. It was quiet and comfortable but didn’t have a particularly solid, high quality feel. Cheap tacky trim was screwed onto a pretty flimsy structure. By comparison, the 1990 redesign was a huge improvement.
But back in the early 80s, the Continental was the Lincoln sedan to have. A friend had an 83 model for many years. It’s ride, handling and structure were superior to the TC The fit, finish and materials were superior. It simply felt like a solid, quality car in the American tradition. Yes, it had flaws, in particular the distinctive styling put a lot of people off and made the trunk feel a little cramped. But overall a more satisfying experience.
I agree with Paul; the Panthers were never as good as the B-bodies. They felt flimsier and had more of a plasticky feeling and a more disconnected feeling to them. The parts never felt synced up as well as the B-Bodies. I love the idea of an unsophisticated, cheap, RWD, V8, live axle, luxury sedan but looking at a lot of new Town cars and Marquis as recently as 2001 just left me cold. These were the sort of cars that Detroit could put together in its sleep. Perhaps the newborn Escort was a little wobbly on its legs, being a completely new sort of car . . . but the Panther’s inadequacies were inexcusable. Especially since when it was developed, it was going to be the bread and butter car for Ford.
Also echoing Paul’s point about “quality is Job one” by Petersen. Somewhere around 80-82 the domestic manufacturers realised, some faster than others, that the warty little Datsuns and tinny Toyotas and tiny Hondas weren’t, in fact, going to be thrown back into the ocean and they weren’t going to stay warty and tinny and tiny forever but were going to grow in sophistication and comfort and take over if not stopped. Reagan’s response was to impose Voluntary Trade Restrictions, but NOBODY was going to put up with the kind of dreck they had been shoving out the door. In 1972 someone who bought a bad Malibu chalked it up to “lemon” or built on Hungover Monday, but in 1980, they went to Toyota. Iacocca knew Chrysler couldn’t afford another Aspen/Volare disaster so even though the K was well in its development cycle when he was hired, Iacocca made sure it wasn’t an Aspen. I dunno what all the “Quality is Job One” program entailed, but it certainly sounded convincing and given the abysmal standards for quality in the mid to late 70s, they didn’t have to try very hard to make a huge difference.
What an awful car. This sounds like it was even more worn out and troublesome than your average 7 year old car at the time, in no small part due to all the fancy electrical things which gave a lot of trouble. In those days, a 7 year old car wasn’t made all that well to begin with and didn’t age gracefully. Now a car runs perfectly for 15-20 years and a few things start to go and we replace it cos it’s at the end of its useful life.
I am now on my second 91 Cadillac Brougham which has been, other than maintenance and routine wear items, flawless and has certainly covered the distance. Cars got SO much better SO quickly in the 80s.
Excellent and very fascinating article as usual, Daniel! I truly enjoy learning more about the automotive gremlins in the various cars.
The high school experience that your sister had was no different from mine when my family and I lived in Texas. I nagged at my parents to go upscale and to shift from Lutheran (and German) prudence to living in the greatest American dream in the late 1970s right before the yuppie movement took off in the 1980s.
First, we upgraded our wardrobes to include the popular labels: Lacoste, Ralph Lauren Polo, etc. That greatly reduced the stare-down from my classmates. Then, a 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL and 1984 BMW 318i in our garage. That shifted their attitude toward me for better. Then, my mum quit her hourly job and started working at the fancy World Trade Centre in Dallas as sales specialist. That led to bigger circle of wealthy friends and more interesting people. Then, we moved to a very large and opulent house in the posh neighbourhood. That caused the “disruption in the force” with our German friends and relatives who were so jealous of our “American Dream”. They couldn’t understand why we “needed” four cars, nine television sets, two living rooms (actually, drawing room and den), four bedrooms, three-and-half bathrooms, separate dining and breakfast rooms, etc.
Sorry that you got a very brutal dress-down in a very public way from your mum.
The rear lap belts were a negligently backward misdesign: the belt pulled out from the inboard side and buckled at the outboard side.
Do you mean like in the 90’s 7-series BMW? So the rescue personal could just cut the belt before extracting an injured passenger?
I don’t know about the belts in a BMW 7er, but I would be interested to learn what prevents a rescuer cutting a belt arranged the usual way (pulled from outboard, fastened inboard).
That’s what I’ve read. Picture of the rear seat of E38 attached.
Daniel, could you please shed some light on why for E28 5-Series both headlights had to be the same diameter for the US market (in Europe inner lights were smaller), yet the Merc C123 was sold with a different diameter headlights (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-1984-mercedes-benz-300cd-turbo-diesel-what-me-worry/)
Thanks!
One can read a lot of things; some of them are true.
The E28 (and E23, E24, E30, Jaguar XJ, various Alfa-Romeos, etc) didn’t have to have four 5-3/4″ headlamps in the U.S.; they could have had two 7″ headlamps. Either setup was considered a complete headlamp system. What wasn’t permitted was to have a system-and-a-half consisting of two 7″ and two 5-3/4″ lamps. Nor was it permitted to have half a system consisting of two 5-3/4″ lamps. The reason why was central intensity limits in the high beam spec: not more than a ridiculously low 37,500 candela per side of the car until the limit was doubled to a still-very-low 75,000 candela per side in 1978. The whole high beam task (per side of the car) is done by one 7″ round headlamp or two 5-3/4″ headlamps; in the latter case the high beam setting of the high/low beam lamp provides close-range fill light while the high-beam-only lamp provides distance reach and mid-range spread. Putting a 5-3/4″ high-beam-only lamp with a 7″ high/low beam lamp would potentially have exceeded the central intensity limits and/or the foreground light limits, so it wasn’t allowed.
The Mercedes 123 in U.S. trim had a system of two 7″ round headlamps, one per side. The 5-3/4″ lamp inboard of that wasn’t a headlamp, it was a fog lamp on its own switch. Same with the Alfas that had a big + small headlamp elsewhere in the world. Fog lamps aren’t federally regulated in the U.S.
Good write up. As someone who grew up in Denver I appreciate reading/hearing stories from around the metro area of yesteryear.
We never had a Towncar, but had many Ford products. My parents at one point owned a 1976 Grand Marquis Sedan in dark blue. I ran into that inertia switch issue twice with a 1986 Mercury Sable LS Wagon and a 1992 Ford Taurus GL Sedan. Seems like it was an ongoing issue with Fords for a long time. I think my Dad even had it happen on a ’90 F250. A friend had a 1989 Continental that was fully loaded and had many many issues I remember. In my experience with Ford from the 1980’s and early 90’s was that you either got an amazing car your got a total lemon that you could never seem to work out the problems with. Our 1986 Sable was one we could never work out the problems with, as was that friend’s Continental.
I totally agree with you about just spending more on a better car initally and not having to be nickle-and-dimed to death. I think Ford’s are awful about a bunch of little things failing constantly as they age. That’s always been my experience. Little switches, relays, connectors, etc. just seem to fail often after a certain point. Fixing all those little issues starts to become more of a hassle than it’s worth.
Sounds like for what it was, it gave a decent service life. But like so many other’s of the era, reliability was hit or miss. My folks had a 1981 Cadillac Seville in tan that was about as bad as you describe this Towncar to be. They later had a 1985 Eldorado which was better in many ways.
Thank you for the write up, it was very entertaining.
Brings back bad memories of my 1979 Fairmont, my friends 1985 LTD/Fairmont and a colleagues 1994 Taurus with the impossible Essex 3.8 engine. All three were junk with a capital J!
Each car was plagued with different issues. My Fairmont literally was falling apart with only 60K on the clock, the rear end blew leaving me stranded at school, the paint was wafer thin and fading right off the trunk and rear panels, the interior door handles broke right off in my hand, the door glass was about as thick as a dime and shattered very easily, electrical issues were too numerous to mention and the power steering pump went out twice making the dreadful whine before it crapped out. It never ran right and was always cold blooded even after several carburetor overhauls and full tuneups, the entire dash vibrated annoyingly at 55 MPH despite the tires checking out as perfectly balanced, the tranny started slipping shortly after the rear end was replaced and sitting in this thing for more than a half hour was rear end torture.
My buddies 1985 3.8 4 speed AOD equipped fox body downsized LTD was a bit better on certain things but the 3.8 blew the tell tale head gasket and right at 80k the tranny went losing first gear immobilizing the car. It also had electrical issues and ate 3 alternators and two of the 4 power windows were inop by the time he junked the car with a badly rusted under carriage.
The co-workers 94 Taurus was also a pile. With but 42k on the clock the head gasket blew. The dealer supposedly put on a new one and within a month the engine started a death rattle on the bottom end and seized right up in his driveway. A year after the replacement engine the trans axle went at about 60K. The car felt like a creaky loose rattle trap when driving it. Both front struts went bad and the rear springs were broken and needed replacing. The A/C stopped working. All this with under 70K miles on a car he bought brand new!
Other friends with later model Panthers fared much better but even those had typical issues like the headlights going out due to the control unit box under the dash, the overhead digital unit going whacky and the infamous climate control head unit failure. Luckily with the help of Youtube we were able to correct most of those problems easily enough.