It's only fairly recently that when you wanted to buy a new car with certain options you could find almost exactly what you were looking for on dealer lots. Cars come pretty loaded these days so there's little need to custom order. Custom ordering, though, is the only way our 1969 Ford LTD here could have been built for certain no dealership would ever order this car without someone specifically wanting or needing it.
It's not that Ford's optional 429 cubic inch, "Thunder Jet" V-8 was so unusual in a 1969 LTD but the lack of other options is. No air conditioning, power windows, locks or brakes. Dog dish hub cabs.
It even has a manual transmission. Who would order such a beast like this? Well, I would for one but not in green with a black vinyl top. Horrible. Gauges are all aftermarket. By the way, look where the radio is.
Back in the day, many options were a la carte and they were not bundled together like they are today. Customers willing to wait weeks if not months for their new car could literally custom order it. On older cars like our '69 Ford LTD here, it's not unusual to find them equipped with power windows but not door locks and vice versa, tilt columns and AM radios, leather interiors with manual seats. Still, finding something like this that's a bone stripper LTD, except for its monster engine is quite unusual.
Custom orders also meant no two cars would be, in theory at least, the same. Sounds great but the problem was custom orders led to assembly issues since the factory was not building any two cars alike and that led to myriad build quality issues. Today, options are limited to packages and there aren't many permutations of cars save for color, interior trim and perhaps wheels and tires.
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