I think I find this 1969 Ford LTD appealing because it looks like something GM could have done. It's currently for sale at the same Ford dealership that the only buyer it's ever had bought it from back in 1969. Only in small town USA.
Up until 1978 all big Ford's and Mercury's rode on the same chassis that was new for model year 1965. Those big Lincoln Continental's with the "suicide-doors" didn't share the chassis until 1970. Ford sliced, diced, kneaded and bobbed the design constantly no doubt to stay at least in pace with General Motors incessant changes. The end result being the oafish LTD of 1974 through 1978. infamy. I've said many times before that with the rarest of exceptions designs don't get better looking the more the designers futz with it. To be fair, GM's big bumper, pillared sedans from 1974-1976 where pretty god awful too. Ford sorta, kinda got it right for a brief while with these tasty designs.
Well, as right as Ford got things back then. Save for a Mustang or Thunderbird here and there, they didn't do much right design wise in the thirty plus years after World War II. That period of form over function coming to a screeching halt with the Great Downsizing Epoch that GM started in 1977. Sorry, Ford's 1979-2011 "Panther" LTD\Crown Victoria's never rowed my land yacht. To give credit where it's due, I'm also a big fan of the 1968-1969 Mercury Cougar, the Continental Mark's II-V and 1966-1967 Continental's but I'm focusing on Ford's today and not FoMoCo's myriad other divisions.
The Ford LTD, just like the Chevrolet Caprice, was a bit of an odd duck seeing that it portended to be a luxury car. What started out as a trim level on the 1965 Galaxie, it became it's own model line come 1966. Again, very similar to what Chevrolet did with the Caprice as Carpice was at first a trim level of the Impala before superseding it. The LTD luxury aura wasn't really slathered on until these all-new-for-1969 models rolled out complete with vacuum actuated head light doors. You know a car is luxurious when the headlights are covered. So, if the Ford Motor Company's least expensive division was selling a rather well equipped luxury model what was left for Mercury and Lincoln to peddle?
Oddly enough, while Mercury got a retooled Marquis for 1969, that, subjectively, lacks any of the clumsy charms our Ford LTD here has and could be construed as it's homely sibling, Lincoln didn't get a new Continental until 1970. And as bad-ass as those cars were, well, the hard-top two-door models where, they were really nothing more than gussied up LTD's. In a world where you would think riches would trickle down, the bubbling up of luxury must have been a stretch for many a Lincoln faithful. Especially after nearly a decade of the uniquely wonderful suicide-door Continental.
The online ads for it make no bones about the odometer rolling over; it reads 39,000 + now. Back in the olden days odometers only had five digits because one-hundred thousand miles on a car was an unfathomable distance for an automobile to travel. And a mark of shame for their owner if they drove something "that old". Over the years the interior and the top had been handsomely redone. The paint is original. Sadly, no pictures of the Ford "FE" 390 V-8 appear in the ad. Asking price is a tad high at $9,986 but reasonable for a time capsule in this sort of condition. Any full-size GM two-door of this vintage in this shape would have two to three times the asking price. The reasons for that I will have to drill into in a subsequent blog dedicated exclusively to that subject.
You have to wonder what will become of big, old-school American iron like this seeing that kids today have so little interest in cars in general to say nothing of ill-performing old barges like this. I'm lucky that my older son is somewhat interested in cars but you just know some guy in his fifties is going to swoop in and grab this. Maybe for less than the asking price. Let's hope so. My son wouldn't be caught dead in this.
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