1968 Ford Ranch Wagon Custom 500 - Brittany Blue

 

Amazing what you find when you're not looking for it. Probably since the day I started this blog, I've been searching for a 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon in "Brittany Blue" just like the one I grew up with. While this one I found on Haggerty's auction site is a bit fancier "Custom 500" than my father's car was, all things being equal, this is the same car of my woe begotten "wonder years". 

Let's swing open or pull down her "Magic Tailgate", kick the "poverty" hubcaps and take this memory machine for a figurative drive down memory lane. 

First, some context as I attempt to see this car again through my then six-year-old, car-obsessed eyes. 

Late summer of 1970, I was thrilled to learn the "block was cracked" on my father's 1961 Rambler Classic, four-door sedan. While I didn't know what that meant, all I needed to know was we were getting rid of the damn Rambler and we were getting a "new", or "new-to-us", "new car". 

Long story short, my father picked up a literal rental grade 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon from a Hertz' used car lot not far from Kennedy Airport to replace it. I can still hear this impossible to baton down properly spare tire banging around behind it's plastic cover. 

Suffice to say I was disappointed and in more ways than one. Not only was I not thrilled with the dreary, featureless, utilitarian to a fault Ford wagon, but I was more upset my father bought it without consulting with me about it. 

Yes, I was all of six-years-old but still. Then again, my father was clueless when it came to stereotypical, father son bonding. We never played catch in the yard let alone go car shopping together. 

Knowing my father, he did what was most convenient and bought the first car he saw that fit whatever price point he was comfortable with. He rented from Hertz out at Kennedy Airport often as he traveled frequently for his job, they had a used car lot selling off some of their rentals and, voila. He bought a station wagon.  I doubt he even consulted with my mother about it. 

Back in the 1960's and 1970's, station wagons were big business for The Big Three.  For 1968, Ford sold seven different iterations of their full-size models, but they also sold intermediate- and compact-wagons. Note from this Ford sales brochure, "Ranch Wagon" is at the bottom of the wagon totem. 

The piece de resistance on this car, though, are these fold-down, "facing" rear jump seats; the stuff of prepubescent kid dreams back in the day. These non-removable seats increased passenger capacity up to, well, in theory anyway, ten people. For comparison's sake, the current Chevrolet Suburban has seating for up to nine. 

Fold the seats and rear seat down and you've got hauling capacity to rival a pickup truck. In my father's car, there were metal panels that opened and closed north-south giving access to a cavernous, subterranean trunk; in my father's car, a trunk loaded with sandbags to help give it at least some modicum of traction in winter. 

Owing to the ala carte nature of the way these cars could be optioned, this car is a bit an oddity. For instance, it has a column mounted three-speed manual, the proverbial three-on-the-tree that even by 1968 was increasingly rare; my dad's car had an automatic. Also, as we get under the hood, appears this car also lacks power-steering that my father's car had as well. 

Then again, my father's car had been a rental, Hertz no doubt wanted a car as accessible to the masses as possible. 

Like my father's car, this one has the new-for-1968, 302-cubic-inch Windsor V-8; I don't see a power steering pump. Smooth and torquey, my father, who was not a car guy, loved its power and, sign-of-the-times, thought the 17-miles-per-gallon highway it got the pinnacle of thriftiness. 

Adding to my verklempt was that the family across the street from us had a 1968 Ford Country Squire loaded with every accouterment on the options list. You name it, it had it. Including pie-in-the-sky air conditioning, a hedonistic option given that my parents didn't own even a single window air conditioner. We roughed it with these side-vent windows that opened via a separate crank from the regular door window cranks. I can still smell my parents' cigar and cigarette smoke whirl winding through the car when these vents would be open. 

Bidding on this, last I checked was at $2,800. Despite its indirect history with me, I have little interest in it. Blame the three-on-three-tree, lack of power steering and these shot-to-pieces front seat covers that, I have to imagine, are impossible to find anything close to OEM for. My father's car's front seats were split like this as well. Note the lack of head rests; who's up for some whiplash?

I do love its patina which I hope whoever buys it keeps. 

Nope, I'll pass on this one and simply bask in the very mixed, bittersweet memories I have of my father's Ranch Wagon. Even to this day and at my age, I vacillate, either laughing or coming to near tears reminiscing about the misadventures my parents put my brothers and I through in their Ranch Wagon. 

As far as cars go from back then, the Ranch Wagon was fairly reliable. Sure, it had its issues, but it was no lemon. If I recall, though, forgive me, it's a been a minute, my mother believed the Ranch Wagon "beneath us"; ironic since she didn't drive. After seven-years of "slumming it" (her words), she put her foot down demanding my father buy her a Cadillac. Took a while but dutiful husband he was, more like a sycophant, he eventually did. 

1981 Ford Fairmont - Oh So '70's Vibe (And Not in a Good Way)

Although my birth year coincided with the debut of the Pontiac GTO and I was born within a month of the launch of the Ford Mustang and the Plymouth Barracuda, by the time I approached driving age, thanks to two gas crisis and EPA emissions and safety regulations, the cool car party was long over. Due to increasingly stringent safety, emissions and gas mileage regulations, staid looking economy cars were king and anything with a V-8 engine, not to mention any modicum of performance, real or imagined, was verboten. 

However, what came about at the Ford Motor Company as result of circumstances and government scrutiny, was actually quite good. Although, I had little use for the game changing 1978 Ford Fairmont and its corporate kissin' cousin, the Mercury Zephyr. Even in two-door guise like this '81 Fairmont.  

To be honest, though, as good as these cars are based on what became known as the "Fox-body", or platform were, they have not aged well. At least in comparison to their far more famous sibling, the Ford Mustang. And to a lesser degree the 1979-1986 Mercury Capri. The Ford Motor Company used the Fox-body on a wide variety of automobiles across all three of their divisions including Lincoln. The origin of the name, by the way, the subject of much conjecture but the common notion is Ford named it after the Audi Fox which was supposedly the benchmark they aspired to when they first started drawing it up in 1973. 

The "Fox-body" was a radical departure from most anything the Ford Motor Company or any domestic manufacturer had come with before it. The relatively lightweight, unit-bodied Foxes featured a then "space-age" Macpherson strut front suspension and rack-and-pinion steering that afforded drivers a near European level of ride and handling. Well, for at the time anyway. 

Ah, but where it counted to pre-pubescent me, its simple styling was a decided turnoff; not that there were any Ford's of the era that I cared for save for any Fox-body Mustang or Capri with a "5.0" glued to its front fenders. Simple by design and straightforward in ways what they replaced (the Ford Maverick and Mercury Comet) certainly weren't, the Fairmont and Zephyr were the Ford Motor Company's literal and figurative interpretation of a Volvo 240. Ha, as if? Well, auto pundits raved about these cars in ways they didn't gush about General Motors downsized full and mid-sized models that were really, if we're being honest, nothing more than shrunken versions of what they had been pushing out for the past thirty years or so. Your opinion may vary, see dealer for details. 

Funny how some of us have to learn life's lessons the hard way. While my first car, coincidentally or not, was a 1974 Mercury Comet, what I refer to as my "second first car", was exactly what I wanted in the first place - a big, spatially inefficient, V-8 powered "personal luxury car" that was a wallowing monster to handle. But I thought it cool as all hell even though I was smitten by the handling prowess of a friends tiny, early '80's Toyota Corolla. That little car along with a number of other smaller, sharp handling cars subliming stoking the coals of my inner race car driver; I didn't realize at the time that not only was I a budding automobile enthusiast, I actually really enjoyed driving. 

Back to our '81 Fairmont here in the '23. I found this on Facebook Marketplace not long ago for sale near my home here on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price was a fair $4,500 for a rust-free, forty-year-old, 50,000-mile anything although I chafe at the thought of dropping that on this. Attempting to look at it through the goggles of my 26-year-old, semi-car conscious older son, I still can't see past it's, as he would put it, "not in a good way, oh-so-'70's-vibe". He adores my 1977 Corvette so he does know a thing or two. I might me somewhat alone in my contempt for this car as I went back to Marketplace to find it and it seems to be gone. 

1968 Ford Galaxie 500 Convertible - Not My Father's Ford Ranch Wagon

Up until I was around eight years old, my father worked as an executive in the Manhattan office of Burlington Industries, a fabric making company based in Greensboro, North Carolina. At least once a month, often times more, he would travel down there for meetings. He'd be gone early Monday and not return until Friday evenings, sometimes Saturday mornings. Sad thing is, I can't say I actually missed him, we were not close, but when he was away, there was relative peace in my house because my parents wouldn't be at each other's throats. That and his homecomings usually meant dinners of Coke and pizza. Also, he'd bring the pizza home in what he referred to as "company cars" which I came to learn were more like "company paid for rental cars". One time he came home in a car that sort of resembled his 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon but it, for certain, was not my father's Ranch Wagon; it was 1968 Ford Galaxie coupe like this red convertible Galaxie 500. 

I was not a fan of the Ranch Wagon. Story goes that when my father's wretched '61 Rambler cracked its engine block, he replaced it with a blue, 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon from Hertz Used Car Sales. Figures since he spent so much time at the Hertz counter at JFK and LaGuardia that he'd pick up a used rental. His car was light blue like the Ranch Wagon in the foreground in this photo from a 1968 Ford brochure is. It didn't have a roof rack, nor did it have side chrome moldings. Ford "dog-dish" or "poverty" hubcaps finished off the sorry, spartan, no-frills "Grapes of Wrath" motif.  At first, I thought it just another "company car" until he started putting the damn thing in the garage.

.

Meanwhile, across the narrow street from us, neighbors with kids around my age had a 1968 Ford Country Squire like the one pictured above from another brochure. Power-everything and facing rear jump seats. Jump seats - the dream of every kid born between say 1960 and 1975. That Country Squire made my father's Ranch Wagon have all the industrial charm of a school bus.  

So, when I saw that Galaxie, I was smitten. Although the car had nothing in common with my father's Ranch Wagon from the A-pillar back, I thought it the most fascinating car in the world. Mind you, it was a hard top coupe; I may have burst into flames seeing a hedonistic convertible like our redhead here. Although, coming to know the man who was my father, playing catch with Joe Namath in my backyard was more of a possibility than us ever owning such a car. 

In hindsight, I've come to the realization that my father's Ranch Wagon was the embodiment of the man, we are what we drive, after all. Or whom we wished to be seen as. More Willie Loman than the swaggering, confident John Wayne meets Frank Sinatra I wished he was, my father was a simplistic, blue-collar guy caught in the crossfire of the executive mumbo-jumbo and posturing of "Mad Men" era New York City. That show pegged those guys dead on; my father told a tale or ten of the consequences of liquid lunches. And the car he chose to replace his hoary Rambler with was a carpenter\plumber\electrician's special rather than an executive express like Don Draper's Cadillac. Pick a lane, old man. And stay there. He just didn't get that. 

Sadly, my father lacked the intrinsic mechanical aptitude, skill and work ethic of his immigrant father making him a wannabee in two very different universes and not particularly good in either. He changed jobs frequently. Throw in a most difficult homelife and his self-medication to deal with his miserable life and you might be able to at least start to appreciate my taking solace in the small things like his not being around, Coke and pizza and of course, cars. My father and I were like two orbs occupying the same space barely acknowledging each other. Not unlike the way my dog and car interact with each other. A benign, listless and at the end of the day harmless coexistence.  I didn't ask for anything more than he could provide. Which wasn't much. 

For model year 1968, Ford offered twenty-one variations of their quite good, new-for-1965 full size car.  And who knows why too although GM did the same thing. Chrysler to a somewhat lesser degree. Did they really need two different types of two- and four-door models? Two different Country Squires as well if the only difference between the two is one has the, literally, killer rear jump seats and the other doesn't. Oh, look. You could also get the jumpers in the Ranch Wagon. 

It's been said that one of the reasons for the shoddy build quality of domestics back then was because there were too many different ways an automobile could be configured. Our Galaxie 500 drop-top here is near the top of the second row. Not too near the top and certainly a long, long ways from the bottom of the lineup. 

For my money, I'd opt for this car back then rather than splurge for an XL convertible. Especially stuffed with Ford's "FE" (Ford-Edsel), 390 "4V" (four-venturi, sounds better than nozzle) "Thunderbird" V-8 engine. Despite single digit city fuel economy. Can't be that much better on the highway. The front end on these cars is cleaner and simpler and isn't bogged down with the fussy headlight doors of the XL convertible too. Not quite sure the Ford mags were available on these cars and the raised white letter tires for certain were not. But they look marvelous with the rims on this car. Why spend more than you have to? 

I found this memory machine on Facebook Marketplace for sale near my home in Cleveland, Ohio with a price reduced ask of $12,500. It's a North Carolina car which means it's going to be pretty free from rust, which is so important on an older car, especially really old cars. NADA pegs this average retail at $18,100, high retail at $29,400 so the seller might be looking to onload this rather than store it for the winter. Finding relative bargains like this another reason I love car shopping this time of year up here. No, I'm not going to go for it, but it is nice to think about. You get this closer to ten-grand and I'll writhe with jealousy.

As for my father's Ranch Wagon, he traded it in during the summer of 1977 on a 1970 Buick Electra 225 four-door hard-top I steered him towards after my mother decided it was time to get rid of the wagon. All of thirteen at the time, I had no idea how pretentious it may have seemed going from the Ranch Wagon to the Electra, but I didn't know better. Not that I cared, I just loved that car. And after my father was left to his own devices after the Rambler croaked, I wasn't going to take any chances. 

 

1986 Ford Bronco II - II Tippy

Back in the '70's, Ford had a habit of using "II" when they'd launch either new versions of an existing nameplate or an accompanying model to one. For 1974 they launched their diminutive, Pinto-based "Mustang II" and for 1977 they rechristened their intermediate but still elephantine 1972 vintage Torino as the "LTD II"; which they sold alongside the still full-size and ginormous LTD which wouldn't be shrunk until 1979. For 1984, seemingly long after the Great Downsizing Epoch had subsided, Ford rolled out a compact sport utility vehicle they labeled, "Bronco II". Our blocky, stubby subject is a 1986. 

Based on the then current (1982) Ford Ranger pickup truck chassis, just like the current Bronco is Ranger based, the Bronco II was dimensionally all but identical to the first Bronco Ford peddled between 1966 and 1977. If you blurred your eyes a little and went with the flow, you could say that it was a spiritual updating to the first Bronco that is now one of the hottest and most desired "vintage" vehicles out there today. If you don't blur your eyes or go with the flow, ahem, you just didn't get what the Bronco II was all about. I didn't and still don't. 1966-1977 Bronco's? Oh. Hell yeah. One of these? Err, no. 

The fact I didn't get what the "II" was all about makes my appreciation of the current model all the more amazing. I'm from Long Island; I don't "get" anything truck. The new Bronco, again, I'm referring to the "Bronco" and not the fancy Ford Escape they call "Bronco Sport", is a transcendental design that is so wonderful, the masses are throwing themselves into financial harms to have one. Despite the fact that they are about as practical as a Ford Mustang II. Yeah, yeah. I know that's more than a slight exaggeration, but I say that to illustrate my point. Your opinion may vary. See dealer for details. 

Any "cool" (subjective) that the '66-'77 Bronco had was lost on the 1984-1990 "II". The proportions and any semblance of balance are actually better with the II, but therein lies most of the charm of the original Bronco that the current one successfully apes. The original is a weird, clumsy, disproportional design that has a butch, industrial syncopation to it. Let's understand, however, that often times good design doesn't work aesthetically. For instance, better "design" is what made General Motors downsized 1978 intermediates so damn boring. There was no whimsy, no spirit, no elan. And any semblance of it, like what they tried to do with the 1978 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix, came across as grossly pretensious. 

What the Bronco II is best or worst remembered for, however, is not its design, folks actually loved it and bought nearly three-quarters of a million of them between 1984 and 1990, but its propensity to rollover. In short, because of the "II's" center of gravity versus its width being proportionally at odds, it's "Stability Index" was sorely off. "II's" look "tippy", and they were. Ford paid some $113 million in 334 wrongful death and injury settlements; some accounts say more than 800 people were killed in "II's" that rolled over and one in five sold between 1984-1990 was involved in a rollover. Wow. Ford apparently knew about the issue even during the "II's" design phase in the early 1980's but they went forward with it because it would have been too expensive to engineer out the problems with the suspension. 

It got so bad for the "II" that Geico refused to write policies for them. 

My only first-hand experience in one was as a back seat passenger in one a friend of a friend had back in the late '80's. Again, I'm no "truck" girl, bit I found the whole the utterly ridiculous. Along with it being oh-so-bouncy, especially in the back seat, I thought the whole thing felt like it was riding on giant balloons. Which in fact it was in reality. If I was going to do a "truck" back in the day, and I had to have a Ford, it would have been an "O.J. Bronco" although it would have been in black or dark red. Then again, give me a Chevy K5 Blazer.  

The Ford Explorer, that replaced the Bronco II in 1991, had similar rollover propensity issues until Ford sorted it out with a wider track and an independent rear suspension. In...2002. Along with "O.J.'s Bronco", is it any wonder why Ford waited twenty-five to come with another SUV they called Bronco? 

 

Ford's New Bronco - I Want One

A family down the block from us just got one of these new Ford Bronco's. Just like this in whatever hue of grey blue this is too. And I want one. Bad. That's saying a lot too since in general I'm not even a cross-over kind of girl let alone a "trucker". These are "trucks" seeing their based on the mid-size Ford Ranger pickup truck. 

It's interesting to note that Ford used their original Bronco of 1966-1977 fame as the inspiration for their new Bronco as there's not a shred of what those of a particular vintage refer to as, "O.J.'s Bronco" in it. Then again, "O.J.'s Bronco", like all Ford Bronco's made after 1977, are far less distinctive looking than the originals. If anything, there's a whole lot more 1984-1990 Bronco II in these new Bronco's, especially the two-door models, than "O.J. Bronco". Then again, Ford probably doesn't want buyers of these new Broncos googling "Bronco II" any more than they want them googling "O.J. Bronco". 

The design of this new Bronco is so good, Ford could have it called it "Simpson", and it would still be, arguably, the hottest new vehicle on the market today. I know people who've waited eighteen months for theirs to come in. That they call it something impossibly cool like "Bronco" only adds to the mystique, the allure if you will. Please note, Ford also sells something they call "Bronco Sport" and it's an entirely different vehicle. Frankly, it's an underwhelming looking affair.  

You can't see in pictures just how different this thing is from my new main squeeze; but it's totally different. The Bronco Sport (above) looks like a first-generation Ford Escape. In and of itself not a bad thing but why'd they go and call this "Bronco Sport"? Holy marketing confusion, Ford Motor Company. Then again, these are same people who slap "Mustang" on an all-electric cross-over and recycle "Maverick" onto a compact pickup truck. The latter marketing faux pas far less egregious than the former. Speaking of the new Maverick, the Bronco Sport shares it's underpinnings with the new Maverick which while looking like a compact pickup, it's more like a cross-over with a pickup truck-ish body seeing it shares its guts with the Ford Escape. 

Ford introduced the original Bronco in 1966 as a direct competitor to the Jeep CJ. At first offered in roadster, "half-cab" and wagon, by '68 the "roadster" (above) was gone and after 1972 all Ford Broncos were three-door wagons. Ford sold between 12,000 and 14,000 a year, one year they sold 26,000, so they were a relatively niche vehicle. I never saw one in the wild when I was growing up on Long Island in the '70's. Part of the problem was they were so small, too small for families. That didn't matter since Ford sold lots of County Squires. Offering little to no creature comforts, folks bought them for their rugged, compact utility, they were all four-wheel-drive, or they quickly came to realize they had misspent their money on a fashion statement. 

Meanwhile, as Ford was attempting to out-do Jeep, debate all you want if they succeeded or not, in 1969 General Motors rolled out their full-sized, short-wheelbase pickup truck-based Chevrolet K5 "Blazer". Too bad these rode-like trucks with square wheels - these are painfully cool and again, that's coming from a dyed-in-the-wool car guy. GMC got the same vehicle for 1970 but they called it, "Jimmy". The rest, as we say, was history. 

The Blazer\Jimmy was an immediate smash hit that in typical GM form didn't invent a market segment, just redefined and transformed it. Ford didn't come with any answer to the Blazer\Jimmy until 1978. In an age of "downsizing", Ford upsized the Bronco when they took a page out of GM's playbook shortening a Ford F100's wheelbase, dropping a back seat in the bed and bolting down a removal plastic top. No surprise, it sold very well. Cool as these are, there also sort of anonymous looking. Well, that was until the "O.J. 500". 

Five generations of the F100\F150 based Bronco later, Ford replaced it in 1997 with the four-door only, Expedition. A bastion of civility compared to the hoary Bronco; Ford continues to produce the Expedition to this day albeit one that's gone through a gaggle of refinement and four generations over the last quarter century.  

But wait, there's a chapter to this horse story that Ford probably wants to forget about. In 1984, in conjunction with the also new for 1983 Ford Ranger pickup, they foaled, (sorry) the diminutive "Bronco II". Although dimensionally quite similar to the original Bronco, if you ask me, it lacked all of its butch charm. Built through 1990, the "II" was most famous or infamous for stability problems. A top-heavy, narrow design, the "II" had a propensity to flip over. Especially in what's referred to as "J-turns"; the Ford Motor Company, naturally, blamed driver error for the roll-overs. So many "II's" flipped over injuring and killing drivers and passengers that the GEICO insurance company stopped writing policies for them. 

However, to those of us of a certain vintage, "Ford Bronco" will always mean, "O.J." although, in fairness, that infamous designation probably belongs just to the white ones. Ford said that the "O.J. 500" had no bearing on their decision to drop the Bronco name in 1997 as sales of these brutes were dropping anyway. Here's the actual Bronco involved in the infamous low-speed chase on display at the "Alcatraz East Prison Museum" in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. If you're wondering, the Ford V8 next to the Bronco was used in the filming of the 1967 film, "Bonnie and Clyde" and was shot up by local police prior to the filming of the scene. The "real" Bonnie and Clyde death car is on display in a casino in Nevada. 

Based on how many 1966-1977 Broncos were made, there were only around 225,000, and so much time has passed since the whole "O.J. 500", much like Ford's new compact "Maverick", it probably doesn't matter what Ford calls this thing or what inspired its design. It's transcendental much in the way the "new" Mini Cooper was and still is. No one cares that it apes the lines of an older vehicle. All that said, I want one. A two-door, please. The four-doors look like shoeboxes on wheels. 

Incidentally, a Bronco is a wild horse and not a particular breed or type of horse.