The big Fords of the Malaise Era don’t show up in the wrecking yards much these days, after several decades of being commonplace. The Taurus has replaced the LTD as the most common Ford product in high-turnover wrecking yards, and will likely hold that honor for another decade or two. Still, you see members of the full-size Ford family in The Crusher’s waiting room every now and then; here’s a Country Squire in Northern California.
I was 9 years old when this car was new, and the Country Squire was the standard family hauler of the era. Imagine all the SUVs and minivans you see dropping kids off at school and replace them in your mental picture with Country Squires and you’d have a fairly accurate image of 1975… except, of course, that most kids back then braved a daily gauntlet of murderers and molesters and got their own damn selves to school. My own family never had a station wagon, instead relying on an industrial-strength ’73 Chevy Beauville van with red-plaid-cloth interior for family-road-trip duties, but I rode in plenty of Country Squires on Little League trips and so forth.
Photo source: Old Car Brochures
The Country Squire name spent quite a lengthy period as the top trim option on the Galaxie wagon, with Country Sedan badges slapped on the lower-level full-sized Ford wagons. By 1975, however, the Galaxie name was long gone.
It appears that the last owner of this wagon added some pimpin’ upholstery to the tailgate. Note the very luxurious bottom- and side-hinged tailgate on this generation of Squire.
I’d look up the horsepower figures on the smogged-out V8 in this car, but it would just make everybody depressed. Let’s say low-triple-digit horsepower and halfway decent torque and leave it at that.
When it comes to wagons, nobody swings like Ford!
Back in ’77, we borrowed one of these land-going barges to pick up my grandmother. It was the first car I had ever been in with power windows…man, I thought this thing was the lap of luxury (we were in the USA for one year between stationings to Germany, so I was used to small German cars…with crank windows and no A/C!). The one we borrowed was right down to the fake woodgrain…wow.
In 1985, I was invited to travel with my new girlfriend’s family to their cottage 6 hours away; we were still in college. They owned a Country Squire just like the one in the ad – yellow with woodgrain siding.
Halfway into the trip, the car began bucking and finally died. But we managed to get it to a fleabag motel where we stayed the night. I shared a double bed with her father, while she shared a bed with her mom and 16-year-old brother.
In the morning, I figured out that the car needed a fuel pump. We changed it right there (a parts store was across the street), and kept going with no more trouble.
Now she’s my wife, and we look back on that old car with fond memories.
Did a wagon ever wear Custom Sedan badging? I thought the wagon wore Country (or Custom) Wagon badging.
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, to learn that it was possible to order a Country Squire without the wood trim.
Full disclosure: my dad bought new a 1969 Country Squire in yellow; maybe the best looking wagon ever!
Yes. The Ranch Wagon was the equivalent to the Galaxie, the Country Sedan to the LTD, and the Country Squire to the LTD Brougham. In ’75, the Galaxie name was dropped, so wagons were just LTD and LTD Country Squires. And this one is just an regular LTD, as there is no plood on its flanks to Squire it up.
Actually, the Ranch Wagon paralleled the Custom 500 and the Country Sedan was a Galaxie 500. The Country Squire compared to an LTD and had something like a “Brougham Decor Group” if you wanted LTD Brougham trim.
The Galaxie/Country Sedan disappeared for ’75 when the LTD Landau was introduced and the LTD/LTD Brougham were taken down a peg. The Country Sedan was replaced by a generic “LTD” wagon, while all Country Squires wore Landau exterior trim (i.e. the hidden headlights), but came standard with the base LTD interior (Brougham and Landau interiors were optional)
Moreover, the Country Squire had a woodgrain delete option for most of the ’70s. This changed in the ’80s, when all non-woodgrain wagons were called “LTD Crown Victoria.”
But there’s something wrong with this picture. It appears to have hideway headlights, but no evidence of it ever having wood trim.
If you wanted hideways you got the Squire with the wood, period.
This car has been modified somewhere along the line.
Maybe it’s one of those freaky Canadian hybrids, like the ’63 Valiant featured yesterday?
Hidden headlamps were not exclusive to the Country Squire.
I think this vehicle is some kind of Frankenstein…regular LTD wagons did not have covered headlamps, those were exclusive of the Country Squire and this vehicle looks too plain to be one. Also notice how the interior is blue but the exterior is green, yet if you look at the engine compartment or interior parts of the tailgate, the car used to be blue. I suspect the front clip is not the original one that came on that car.
Nice find!
Too bad, whomever had this thing last did such an ugly job “redoing” the interior, though I can see why, the front and back seats didn’t match, and someone appears to have cut out sections of the front back seat, why?
Kind of sad, really, as the exterior didn’t look too bad for a car that was built some 37 years ago.
I’d love to know the rationale behind that upholstery job. Why was it necessary to take an Xacto knife to the front seats and cut out sheets of foam?
I wonder if what happened here was that the owner got part-way into his/her half-baked scheme, realized the job was bigger and more complicated than they thought and that they now had a wagon with a destroyed interior, and cut their losses and junked it.
Its exterior looks pretty straight, but that interior…yikes, the stuff nightmares are made of. I’d wear a hazmat suit if I needed to get anything out of it.
The engine is a 400 C.I. – 2V, probably about 150 net horsepower; par for the course back then. Interestingly enough, it has a General Motors A6 A/C compressor.
Yup, and a lot of these big Fords, usually with the 460, also had GM Saginaw power steering pumps too.
I was 9 in 1975 as well, and was often riding in my mom’s 1973 Torino wagon, with woodgrain on the side of course. Later I would drive my dad’s old 1977 Cougar XR7 in high school. That one was a 351W, made I think 168HP with good torque in the 250 range. Shocking how good they were are suppressing horsepower. That was some real engineering at work. So the mid-70’s Fords will always have a place in my heart and memories.
It was 158 HP in 1975, but they got it up to 180 in 1976. I guess the engineers were getting a handle on emissions by then.
I’ve often thought about how awesomely offensive a big Squire wagon would be as a tow vehicle. Swap in an LS series GM engine and overdrive trans, bags in the rear and a class 4 hitch. What a statement.
Nope. Want gas? Swap a Ford V10 in. Want diesel? Swap a 7.3 Powerstroke in. Way cooler than the head gasket blowing GM LS lump ‘o crap
Can’t say I’ve ever repaired a head gasket on a GM LS motor that wasn’t blown out due to 25+lbs of boost.
But I have changed timing chains and cylinder heads due to oiling issues as well as fixed many a spark plug hole in the boat anchor, gas sucking mod V10.
As for the International 7.3? Try and touch a decent long block that doesnt need injector cups, a UVC harness, turbo rebuild and injectors for even 5 times what a low mile LQ9 GM 6.0L could be netted for.
There’s a damn good reason the LS motors are swapped into everything ala SBC of 30 years ago vs. the choices above.
I think you underestimate how large and heavy a 7.3 Power Stroke is (920 lbs dry.)
“There’s a damn good reason the LS motors are swapped into everything ala SBC of 30 years ago vs. the choices above.”
Yep it all comes down to cheap, and hell not even a challenge in say a Fox Mustang, there are k-members out there that make it all a bolt in affair… sigh…
Although a Chevy powered Fox is good for one thing after you’ve downed a six pack or two and the bladder is about to burst at the seems.
Dream on. I had no difficulty hauling wagon full after wagon full of oak logs in the back of my ’74 Country Squire. It was amazing; no need for GM’s weak sisters in any Ford – ever. Next you’ll be telling us that the 2012 ZL1’s supercharged LSA is superior to the 2013 GT 500’s Trinity.
I guess if you can tolerate 9 miles per gallon and miserable low compression power, it would be amazing as is.
The power to weight and packaging ratio of the LS motors just can’t be beat. Good thing the guys at Ford turned up the boost on the 5.8L, it really needs the extra power to pull that dead weight in the engine compartment around at ~ the same speed as an LSA.
We won’t even mention the LS9 vs the 5.8L.
Go big or go home. Build a 460 to wedge in this puppy. It was a factory option on these so all the pieces exist to shoehorn one in.
It would be stupid to put a fugly LS engine in something like this and ruin the 70’s character. Both the 400 and the 429-460 are cheap motors to buy and build, with tremendous power potential. By the way I follow the engine masters series buildups and shootouts religously, and 3rd gen Hemis spank LS motors on a regular basis.
I will agree that Modern HEMIs are a fantastic motor. I would do modern HEMI swaps over LS swaps, but so far the cost is just so much more for the HEMI that it’s not worth the relatively small gains.
Complete pull out LS motors can be had for $500 all day long. Complete modern HEMIs, when you can find them, still fetch 3 times that. They won’t make 3 times the power, and occupy the same space for around the same weight (LS is lighter).
Plus the cylinder head and bore/stroke variety of the LS motors literally let you play LEGOs with the engines and mix and match your hardware to match your goals. The aftermarket has better embraced the LS as well.
Just to get one of these battleships back on the road pulling daily duty, an LS swap is just the best option.
A Hemi is only marginally wider than an LS, they are both considered small blocks. It’s not like the Gen3 Hemi is the size of the old 426 elephant.
Besides the engine compartment on an LTD is the size of a football field, so the width of an engine is irrelevant. In an engine compartment that size you want a wide engine like the 400 or 429-460 because it’s easier to reach things over a front end that size.
5.7 Hemis normally run around 900 bucks from salvage yards around here, complete with accessories. They can be a bit pricey to swap into old mopars if you are unprepared and don’t have the right stuff. For example the accessories are mounted higher on the truck engines and if you try to drop the engine into most older cars the alternator and power steering pump won’t clear the hood. The front accessory mount is very expensive from the dealer and most boneyards won’t sell it off of a motor because they only like to sell complete engines. So unless you know someone with an accessory cover or you don’t mind paying out the wazoo for an aftermarket unit you’re better off grabbing an engine from a car.
Schumacher now makes mounts and brackets for swapping the hemi into the older cars, so that problem is now taken care of. People that do Hemi swaps now use a GM computer, from the late 90’s to about 2004, because the aftermarket has cracked the codes with help from the factory. 500HP from a 5.7 is a walk in the park.
The Hemi responds to mods better than an LS, and performance parts cost around the same. The Hemi has a stronger bottom end than the LS. Most factory aluminum LS blocks are only good for around 600hp, to go higher racers usually have to switch to an aftermarket cast iron block. Hemis have been dyno’d at over 900 rear wheel horses with a stock block.
Mopar Action Magazine took an 06 Magnum about 3 years back and installed a cat back exhaust, played with the software and installed bigger fuel injectors, no other mods whatsoever. The car beat Hot Rod Magazine’s 2010 Camaro SS which received a head swap and had aftermarket headers and the cats were removed.
Like I stated in my earlier post the Hemi outperforms the LS in most engine master buildups and shootouts. They even said a while back “the chrysler hemi responds to modifications better than any other small block.”
And at least the hemi can be made to look cool, the LS is downright ugly no matter what you do to it. But most of all like I said earlier it would be dumb to put an LS in a car like this wagon. A big block ford is a powerhouse when built properly and that is what belongs under the hood of an old ford, in ford corporate blue.
Again, we already agree that the HEMI is a slightly better overall design. It’s the cost and lack of variety that prohibit the rabbid swappage you see taking place with the LS motors.
A notable factual inaccuracy:
$The Hemi has a stronger bottom end than the LS. Most factory aluminum LS blocks are only good for around 600hp, to go higher racers usually have to switch to an aftermarket cast iron block.”
-Stock block and crank LS motors have no trouble until 1000hp range and beyond. If boost is a factor, there are many factory iron blocks available at little cost, no aftermarket necessary
500hp is no problem for an LS motor for less cost than a HEMI. A great case study is an engine we put together a few months ago:
2002 LQ9 6.0L, 200,000 miles from a 2500 pickup: $400
MS3 cam: $350
Stock LS1 853 heads with LS6 springs: $150
Stock LS1 intake and throttle body: free
This combo ran 10.99 @ 129 in a 2500lb car, for less cost than you could even think of touching a stock, miled up truck HEMI around these parts. It. Just. Makes. Sense.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the modern HEMI, I ordered a 2013 Charger R/T. But when it comes to cheap speed, you gotta be honest about what gives you the most value.
Whatever you say, dude.
Cry not for the death of this car, but pity the poor salesman who had to sell it. Imagine looking at a lot covered with these suburban dreadnoughts with big block mileage and straight 6 power. Then greeting a customer who has just seen gas prices jump 75%.
Meanwhile down the street, at the Toyota/Datsun dealership, cars were being sold at full MSRP and they still couldn’t deliver them fast enough.
I don’t recall a 9 passenger Datsun model in the 1975 lineup…
The LTD sedan/wagon line alone likely sold more cars than Datsun did total that year.
It’s possible that Danio’s LTD vs. Datsun claim is correct, and Geekcarlover might be revising history.
It is hard to find sales figures from that era, and my quick search didn’t find 1975 figures, but according to Nissan, Datsun passed US sales figures of 250,000 cars/year sometime in the 70s and claimed to be the biggest import brand by 1975:
http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/us-united-states-nissan-heritage-nissan-heritage/releases/d1a77c0b-e565-47eb-a383-902e8402f88f
Meanwhile, Ford (including Mercury) sold more than 10 million Galaxie/LTDs from 1965-1978, and almost 8 million of those were from 1969 to 1978 — unclear if that’s worldwide or US, it’s according to Wikipedia. I’m pretty sure that the Ford LTD alone was over 200,000 in US sales in 1975, but I don’t know if that includes the Custom 500, the Brougham, the Landau, and the County Squire and also Mercury models:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/10/best-selling-cars-around-the-globe-when-oldsmobile-was-top-of-the-class/
In case anyone was wondering, only 31K Zs were sold in 1975, although sales went way up when the 280Z came out in 1979:
http://www.oocities.org/z-car/rebuild.html
For comparison, Honda sold only around 100K cars in the US 1975:
http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/honda-motor/98709/
Toyota also claims to be the biggest importer by 1975, so who knows whether Nissan or Toyota imported more cars that year:
http://www.cargroup.org/assets/files/toyota.pdf
In any case, that gives us, perhaps, a total of 600K cars sold by Toyota, Honda, and Nissan in 1975, whereas the Ford may have produced almost 800,000 LTD-family cars in 1975, if you assume production was close to even from 1969 to 1978.
“The LTD Country Squire wagon: pleasuring garages since 1975.”
I am moving into a new home next week and I can say without a doubt that this would not fit in my garage. I actually had to pace it off to see if my IS and my wife’s Outback would fit.
“I am moving into a new home next week and I can say without a doubt that this would not fit in my garage.”
It is amazing what you can do with a little KY and slow patience. Have you tried focusing on the garage’s pleasure ahead of your own?
I’m pretty sure this is the exact car that Peter Griffin drives.
I grew up in a long series of Yank-tank wagons. Mostly Chrysler products though. One Olds Vista Cruiser. No Fords after the family Ford Galaxy’s rear bumper fell off onto the garage floor at age 2 from rust. The old man didn’t buy another Ford until the ’95 Windstar, which was a bigger Turd than the Galaxy was.
I am still a wagon sort of person to this day, though of the German and Swedish variety, mostly. Such useful vehicles.
I was 10 in 1975. At the time my parents owned two Ford wagons – a 1969 Fairlane 500 and a 1974 Torino. While mid-sized by 1970’s standards these were big cars. Both were painted robin’s egg blue and had blue vinyl interiors. I remember many trips to visit grandparents in these wagons. I also recall our summer vacations when these cars towed the family’s Scotty camper. While not fast or particularly stylish, these were comfortable cars that gave my parents years of reliable service.
I learned how to drive in a 1969 Fairlane 500 sedan, also robin’s egg blue with blue vinyl interior. Retired Texaco company car. Loved that vehicle, but by the late 1970’s it was being quickly anihilated by rust. You couldn’t kill the engine and tranny, but circa 1980 its chassis cracked. Still fondly remember its dashboard, with the big round instrumentation pods. Much cooler than the Galaxie or LTD of that same year. Nice clean design…
For what it’s worth, these make great LeMons cars.
Tunachucker Approved!
I’d love to get this boat back on the road. As Sajeev says “LS-FTW!”
I can’t believe cars like this ever existed.
Think of them like all the Honda CRVs and crew cab half-tons you see driving around today. In today’s economic climate I don’t know if disposable income was much lower in 1975 than now, but at any rate cars like this were around to fill a number of duties.
“I can’t believe cars like this existed.” Umm, well, some people did have large families, you know. Ours was a perfect example, I had 4 sisters and we made several trips a year from Ohio to Tenn, over 600 miles one way.
I am heartbroken to see another Ford wagon with side-opening rear seats destined for the crusher, and even more depressed to be reminded of interior color options you can’t select from the order sheet today. Hold your head high, Country Squire, and remember that every other automobile without a dual opening tailgate is simply a lesser vehicle.
Fondly recall vacationing in So Fla and my sister had one of these, my own car was a Beetle that was 5 years old at the time so getting behind the wheel on this thing was the next best thing to a luxo car experience.
It’s the Wagon Queen Family Truckster!!!
“If you think you hate it now, wait till you drive it”
When I think of one of these malaise-barges in the jaws of the crusher, I imagine it shouting, “Top of the world, Ma!”
My mother had a 1974 Country Squire. I learned how to parallel park with this beast. It was optioned with the jumbo-sized 460 cubic inch motor and a towing package (never used, but I think my father had some romantic notion of family camping trips). The car was smooth riding and quiet, but had quite the appetite for gas – on the highway it got 10-ish MPG, but only with a really good tail wind, so you ended up stopping for gas every 200 miles or so.
The old man never bought another wagon after my older sister wrecked our ’65 Catalina wagon when it was two years old , after Mom had wrecked our 1960 Bonneville and 1962 Catalina wagons . Of this era , my question on the GM vs. Ford debate was why GM came up with the ridiculous spacewasting unreliable clamshell tailgate .My memory of this year Ford wagon is the same year , and I believe same non-woodgrain model – in black I think – that Jack Klugman drove in that Quincy M.E. tv show , for hauling corpses I guess . Of course Ford provided the vehicles in so many Quinn- Martin shows of that era – Continentals in Cannon , LTDs in Barnaby Jones , Mercury Marquis in Hawaii 5-0 ,etc. etc.
Riding in the back of one of those wagons as a kid was awesome. We had a lot of fun back there. It was like a play room.
A friend of mine has a ’76, still. He loves telling people he’s got a ’76 Ford with a 460, c6, big bearing 9 inch, and disc brakes all around. After they get all amped up (“That’s gotta be a hot Mustang!”), he tells them what it is. The look of dissapointment is worth it.
Yes, his had discs from the factory, somehow. We rebuilt the c6 in it, and with a shift kit in the thing, set for ‘race only and we mean it!’ shifts, you still can barely feel the shifts.
He says the scariest thing about the car isn’t how bad it stops/goes/corners, but that it was THAT bad AND driven by the average housewife of the 70’s…
He says the scariest thing about the car isn’t how bad it stops/goes/corners, but that it was THAT bad AND driven by the average housewife of the 70′s…
No worse than a 5’3″ soccer mom driving a BOF SUV like Hummer, Suburaban, Escalade, Denali, ect…
One of the Japanese import brands, I think it was Datsun, actually played that up in a 70s commercial. They showed a suburban housewife struggling to man-handle her Detroit barge of a wagon into a tight parking spot, while another woman just zipped right in in her little Japanese compact.
Come to think of it, that was the probably the most important demographic for compact cars that Detroit hardly ever considered (except maybe Nash).
“No worse than a 5’3″ soccer mom driving a BOF SUV like Hummer, Suburaban, Escalade, Denali, ect…”
I don’t know. Do you remember Jack Baruth’s review of the ’76 Cadillac Fleetwood?
“I wish I could put every TTAC reader behind the wheel of this Fleetwood. In a flash, in a single kinesthetic moment, you would understand what you don’t now. You think a Town Car is a “boat”. Hello no. A modern Town Car has the reflexes of a Lotus Elise in comparison to a ’76 Cadillac…This is a car which can barely match posted cornering limits around offramps”
These cars had front disc brakes as standard equipment, just like all full sized cars of the era. They also offered an anti lock option, called sure trac, that featured 4 wheel disc brakes.
Forget your SUV. THIS is the proper way to travel. My family’s Hornet and Datsun wagons pale in comparison.
Was the goal back then to make the ugliest cars possible? My parents had a ’74 Buick Estate Wagon that probably could have been seen from the moon.
In 1976 we had a yellow one just like the picture with a 460. That summer us five kids and mom and dad did a two week trip out west and back. We even built our own car top carrier out of plywood to attach to the factory roof rack, painted it brown with a matching yellow stripe. It was a great trip but my teenage brothers and I about killed each other jammed in there and my parents kept up with the “if I have to pull this car over your going to be sorry”. Somehow my dad was never as funny as Chevy Chase.
With that interior, what was this thing, some sort of rolling bordello? Didn’t anyone explain that you’re supposed to use a van for that?
This car is a standard LTD wagon, someone either added the front clip with the hideaway headlights or like someone else said, it’s a rare canadian hybrid or something.
This car has the base LTD interior. Besides having the woodgrain on the sides the country squire also had the top level interior used in the landau, which replaced the brougham as the top of the line LTD in 75. Back when the brougham was the top of the line LTD the country squire used the brougham interior.
Our family wagon was a 75 LTD just like this one, only in a lighter shade of blue.
I share Murilee’s lament that the only wagon my family owned was a used 82 Escort wagon and it didn’t last long until the block cracked (bought used in 86 or something like that)
Our roadgoing “Family Truckster” was an 84 Econoline conversion van with a 351 in Malaise beige with brown accent stripes and a brown interior like a living room. A smogged 351 loaded down and saddled with the weight of the Econoline never saw more than 11mpg, according to the JCPenney(!) trip computer my Dad installed.
We still had it when I learned to drive and took a few HS roadtrips in it. Great fun for that, not much else. Well, maybe some other things, but it was sold to a friend of my Dads before that kind of fun would happen for me.
I always thought the van was kinda uncool growing up, since all my friends parents had Chrysler minis (except for one friend who’s Dad worked for Ford. They had an LTD II wagon!)
Ford brought out plain sided LTD wagons in 1973.
And to the post about ‘pity the 1970’s Ford salesman, only had big cars to sell…’
Well, they had lots of small cars to sell also, Pinto, Stang II and Mavericks. Laugh sure, but they sold well. And Ford is still in business, no bail out.
When I was about 18 in upstate NY, my folks got a used 1975 Estate Wagon, yellow with the fake woodgrain side panels. It was 1980 and the car was in like-new condition. It really looked great for what it was. However, the engine had absolutely no power. it had a 400 V8 in it. In contrast, my dad had a 1978 Ford pickup with a 400 and while not exactly a horsepower demon, it could get out of its own way. The CS wagon, sadly could not. Its performance was so bad, that the car was taken on several occasions to the Ford dealership to try to find out why it had no power. The car started fine, and ran smoothly, though sometimes when you floored it (which was most of the time when you didn’t have your foot on the brakes), it would backfire through the carburetor.