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. (Read More…)

It’s going to take decades for the last of the Broughams to work their way through the junkyard system; the Detroit Brougham Era ran from about 1965 through 1990, and that’s a lot of cars bearing heraldic crests and Nearly Velour™ interiors. In recent months, we’ve seen this ’88 Cadillac Brougham d’Elegance, this ’73 Mercury Montego Brougham, this Olds Delta 88 Royale Brougham, this ’72 Mercury Marquis Brougham, and this ’81 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham (I can see the need to search for some Chrysler and AMC Brougham Junkyard Finds now). Today, our Broughamic Junkyard Find dates back more than 40 years, to the heyday of the Big Detroit Brougham Era. (Read More…)

The discussion of yesterday’s Junkyard Find, a 1973 Ford LTD, got a bit heated at times. Some felt that the ’73 LTD was an abomination too horrific to contemplate, while others (including most who had actually driven one back in the day) opined that it was a pretty comfy pseudo-luxo-chariot and no worse than its contemporary rivals. Both sides have valid points, which got me to thinking about what I would do if a time machine were to drop me off at Auto Row in 1973 with the money to buy a new LTD (assuming I was required to spend the money on a new car, instead of giving it to my 7-year-old 1973 self with instructions to buy Microsoft stock a few years hence). Would I get the LTD… or something else? If something else, what? (Read More…)

Every time I see a junked Ford LTD of this era, I recall my early-childhood memories of my grandfather’s ’69 LTD hardtop. My parents had a ’67 Ford Custom and a ’49 Cadillac sedan at the time, and I thought Grandpa’s super-clean LTD was the most luxurious transportation imaginable. Nowadays, of course, most big Fords of the 1965-75 period that one encounters are total hoopties… but even a junked Early Malaise Era LTD still retains a bit of its original class. (Read More…)

You don’t see a lot of intact 60s Detroit cars in the junkyards of Denver, where I now live. When I return to my old haunts in the San Francisco Bay Area, as I did last month, I find that a steady trickle of these old survivors still flows into the self-serve yards. Here’s a big Ford I found in Oakland. (Read More…)

Some 24 Hours of LeMons fans get all excited about the team that turns the most laps at a race, but the real cognoscenti know that the Index of Effluency (the prize given to the team that accomplishes a great racing feat with a car that never belonged anywhere near a race track) is the pinnacle. Only the most legendary LeMons heroes manage to win the Index of Effluency more than once, and now South Carolina’s Tunachuckers have driven their two-ton Ford to that achievement. (Read More…)

When a first-time 24 Hours of LeMons team finds some ancient hooptie that’s been rusting in a field for a decade and makes a “race car” out of it, most of the time that team spends the entire weekend thrashing on fuel-system components, shriveled transmission seals, and rodent-gnawed wiring. This did not happen with Team NASA’s Space-Shuttle-themed 1978 Ford LTD wagon. (Read More…)

Of all the cars at the ‘Shine Country Classic, none inspired more speculation than the ’75 LTD of the Tunachuckers and ’79 W116 of NSF Racing. So many questions! Would either car be ready for the green flag on Saturday morning? Which one would be quicker around a road course? Could an ungodly complicated Teutonic flagship even make one lap on a race track after 32 years and a 99.97% value depreciation? Could Grandma’s long-abandoned big Ford roar into life and survive on the race track with little more than a cage installation and a hasty tune-up? Each team had joined the elite of LeMons veterans, with one Index of Effluency win apiece, so expectations of horrible failure were high. (Read More…)