Junkyard Find: 1971 Ford LTD Brougham
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.
This is a true four-door hardtop, complete with hideaway headlights, big-inch engine, and lots of glitz.
From the Model T to this!
I’m pretty sure this is a 400M engine, a longer-stroked and more grandfatherly relative of the 351 Cleveland. No doubt members of the Ford Smog Motor Jihad can tell us more.
Bring back the Brougham!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Cannon. In Color!
In it's day, it was a great car. I prefer the 1972 because it has a nicer front (fine squares) and I liked the larger tail lights. To me, this was one of the best full-sized Fords ever built. I rode in one as a young teenager and they were smooth riding, bank vault quite.