Junkyard Find: 1982 Ford LTD Country Squire
Before Real American Families drove SUVs and minivans, they drove full-sized Detroit station wagons.
I’m not a wagon fanatic and it doesn’t break my heart that wagons are no longer mainstream (although it does break my heart that Chrysler didn’t bring back wagons with huge tailfins instead of the PT Cruiser), but I recognize that the archetypal Detroit wagon of the 1960s and 1970s was the Ford Country Squire. I can’t resist photographing a junked Squire when I see one in the junkyard, and so here’s a Late Malaise Era Country Squire I spotted in a San Francisco Bay area wrecking yard.
So far in this series, we have seen this ’75, this ’76, this ’77, this ’86, and this ’87 (plus this bonus ’72). Nearly all of them had not-even-trying-to-look-real fake wood “paneling” and “trim” on their flanks, like today’s car.
For the 1979 model year, the Country Squire (badged as an LTD Country Squire, which remained the case even after the LTD itself moved to the Fox platform later) would go onto the Panther platform. This made it smaller than the dreadnought Squires that preceded it, but still big enough for large families and their gear. My own family had an extremely practical and stylish 1973 Chevrolet Sportvan Beauville during this era, which may be the main reason I’m not nostalgic about enormous LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter-era station wagons or the slightly smaller Reagan-era wagons.
The first owner of this wagon kept maintenance records using Dymo labels on the striker surface of the driver’s door. It appears that only 27,440 miles were put on the clock during this Squire’s first decade.
Under the hood, a 255-cubic-inch Windsor V8 made a grim 122 horsepower. The 255 was a very rare and very loathed engine, and it was used only for the 1980 through 1982 model years. I’ve seen two of these engines swapped into 24 Hours of LeMons Mustangs after 302 obliteration, because they were the only Windsor engines available for cheap on Craigslist late on a Saturday night and the teams were desperate to resume racing on Sunday.
Look out world! Here comes Ford!
[Images: © 2016 Murilee Martin/The Truth About Cars]
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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
Resurrecting a really old post, I know- but can anyone share exactly where this wagon is located?? I need parts! Thank you! Bill
We spent a week on Oahu riding around in a blue on blue '70 Country Sedan when I was 12. I always wondered why Ford called the mid-trim wagon a sedan when the base car was a Ranch Wagon. In the mid 90s I passed on a mid -eighties used County Squire because it was a Florida car. I was worried about rust although it drove fine. We probably would have grown to hate it anyway becoming all faded out with no garage to park it in.