Bringing it back for back to back LTD posts

SWEET OLD FORD WITH A COOL SET OF SHADES

On a beautiful Summer day in Old Forge, PA I drove past this sweet ride:

This is a 1968 Ford LTD in Wimbledon White. In 1965 the LTD debuted as the highest trim level of the Galaxie 500. In 1966 the LTD had become its own line separate from the Galaxie. 

This is a 1 year only car as the main body remains the same as the '66-'67 but the roofline is more formal and the front got this awesome hidden headlight treatment.

This grill is one of my favorite moments in all of Ford history! The headlight doors are operated by a vacuum hose running off of the engine. If the vacuum was lost while the car was running the doors would default in the open position so you could still drive at night. I just think it looks cool with the front all grill like the General Lee Charger. The covered headlights were only available on the high-end LTD and the station wagon. I've seen a green wagon with these covered headlights and faux wood trim and it was fantastic.

The dimensions of the car are very straightforward but the subtle Coke bottle curve to what would otherwise be a perfect brick keeps it lively. The turn signals are tucked under the lower corners of the grill surround and don't take away from the look as a result.

This was a massively popular car in '68. In fact 138,752 total LTDs left the factory that year, most of them 4 door sedans like this one. Those dog dish or "poverty" hubcaps are from an early '70s Ford.

There was a Brougham trim package available that is really only identifiable by the interior. If this car were so equipped that bench seat would be split in the middle.

This has the optional Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission. The radio has a small chrome rectangle between the knobs which means it's an am/fm model as opposed to the basic am. There was a Stereo-Sonic 8 track player as an option but it would be mounted under the dash with its own set of knobs.

You've gotta love the era when cars wore gaudy jewelry. 

Clean and crisp is the order of the day on the rear end too. 

These lights are an evolution of Ford design hallmarks going back to 1952. Rounded taillights with a jet engine look reached a crescendo with the early '60s Thunderbirds (they really look like spaceship rocket engines). 1968 provided the final iteration before becoming horizontal rectangles. 

I find the craftsmanship of these taillight housings beautiful. 

This ride is in great overall condition with the exception of that vinyl roof and some surface rust.

This ride sat for sale for at least a month until one day it disappeared. When I drove by at a later date it had been replaced with a slightly newer 4 door LTD for sale from the early '70s. Brand loyalty from a relative that passed away maybe? Regardless I slowed down each time I passed before finally getting out to snap these. Looking at these pics now I wish I'd at least called for a test drive. I did find it on posted on the local Craigslist (some people watch tv, I scroll through classic car ads) for $2,000. If I had driven it I might've felt compelled to drop an offer on it and who knows if the guy would've said "Sure $1,500 is fine" and then I'd have a 48 year old Ford. Maybe next time!

Cannonball Gold Caddy that took the Bronze

GOLD CADDY THAT TOOK THE BRONZE

I'm going to take a minute to feature yet another '70s Cadillac because they seem to live forever. Way out in rural PA I passed this dusty beast sitting in the Summer sun:

This is a 1971 Cadillac Coupe DeVille in Chalice Gold Firemist Poly. You can call it Chalice Gold but let's face it this thing is BROWN.

As massive as this car is it looks sleek with those awesome taillights that trail the quarter panel edge top to bottom.

Build quality was top-notch for Cadillac as we can see here by the tight and unblemished vinyl roof. This roof treatment is known as the Halo Roof as it doesn't go all the way to the tops of the window openings. This is a hardtop coupe as there are no pillars between the front and rear windows.

The interior is a super comfortable expanse of various browns (called either Carmine or Saddle in the brochure). The dash wraps around the drivers seat a bit even though there isn't much to see. GM figured that anyone buying a Caddy didn't need to mess around with gauges other than the speedometer and the fuel level. The prodigious ashtray is open only adding the overall brown feel.

This long hood holds a monster of an engine; a 7.7 Liter 472 V8 producing 375 horsepower and 365 ft lbs of torque. The only available transmission was a 3 speed automatic. Even though these beasts weighed in around 5,000 lbs their sheer power make them fun to drive hard. Amazingly the engine to succeed this one was even bigger! 1975 ushered in the 8.2 Liter 500 V8.

A bone stock '71 Coupe DeVille just like this one placed 3rd in the original Cannonball Run (this was a real yet unofficial race that was run 5 times in the 1970s). It managed to hold the highest average speed of the race at a whopping 84.6 miles per hour! To average that speed over almost 3,000 miles means hours at over 100mph. They reported an average 8.9 miles per gallon for the race but with a 27 gallon gas tank they still had a while between fill-ups.

This car is as wide as it looks. The '71-'76 Cadillacs had the most door-to-door interior space at 64 inches. Three people can easily sit abreast in the front seat.

Why anybody would bother swapping the Coupe and deVille words so that it reads deVille Coupe is beyond me but whatever. This beast is sporting new tires which can be pretty expensive for such a large car. I don't mind the letter tires and mudflaps on this ride actually.

It's too dark to see but this little housing on top of the fender has 3 small lenses. These are connected via fiber optic to the lights and turn signals to let you know when they need to be replaced. Being a Cadillac it has its own compliment of chrome trim to keep it classy.

Overall this ride is in solid shape with only surface rust emerging here and there. It's sitting nice and tall which makes me assume the suspension has been redone. The ride in these cruisers is like floating on a cushion of air. It can take some getting used to, but things like speed bumps appear in the windshield only to be reduced to a slight movement when passing over them. In addition to the ride these cars are almost silent in stock form. There is sound deadening equipment throughout and the exhaust has a resonator in addition to the muffler to keep it quiet.

This is the sort of car I grew up in. My grandparents had a succession of Cadillacs through the '70s that they would pass along to members of the family when it came time to get a new one. When you're a small child in the backseat of one of these monsters it's like sitting in a room. Power windows and ashtrays (usually full) in every door were the norm.
In high school I had a '74 Coupe DeVille with a less powerful engine than this and I still laid strips constantly (I was 17 years old what do you expect?). It was such a hilarious car because it was super fast while enormous. Gas at the time was around 90 cents a gallon so it was doable. I remember once getting my Shop Rite paycheck and filling the tank from almost empty with the best gas available. even at that low price 27 gallons left me with only a few dollars extra, but what else did I want to do at that age?

Who knows if it's still available but since it was for sale and I snapped all these pics I figure I might as well give the seller a plug. You could do worse for this money if it's in as good repair as I suspect, and if it is still available I'm sure the price is much lower. Good luck!

Big Bill Blass with loads of S.W.A.S.S.

BIG BILL BLASS WITH LOADS OF S.W.A.S.S.

First of all S.W.A.S.S. is the 1988 debut album of the legendary Sir Mix-a-Lot. If ya don't know now ya know. Unfortunately I wasn't listening to Sir Mix-a-Lot on the day I took these pics but rather some aggressively experimental machine sounds on free form listener supported radio. We were tooling around Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn when the windshield filled up with this schooner:

Egads Cap't! Damn the torpedoes!
This white whale with the thousand yard stare happens to be a 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V Bill Blass edition in White over Midnight Blue Metallic. This thing is unabashedly colossal in size, but get this: IT IS A MIDSIZE CAR! Aaa ha ha ha yes in 1979 you could call the *largest 2 door car ever made midsize as there were larger 4 door behemoths still roaming the earth.
*To be fair the 2 door Continental non-Mark was 2" longer, but we're talking twins from the same company in the same model year.

This was last call for size queens as the successor to this beast would be massively downsized. Don't go thinking the American public demanded a smaller car; the Mark V was enormously popular and the best selling Lincoln up to that point. For only 3 model years from '77-'79, and always as a 2 door personal luxury car, the Mark V was exactly what much of America wanted.
I am no exception. This has been one of my favorite cars to draw since I was a kid due to its excess, angles, jutting fenders, and shark gills along the sides.

The entire Malaise-era checklist has been fulfilled on this ride. Here is the stand up hood ornament that is a stylized evolution of the charming starburst of the '50s, now looking like the eyesight for a howitzer.
This sits proudly on a Rolls-Royce style tombstone grill in heavy chrome. Power! Success!

A Continental Kit consists of the spare tire being mounted between the trunk and the bumper on the outside of the car (I loathe them along with fuzzy dice and stuffed animals on classics at car shows). Perhaps to hold onto its own name the Mark V has a simulated Continental Kit on the trunk. To me this is the equivalent of getting really thick glasses because you want to look smart even though you have perfect vision, but hey.

People throw terms around like Land Yacht too often but this absolutely qualifies. The Nautical theme just highlights its ocean liner tendencies. If I owned this I would consider adding small lifeboats and tires to the side, maybe an anchor up front. Would you be surprised if you saw this car soaking wet dragging huge knots of seaweed while driving down the street?

This is the hallmark of the lauded designer Bill Blass! While AMC started the designer craze with Gucci Hornets and the like, Lincoln offered 4 special edition Mark Vs in each of its 3 year run. In addition to this we have Cartier, Givenchy, and Pucci. Each had its own brand of gaudiness. The Bill Blass came standard with this "Carriage Roof" treatment, meaning that the vinyl was textured to look like canvas. You had to specify that you wanted these opera windows if you went with the BB Mark V as it normally came with just an expanse of roof over covered up rear windows.

Look how daring Bill got with the interior! White seats with blue piping are sure to wow your valet. At least they were civilized enough to keep up with copious amounts of faux wood.

There are those 3 massive gills I was mentioning earlier. From what I can reckon they do diddly-squat as functional vents but they add architectural importance to this Titanic.
That little triangular vent window is power operated! I actually found a video of it operating for those curious enough. You were expected to smoke in every 1979 Lincoln, and what if your ashtrays were all full? Vent window!

Look at all that hood.
The engine for '77 and '78 was the gargantuan 460 V8. For this year that engine was dropped and replaced by the smaller 400 to help with the CAFE standards from 1975 (that stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy and was set up by the federal government after the oil crisis of the early '70s). Being the Malaise era of emissions equipment strangling these large engines it was rated at only 166 horsepower. With 319 ft lbs of torque it could still pull stumps out of the ground but spritely it wasn't.

Well that's where we'll slowly back away from this wide-eyed drunk. The headlight doors are vacuum operated so many times there's a leak or another issue and the safest way to deal with it is leave them in the open position.
We spoke to a neighbor of the owner of this ride who said it was for sale. The asking price is $6,500! I know it's a special edition and all but that's pretty steep money for a tarted-up Ford from the depths of the Malaise era. Still, if you really wanted one and had that sort of money laying around you could find a truly rust free example on the West Coast. Good luck finding a new home Bill!

Classic case of Monumentalism

CLASSIC CASE OF MONUMENTALISM

Brash! Bold! Dashing! Tucked alongside a country road in rural PA was this mammoth testament to executive power. Thanks to Sarah from Everywhere for this luxurious submission. Now please rise. . .

What we have here is an ocean liner otherwise known as the 1968 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron dressed in Formal Black with a Polar White vinyl roof. This is the end of an era in American automotive design. The Imperial would continue on as the Chrysler flagship after '68 but the severe formality of this vintage would be tempered by the Fuselage style to come.
Check out that War of the Worlds looking single orange eye at the center of the windshield base. That is the Twilight Sentinel feature which was available from '67-'75. It would notice oncoming headlights and automatically dim your brights. 

Look into the relaxed eyes of a vehicle that knows it's at the top of the food chain. Whoever hung that LOST IN THE 60'S license plate on this beauty ought to be escorted out of their office by a guard ("we'll send your things along to the address on file. Please leave now").
Everything about this car is solid. You know just by looking at it that the grill and hood are made from heavy gauge metal crafted with great care. This is a 48 year old car sitting by the side of the road but every panel fits perfectly and the chrome refuses to dull.
This is how Chrysler itself chose to advertise the '68 Imperial:

Here it is having emerged from the depths of the ocean after feeding on shipwrecks and getting stronger. The grill has the look of baleen. The brochure for this ride is 100% superlatives and declarations of awesomeness.

The scale of this is undeniable but so is the level of quality. Imperials are still legendary for holding up beautifully. No expense was spared at any point in creating this beast. Fun fact: Imperials are the only car universally barred from entering demolition derbies because they would nonchalantly destroy everything else on the track without breaking a sweat. It wasn't even a fair fight!
The LeBaron series was the top-of-the-heap above the Crown and base models. Appointments were bordering on excess. Those tiny vent windows in the front doors are power operated. The air conditioning is actually 2 separate systems; one for the front and one for the rear.

The door panels are currently removed most likely for electronics repair. Power windows, vent windows, and locks are joined by a courtesy light at the bottom (out of view). All of this makes for a mighty complicated door! *Incidentally each door had its own glove compartment as well; the armrest lifts up exposing a generous and hidden storage area.
The dashboard is very sleek with "antiqued bronze" featured heavily for the full width of the car. The radio is kept hidden behind a lift-up panel that you can make out in the open position here. Options were few as the LeBaron Imperial came almost fully equipped as-is. The parking brake automatically disengages when the car is put in gear, the climate control allows you to set a temperature and it will use a/c or heat depending on what's needed, and cruise control is included. Leather seating in this pattern was LeBaron only, this example in Red.

Alright Chrysler isn't even playing it cool in this image! The rear seat is tryst-ready as shown by this comely lass laying languorously on the champagne-colored leather bench. A tiger rug? Cattails in a vase? The message is clear! Buy the Imperial and harvest lunchtime secretaries from the lower floors of your office daily!

I love the severity of the full-width chrome-hidden taillights on this beast. That center circle is the gas filler door which consists of a cast metal eagle! You'll be using this door often as the only engine available was the 440 TNT V8. Despite its size the Imperial was known as the luxury car for drivers because it accelerated, handled, and stopped much like a smaller, sportier car.

Well that's it for this car but I'll close out with a personal anecdote. When I was a kid living in Paradise California my stepfather Cliff had a 1962 Imperial that he loved. One day he got into a heated argument with some guy who claimed his new Toyota pickup was stronger than an old Chrysler. Cliff came home to get the Imperial and grabbed myself and my best friend Dan to sit in the backseat for added traction. We drove to a Safeway parking lot where the guy with the truck was waiting (with a fresh pile of gravel in the truck bed for his own traction).

They hooked the two vehicles up back to back with a chain connecting the rear axles and inched them forward until the chain was tight. At that moment Cliff leaned over the seat and told us to get down because "if that chain snaps it's coming through the window and might take your heads off".

Somebody must've given the signal and both men stomped the gas to the floor. After a brief screaming of tires there was a loud sound and we were moving forward. We stopped and got out to see that the Imperial had torn the rear axle off of the truck completely which was now slumped on it's haunches, gravel spilling out onto the pavement. We drove home victorious with Cliff saying what an idiot the guy was for overloading the truck bed with ballast. True story!