'77 Ford LTD Country Squire on eBay - S. Woodstock, CT

This car is green. Really green. And I don't mean a hybrid!

Nice clean underbody, but signs of rust on bottom of doors. Seller seems intent on honestly showing all the car's flaws in the pics.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ford-Other-...ed0096143&item=201058771267&pt=US_Cars_Trucks

 

Been for sale a long time. Pretty car, but big problem is no A/C.

 

I was gonna say that I think we've seen it before. Absolutely gorgeous wagon though,

 

Officially, it's not a LTD Country Squire. It's a LTDII Squire wagon.

 

77 LTD ll

This is a Flipper. He paid between $2,500-3000 last year and
IMMEDIATELY turned around and listed it for sale at $8,000.00
The car really is nice, but far from perfect. Let's see what Ebay can do
for this Flipper.

 

Bid currently to $3750 on eBay with reserve not met and 12 hours to go.

 

Supposedly just sold for $4051.

 

I would be very leery about buying a car from someone who doesn't even know what they are selling! After all, if I wanted a BIG wagon, I would be very disappointed to find out I had bid on a mid-sized car!

 

The LTD vs. LTD II nomenclature has been confounding car owners since the LTD II was introduced in 1977. Understanding that Ford used the word "Squire", not the name "Country Squire" to denote any sized wagon with woodgrain applique is even today beyond car guys (and gals) who are not wagon nuts, like us. I worked in a discount auto parts store in the early '80s and the number of people who didn't know the correct model name of their own car was simply astounding.

Remember, too, that in today's market, Taurus is considered a full size car by most people. To those under a certain age a 117" wheelbase car is huge. The cars called full-sized in the '70s (from 121" to 127" in wheelbase for the wagons) are simply unimaginable to them. I work with a woman in her thirties who calls my '93 Buick Century wagon a "boat". That's usually when I drive my '76 Colony Park to work to show her what a big car really is.

Buying a wagon from someone who doesn't realize its significance could mean a bargain. Unfortunately, it can also mean you're dealing with someone who thinks anything over 20 years old is an ultra high-dollar classic. Best, I think, to focus on the car rather than on the seller, as long as the seller is relatively reasonable.

 

This is somewhat like what Oldsmobile did in the late 1980s and 1990s for the diluted once highly popular "Cutlass" nameplate - too many dissimilar models shared the same name (Cutlass Supreme, Cutlass Ciera, Cutlass Calais, Cutlass Cruiser) whereby it no longer had any actual significance. I think this sort of blind badge engineering greatly contributed to the ultimate downfall of the total Olds marque, unfortunately.

 

I don't think the situations are quite the same. From the late '70s and into the '80s the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the best selling car in America. I think Olds was trying to tap into the popularity of the nameplate by attaching it to so many different models. There was actually some validity to using that name on these cars, however. Cutlass was Olds' traditional name for its mid-size cars. The Salon, Supreme, and Calais were all variations of the mid-size, rear drive "G" body. The Ciera was their new front wheel drive mid-size "A" body. The Cutlass Cruiser was their name for their mid-size wagon, which began as a Colonnade era (RWD) "A" body, then moved to its "G" body replacement, then again to the (FWD) "A" body when that superseded the RWD wagon.

While I have no inside information on Ford policies at the time, I think the LTD/LTD II situation is more akin to the (Fox body) LTD vs. the (Panther chassis) LTD Crown Victoria, or Plymouth's "B" body Fury vs. its "C" body Gran Fury (both with wagons called Sport Suburban). My hypothesis is that the LTD II was named at a time when Ford hadn't yet decided how to carry out downsizing their cars. I've seen a couple of sources that seemed to indicate that at one time, the LTD II was slated to replace the LTD as the full size model, the way Mopar discontinued its "C" bodies and called the "B" bodies full-sized. It seems likely to me that there were competing teams, one developing the Panther chassis cars and the other re-styling the Torino into the LTD II.