In 1965, Ford Motor Company ran a lovely advertising campaign that was frankly a little derivative. While Ford was perhaps better at finding market niches in the 1960s than their titanic competitor across town, it’s true that the sharing of intellectual property ran both ways. Michael Lamm, in his epic book titled A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design, noted that the industry had little respect for the 1965 full-size Fords, observing that they looked like the box that the 1963 and ’64 Pontiac came in. If that is true, the big Ford’s styling isn’t the only thing that copied 1963-era General Motors that year.
General Motors had run ads with a similar theme in 1963. These corporate ads always began with “Coming from GM,” with the rest of the sentence being tailored for the picture used in that specific ad. In this Bonneville’s case, “a new car means a whole lot more.”
My personal favorite shows a Riviera in front of a lake, where “beauty means a lot whole more.” Ford’s 1965 corporate campaign began with “Ford Motor Company is:”, and the rest of the sentence completes the thought based on the picture.
Both are great campaigns if you like pictures of old cars. Ford showed trainloads of Mustangs, the Big Red turbine truck, a Thunderbird splashing though a salt bath, a Ford GT40 being ministered to by none other than Ken Miles himself, and many more. I own several of the ads, and I love them. But GM did it first, in this case.
It’s also true that the squared-off, stacked headlight look of the 1965 Ford originated with the spectacular 1963 Pontiacs, the most handsome being this Grand Prix.
But the big Ford still looked good and sold very well for 1965, and it must be said that the LTD four-door hardtop prominently displayed in much of Ford’s advertising that year caught GM off-guard. By introducing a luxo-barge to the low-priced three, Ford continued the erosion of GM’s “Sloan Ladder” by forcing Chevrolet to react with the Caprice. While lacking the prestige of the Continental, buyers could now get a swanky, luxurious package for thousands less.
I don’t know about you, but I have always liked the dark blue LTD shown in so many 1965 Ford ads.
The full-size Mercury went through another transformation for 1965 and earned the Car Life “Engineering Excellence Award” (Inexplicably – Let’s face it, it’s a big Ford underneath.).
The somewhat controversial (and in my opinion, awesome) Breezeway window was continued for 1965, but its days were numbered, and it was only available on a limited number of bodystyles for 1965.
Still, the Mercury line as a whole was square-jawed and attractive for ’65, and without the Ford’s stacked headlights, it was a bit less Pontiac-like. In our featured advertisement, however, Ford deflected any whiff of unoriginality by pairing their Ford and Mercury full-sized models with the Continental, which was somewhat square-rigged itself by 1965, with the side windows being straightened out along with the roof for the previous model year. Therefore, Ford could claim that its new boxiness indicated nothing more than a family resemblance to the big Lincoln, a Sloan-ladder imitation if there ever was one.
No matter. They say there’s nothing really new in the world, and we all copy each other to some extent. Any fans of automobiles in advertising come out ahead by the theft, because there are that many more of both to enjoy.
Of all the cars shown in these ads, it is the Mercury that still fails to warm my heart. Something about the details on the 65 Mercury has rankled me since I first noticed these as a little kid. Could it have been that the principal of my elementary school (Miss Stover) owned one? Maybe it’s my quiet aversion to authority that came into play.
From the front, the turn signal lights are too tall. From the rear, those taillights that want to be a single vertical unit are split in two with the lower halves thrust rearward in the bumper. I guess it is not bad from the side, as shown by that maroon 4-door hardtop. Still, the 65 is probably the postwar Mercury I find least attractive of all.
I must confess that I had never paid attention to either advertising campaign before – thanks for highlighting these.
You’re welcome, JP. It’s interesting that you don’t like the ’65 Mercury; it’s my favorite full-size Mercury of all. 🙂 As much as I dislike authority in general, I remember my 3rd grade principal driving a newish early ’80s Riviera, and that hasn’t affected my love for them. But I don’t remember her being particularly harsh, either.
My favorite part about the ’65 Mercury is the dashboard, although I’m not sure why.
I tend to agree with you more, Aaron, the 65 Merc is a nice looking car. I will say that I like the 66 better. The shape and general styling are similar, but cleaner with the grille and taillights having less fussy detailing and missing the funky fake fender vents.
The even squared off the interior dash on the ’65 Merc. A definitely linear car. I also like it.
I think the GM stylists who did the second generation Firebird interior liked that dash too
Right!
I never thought about that, Matt.
I mostly like the Mercury dash, but what’s the deal with that huge box underneath just for five warning lights? I assumed it was an add-on 8-track player before I read the captions from the brochure, and even then it would look like a clumsy aftermarket add-on.
Round gauges. Beats a ribbon-style gauge everytime IMO….
I have no recollection of my third grade principal, let alone what he or she drove. But my third grade teacher drove a bright red ‘63 Pontiac, and those headlights are permanently etched alongside the other great memories of my favorite teacher in all of elementary school.
My favorite teacher was my 4th grade instructor, Mrs. Baker, who drove a Pontiac Parisienne. There are few people in the world I’ve respected more than her, one of the classiest people I’ve ever met. She was a strong Black woman, well-respected in ALL communities (Happy Juneteenth, everyone). She eventually became principal, and my mom taught for her and loved her, too. She passed away a while back and that was a tough day for me. It’s rare that I worry what someone else thinks of me, but I sometimes ask myself in the back of my mind what she’d think of something I’ve done, kind of like an extra conscience.
My 5th grade teacher was also exceptional. Perhaps even a better teacher, in hindsight, than the young Pontiac driver. But she seemed old and dumpy compared to the 3rd grade teacher, and she drove an old and dumpy car, a brown ‘55 Chevy four door sedan, probably with a six and Powerglide. Note that this was in 1965, when a stock ‘55 Chevy sedan was just a ten year old car. And back then ten was old.
I’m pretty much the exact opposite, 65s are really the only 60s big Mercurys that do much of anything for me, previous or succeeding years either look like Ford’s with extra trim or are completely anonymous. I think both of the details you mentioned are what make the 65 Mercury unique and attractive to me, but I’m one of those psychos who likes the cars with turn signals above the headlights too. Cadillac verbatim copied the 65 Mercury with the split into the bodywork/bumper vertical taillights for 1970, so they must have been doing something right.
I really like the ’65 Mercurys, the family resemblance to more expensive Lincoln Continentals,and the way they picked up so many Lincoln styling cues. It certainly looked competitive against its Chrysler, Buick and Oldsmobile rivals. And yet, under the attractive exterior, are the same parts as a common Ford Custom, which bothers me just a bit. (I’m kind of a snob.)
As a child, I remember our parish priest had a ’67 or ’68 Park Lane Brougham 4-Door Sedan in silver metallic with a black vinyl roof. When he replaced it with a ’70 Toronado, the Mercury was gifted to the nuns (including my grade school principal) who taught at my grade school. The Mercury replaced a 2-tone cream and turquoise ’52-’54 Ford Country Sedan with 3 rows of seats. All of the nuns could not fit in the Mercury at the same time. I don’t know how they worked it out.
I like the Mercury a lot. That split rear tail lamp treatment is very cool. The front turn signals are too tall, but they also very definitive. Those are gone in ’66, so I believe that the Mercury stylists agreed with you. I wish these Mercurys were better cars than they were because this thin linear design is stunning. Not that they were bad cars – they just were a bit compromised on performance in comparison to the competition. The ’65 Mercury spanks the ’65 Ford in styling, without a doubt.
It is a common trope to claim that the Ford stacked headlights were just a Pontiac knock off. Yet no one mentions that stacked headlights on the ’58-’60 Lincolns, or the ’61-’62 Chrysler, the ’65 Plymouth or ’65 AMC products? Pontiac designed an outstanding looking car in ’63, but it was not as squared as the Fords, Plymouths, AMC full sized car lines. I never saw the ’65 Fords, Plymouths or AMC cars as Pontiac knock offs. Stacked headlights don’t make the entire design a knock off. The Pontiacs, frankly looked better in ’63-’64 – more rounded and organic. Their stacked headlight bezels weren’t square as the 1965 competition either. I like to see that trope reconsidered. It is insulting to Pontiac!
Everyone fell in love with Engel’s designs during this age. After the garish bizzare overstylings of Exner, Engel was what looked really good in the early 1960s. Those ’65 Chrysler products looked incredible.
I never knew of that gas turbine truck/bus/whatever.
It wasn’t just Ford; Chrysler went square in 1965 too, just in time for GM to trot out rounded swoopy-hipped full size cars and Corvairs.
I believe it was Robert Cumberford (the ex-GM stylist) who wrote about the Big Three’s full-size cars’ styling in one of the major magazines in 1965; he felt that the Ford and Chrysler were at least one, if not two, styling cycles behind GM. That wasn’t going too far out on a limb; it’s obvious that the others looked to the corporation that was selling one out of two cars at the time.
I have factory service manual for 1965 Ford/Mercury full size cars, and there is engineering differences between them. Just blindly saying a 65 Mercury is just a Ford is both incorrect and misleading.
Yeah, GM did poke fun at FoMoCo by stating that the ’65 Ford is the box the ’63 Pontiac came in, but I personally like the ’65 Ford and Mercury lines. As far as the Lincoln goes, it took a step backwards in ’64 when they jettisoned the curved side glass to make the interior bigger. I prefer the original ’61-’63 Lincolns. But back to the Ford and Mercury. Very nice and good looking cars.
Me too althought the ’65 Plymouth Fury didn’t have a bad look either and Ford got lot of mileage with the 1965-66 body when the Galaxie body was shipped to Brazil and soldiered there until the early 1980s.
Btw, we could also mention the Canadian Meteor, here how the ’65 Meteor looks like. http://oldcarbrochures.org/Canada/Ford-Canada/Meteor/1965-Meteor-Brochure/index.html
GM’s response to the LTD with the Caprice didn’t stop at matching the interior accommodations of the LTD. The Caprice was prominently promoted in black over Mist Blue.
If something works….
To me, Caprice equally appealing as the new LTD. Shoppers had good selection in 1965.
I’ve said elsewhere, these cars showed up their divisions’ positions in the “real” corporate hierarchy more than they did their market positions.
Ford was the name-on-the-door division, with a free hand to trample on what had been Mercury’s turf.
Chevrolet had to can or dial back some of their own ideas to leave room for B-O-P, but their “USA-1” sales status was important enough to the Fourteenth Floor to give them license to match Ford Division model for model (“Vun for vun” in old Knudsen’s words).
And poor old Plymouth didn’t have many advocates within the boardroom and had it worse in the showroom, where the VIP was the closest to a flop of the bunch because its’ prospects were being upsold to a Chrysler Newport.
Very quietly, probably as a tribute to these mid ’60s ads, Ford ran some very similar-looking ads between 1983 and 1985. By very quietly, I meant only people familiar with the near identical look and feel of the ’60s print ads, and these equally very clean and similarly styled ’80s ads, would make the connection in their appearance.
Ford even made a brief theme to some of these early/mid ’80s ads. Besides, this ‘Absorbing Quality’ ad, they ran an ‘Arresting Quality’ ad for the Mustang police car.
Mustang ad.
Cool ads, definitely reminiscent of the ’65s.
I’ve been a minor car ad collector for a long time, minor being the main word apparently since I don’t recall seeing most of these ads. The featured Ford one does ring a bell, but I don’t remember the “FMC Is:” campaign generally. I’d really like to get the GT40 ad, that’s sweet.
The GM ones are cool, too. Great photos of landmark cars. Even the wagon is noteworthy because at that time you could order the same “performance” options in a Chevy wagon as any other model. Perhaps the text says something to that effect, it’s kind of hard to read here.
Do you know what magazines they ran in?
Count me as a fan of Breezeway roofs. Especially if A/C is not on the option list, that would be a great thing to have. Appearance-wise, I like it but especially on 2-door models I can see why many buyers balked. The increasing prevalence of A/C probably doomed the concept.
I’ve found that Life magazines are the best sources for big mid-’60s ads. The swankier cars were in magazines such as Holiday, and Time also had a bunch of good ads (in a smaller format).
You can look through any Life magazine you want here (digitally):
https://books.google.com/books/about/LIFE.html?id=R1cEAAAAMBAJ
Thanks for the link. I’ve been through Holiday and Look extensively (paper), but Life and Time more intermittently.
Regardless of your opinion of the actual car, the 1965 Ford LTD should be recognized as a masterful strategic stroke by Ford.
GM profitability had long been helped by the upscale divisions. It really didn’t cost GM that much more to build those cars versus a Chevy. The most significant cost increase would have been created by the need to amortize unique divisional tooling over lower volumes than Chevy. The price premiums were more than adequate to cover those costs and then some.
Ford tried for years to emulate this strategy. They took Lincoln mid-market in the early 50s. They tried to make Mercury more unique in the later 50s. They introduced Edsel. Nothing they tried broke GM’s lock on mid-price market.
Finally in 1965, the introduction of the LTD gave buyers a chance to have mid-market luxury features in a premium model of the volume full size car.
Ford didn’t have much to lose. The ’65 Mercury may have been a nice car. Yet even Mercury lovers must acknowledge it enjoyed very limited sales success against GM’s powerhouse troika of the Buick, Olds & Pontiac divisions.
The LTD forced GM to introduce a more premium Chevy. Once the Caprice hit the market, buyers could get a Chevy with the same features as GMs mid-price models.
That was the beauty of Ford’s move. In the same manner the Falcon stole Ford buyers away from the full size models, now Chevy buyers were coming from other GM divisions rather than being conquest buyers. Ford buyers looking to move up could now stay with their brands.
It took some time for the effects of this strategy to play out. Olds looked healthy well through the 70s thanks to the strength of the Cutlass. The erosion of GMs full size mid-market models was a gradual process that probably couldn’t be foreseen in 1965. Perhaps the LTD didn’t start the erosion of GM’s Sloan ladder, but it sure fed the trend.
That process has darn near killed most mid-priced American car brands. A prestige market still exists and probably always will. But there isn’t really anything left of the mid-price market.
I consider the LTD as the car that finally eliminated the marketing advantage GM had long enjoyed with their better established Sloan ladder brands and dealer networks.
“now Chevy buyers were coming from other GM divisions”
I agree with almost everything you say, but would argue that the Caprice didn’t so much pull B-O-P buyers into Chevy showrooms as it did keep Chevy buyers from graduating into the B-O-P cars when they were looking for something a step up from their Impalas. This would eventually starve the B-O-P Divisions of a key source of new customers.
My own extended family seldom strayed from Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs in the 60s and 70s, but never bought Chevys. It was only when I spent a day in the mid 70s detailing the 68 Caprice of a family friend that I paid attention to how much nicer it was than the 69 Catalina my grandma owned.
Yeah, I really have been impressed with the interiors of the full-sized Chevrolet’s from 1966 to 1970. The quality of the materials is just as nice or in many cases nicer than GM’s more expensive models. Compare a 1968 two door Caprice with bucket seats and console to a 1968 Coupe de Ville. To me, the dash of the Caprice is much more elegant than the Caddy. True, the Cadillac did offer nice leather, but the sporty vinyl buckets and even the cloth covered seats in the Chevy were just as nice.
I have to wonder whether this was a boost to the Cutlass in the medium term, particularly given how coupe-heavy it was in its’ glory days. Former Caprice owners unimpressed by the Delta 88 would take a second look at Olds when the gas crisis hit just as they were graduating from the need for a family sedan to haul kids around.
Good points. Yeah, the current mid-priced market, at least on the domestic side for proper cars “sedans”, seems dead. Ford killed of their nice Fusion and Focus models. Dumb move, in my opinion. Fusion competed well against Accord and Camry and Focus had a loyal cult following for these hot hatches.
On the GM side now we only have the Malibu as they discontinued the Impala. I guess Cadillac still makes sedans but I haven’t paid much attention to Cadillac since the early 1980s, when they shot themselves in the foot with quality issues.
I’m curious as to why sedans remain popular in luxury/premium brands – Audi, Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla have no trouble selling them. The lower-priced Asian brands nearly all do well with sedans too. My theory – the chicken tax encouraged Detroit to concentrate on the light-truck market where it was harder for the foreigners to compete, having to either build a US factory or make buyers swallow a 25% tax on them. The big 3 are thus very competitive in trucks and SUVs but far less so in cars.
The mid price market is still solidly there but instead of Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Mercury filling that market, Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge moved upmarket to fill it. They are no longer no frills entry level cars. They are nice rides. The stripper economy car market is what went away.
In the case of Dodge, we could said they moved back upmarket since they had gone into Plymouth territory with the introduction of the full-size Dart in 1960 and the failure of the 1962 “plucked chicken”. Since then Dodge was a alternative to Plymouth instead of a step-up to Plymouth.
GM now charges $100 for a premium midprice brand, going by the prices of the new Chevrolet Trax LT and 2RS/Activ vs the Buick Envista Preferred and Sport Touring.
The last redoubt of the Sloan Ladder in the pricing of their latest-announced mainstream models is that the Trax (which is morphing back into a station wagon and I’m all for that) is available in two trim levels (LS and 1RS) below the entry-level Buick while the Envista (a “coupe crossover” that’s a set of lowering springs away from being quite a handsome liftback) is available in a top trim level (Avenir) with no Chevy counterpart.
I’ve been a minor car ad collector for a long time, minor being the main word apparently since I don’t recall seeing most of these ads. The featured Ford one does ring a bell, but I don’t remember the “FMC Is:” campaign generally. I’d really like to get the GT40 ad, that’s sweet.
The GM ones are cool, too. Great photos of landmark cars. Even the wagon is noteworthy because at that time you could order the same “performance” options in a Chevy wagon as any other model. Perhaps the text says something to that effect, it’s kind of hard to read here.
Do you know what magazines they ran in?
Count me as a fan of Breezeway roofs. Especially if A/C is not on the option list, that would be a great thing to have. Appearance-wise, I like it but especially on 2-door models I can see why many buyers balked. The increasing prevalence of A/C probably doomed the concept.
That gas turbine super hauler in the picture with the mustang obviously was the inspiration for a Speed Racer episode…was called “The Mammoth Car”
GM had one too, the Turbo Titan III.
I felt the 1965 -66 Fords were the best looking models they had in years & certainly saw them everywhere, can barely recall the Chevrolet/Pontiac offerings, possibly they were the lumpy rounded styling that unfortunately came in.
I like the Fords too, but I can’t personally say that Pontiac’s styling was unfortunate. I just snapped this ’65 2+2 this weekend.
Was this Pontiac at the Motor Muster show recently in Dearborn, MI? I saw pictures of this car on YouTube on the Rare Classic Cars and Automotive History channel with Adam
Yes, it is. I was there on Saturday.
Thoughtful article here Aaron, and lots of good comments.
1965 was a banner year with all of the Big Three’s large cars (except Lincoln and Imperial) getting major redesigns. I was blown away as a middle schooler by the GM lineup, especially so for the Pontiac and Chevy 2-door hardtops.
Great pic/poster! Never seen this one before. Possibly a GM annual report photo?
Not sure if it originally came from an annual report. If you google “It’s 1965 at General Motors,” you can find sources for ordering a copy of this beautiful poster.
I agree that the Chevy and Pontiac were especially attractive, and the colors on your poster would be two of the three I’d narrow mine down to (the other being Mist Blue).
Speaking of the similarity of the styling of the 1965 Ford to Pontiac, I remember in one of the enthusiast magazines in 1965 of a 1962 Pontiac with the front clip of a 1965 Ford bolted to it for testing.
Ha ha, was that Ford wanting to camouflage its new car or Pontiac making a joke? 🙂
Yeah; I don’t get it either. It makes zero sense. Why would Ford use a three year old car of a competitor to “test” the new front sheet metal?
Maybe he got it backwards: Ford disguised a new ’65 mule by bolting a Pontiac front clip on it?
The first GM corporate ad focuses on brakes, and how GM’s engineers are constantly working to improve the brakes of its cars.
Three years later, GM would give us the 1966 Toronado, a heavy, powerful front-wheel-drive car with drum brakes, no disc option until the following year, and no standard proportioning valve until the following model year.
The 1965 Fords and Mercurys may have lagged their GM competitors in the styling race, but I’ve always liked them – particularly the Ford. I remember that Matchbox used the 1965 Ford Galaxie four-door sedan for its police car and fire chief car.
Yeah, Ford really beat the rest of the Big Three to the punch on disc brakes. Buick was consistently praised for their aluminum drums, but discs were obviously the way to go.