We’re not in the car sales business, but Hank sent me this link to what must be Australia’s Broughamiest Brougham ever, the Ford LTD P6. I know it’s just a stretched Falcon, but someone in the U.S. needs to buy this car (listed at AUS$28,990; or about $30,000 in greenbacks). Wouldn’t it confuse folks this summer at your local Friday night “drive in”? 
What caught my eye among the shots was this one showing the sort of cobbled-up appearance of certain low-volume cars back in the day–which is understandable, since the volume of these cars must have been quite low. But check out those chrome levers sticking out of the console–you sure wouldn’t see those on an American Brougham–and all that soft vinyl all over the console in place of Detroit’s hard plastic.
Here’s the dash. A bit simplistic, but better than some of Detroit’s efforts of this era.
The Cordoba rip-off front end will confuse them even further. So who’s going to bite?
It looks like a bi-focal version of “The Car” had sex with a 1968 Fairlane….
Heh, another fascinating look into the parallel universe of the Antipodes. Love ’em. That shade over the windscreen makes it look like a guy in a suit wearing a baseball cap, though.
It’s got the whole Seventies Maroon thing going in spades, I’ll grant that.
I don’t think I ever saw a car newer than a ’58 with a outside visor before, Is that a common thing in Australia?
You could still get them as an option up until around 10-12 years ago, despite air conditioning the sun is still pretty brutal in many areas, and they help to reduce glare
I left it unsaid, but just to be explicit a sun visor like this was (and is) more likely to be installed by an older driver, and also in a rural area.
Yep–I’ve mostly only seen those as a period touch on Aussie-made classics, at least in metro areas.
Outside visors were around in New Zealand too – back in the mid-late 80s my parents had mesh visors on their successive Mk 4 (1980) and Mk 5 (1983) Ford Cortina wagons. And big spotlights – those were the days…!
Wow – so many pieces familiar to those of us in NA, yet in a completely unfamiliar car. Those wheelcovers must be the most recycled ever from Ford, after use in the T bird (early 70s) and Marquis/Grand Marquis (mid 70s into the 80s).
The seats look right out of an American mid-70s Ford, and bits of the dash are familiar as well. I have never seen one of these before, ever. This is a car I could walk around for about an hour just looking.
Oh yes, those wheelcovers in their original incarnation.
That dash just looks…wrong.
I know about RHD in Oz…I was there a month with the Navy; and I had to qualify as a Duty Driver for emergencies and courier service. But MOST modern cars…look…alright with the controls on the right.
Not the Ford Slab Dash with Petro-Wood. It’s just…jarring.
You know what looks jarring to me? A car like this, with such broughamy dashboard, and console shifter.
I always liked these cars. A weird mix of American styles all kinda smashed together. The car looks bigger than it really is. No legroom as seen in the interior pics, and the dash layout is horrible. Aside from those little things, a neat car for sure.
I’ll take the ZH Fairlane Marquis though… a bit classier in my opinion, despite being a lesser model to the P6.
Yeah better choice except without the vinyl top, I kinow what lurks under those and paint isnt it, The roof flexs on these cars painted roofs crack not a very well made car at all but certainly more useable than the LTD
The seats must be pretty far forward in those photos. The car has a 120″ wheelbase which is a 4″ stretch over a Fairlane which itself is a 5″ stretch over a Falcon – legroom is not an issue.
I think ‘weird mixes of styles all smashed together’ summarizes quite well the basic approach to car design by North American manufacturers in this era. There’s no reason why Australian versions should have been much different.
This one’s arguably a little better than some. It successfully showed that an intermediate-sized car was plenty big enough for a good looking ‘executive’ sedan.
Is it a shadow on the photo, or is the “thumb button” on the automatic transmission selector on the wrong side for a RHD car?
Trans button on the right of shifter is normal, these big Falcons were for ministerial transport I do recall one that had been used in a rural setting, the fibreglass front panel weas all cracked and broken where the bullbar had crushed back onto it after a roo strike. Awful cars everything breaks inside and these model Fords have appaling electrics the windows wont lift buy if you want to I remember these things and wouldnt touch it with a barge pole
There is a button on both sides of the shifter, I can’t remember if the left side one is a dummy or not.
That makes sense. You couldn’t see the one on the right in the photo.
That padded vinyl on the console looks more like a way to avoid creating a molding for the console which matches the rest of the interior. Plush, yes, but crude looking.
I suppose the same goes for a lot of large Aussie Fords and Holdens.
That’s what I meant to convey too.
It is actually a padded covering over the moulded console that was used in the normal Falcons & Fairmonts!
That thing is so brougham it is almost cartoon-ish. Just needs an opera window to finish off the look.
This is the sexyist Australian LTD – ’74 P5. The Landau was even better.
Wasn’t one of those in the opening sequence of The Road Warrior (when Max is first being chased by Wez and his minions?)
There was a Landau, which is the coupe version. I’ve seen what is either the original or a pretty fair copy – unusual as most Mad Max replicas are either the black Interceptor or the MFP police cars from Mad Max 1 (because it is basically just a paint job plus a couple of fiberglass bits)
I couldn’t remember, so I took it as an opportunity to rewatch the film.
The Black Interceptor was a 351 V8 Falcon XB Coupe with an aftermarket Monza front end and two aftermarket kick up’s.
The first Yellow Interceptor (the one that goes thru the caravan) is a 302 V8 XB Falcon Sedan with one kick up mounted on the roof.
The second Yellow Interceptor (that joins Max on the chase of The Nightrider) is a 250 6cyl XA Falcon Sedan with one kick up.
Max’s Yellow Interceptor is a 351 V8 XB Falcon Sedan with one kick up.
The pic is of the 351 V8 GT XB Coupe as it would come from the factory.
The Road Warrior was the US market name for Mad Max 2 I understand, so apart from the XB-based Interceptor and the Mack truck most of the vehicles ranged from highly modified (F100, Landau) to barely recognisable buggy type things – they had a much larger budget for MM2 vs George Miller using his own Mazda van as a sacrifice in MM1.
Didn’t realise that was Miller’s Bongo van !
What do the console levers control?
God the car is so bad it is good. Like Homer Simpson was a secret consultant on the project.
Pretty sure they are HVAC controls, couldn’t tell you why they were moved from the normal dash location though.
Yep, HVAC controls, they were on the console on the P5 too. P5 interior shots from my files:
Oops, didn’t include the pic of the controls (courtesy of the aus-ford-uk website). I wonder if they were cable or vacuum activated. Certainly wins the prize for the weirdest HVAC control location – although TVR would be a strong contender too!
That’s my favourite touch too.
You may just be setting your defroster… but can pretend you’re throttling up a Vulcan B2 on full rotation!
There’s a good bit of AMC Matador or Ambassador in this, especially around the upsweep at the rear door.
I 2nd the Matador & Cordoba resemblance.
Under the horiz speedo, to the left of the steering column, I see what look like vertical strip gauges (as with the XJ-S). Am I correct? And it looks like the cig lighter is on the passenger side; not terribly convenient for the driver, is it?
BTW, I think vinyl should be restored to armrests, if not seats. Much easier to keep clean than cloth, & I never had durability problems here in the Sunbelt. Oily skin does bad things to cloth, over time.
Yes the auxilliary gauges are there, I’d expect they are still a sweep needle type though. The previous model Fairlane was criticised as being too similar to the basic Falcon, so for this generation they went to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody would confuse them. The LTD would seem to have been caught up in this, as a strip speedo had not been used since 71. There may have been another cigar lighter – each rear door had one plus an ashtray.
Hi all I’m working on my mates 78 p6 Ltd and I keep having issues with the the fuel gauge I just replaced the gauge printed circuit board pulse until and sender until it worked for a week and now it’s stopped again.
Any ideas why ?? Or is there something I’m missing??
I think the only reason American Broughams didn’t have lots of little chrome levels sticking out of the dash and console was that federal safety standards frowned on them by that point. Otherwise, I don’t doubt that half the cars on the road would have been like the mid-sixties Thunderbird, where even the HVAC controls were designed to feel like the throttle levers of a B-52.
cause they are major source of glare.
I’m thinking about changing out the ign lock cylinder on my Chevelle to a black one to cut down on glare during the day, right into my eyes.
That is certainly a consideration, but the federal regulations were more concerned with the prospect of impaling yourself on the controls in a collision and Detroit had a long history of prioritizing style over function when it came to dash design.
I’m thinking the plain ‘wood’ dash design with the lower level of controls and the plushly upholstered ‘leather’ look comes from a lingering British influence in the Australian market on what a luxury car should look like. It’s American Brougham for the most part, but the interior seems to be trying to recall, rather badly, upscale Jaguar / Rover interiors of the 1960’s. Just the thing for those government ministers and aspiring executives…
I’d say probably more an American influence, as this car was the local replacement for full-size Ford Galaxies or LTDs which were dropped in the early 70’s.
You can every leave this world broughamly in an LTD hearse (photo thanks to the prolific and amazing Glen H’s Flickr stream)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenhsparky/7232127340/in/pool-955322@N24
I wonder what other interior choices were there – black leather just doesn’t say “Brougham” to me since it’s so overused in modern cars.
Plus it must’ve been hotter than heck when parked in the Aussie summer sun, visor or not!
There were numerous colour options, and in the limited edition ‘Silver Monarch’ version, which I own, it has a cranberry red interior, with velour seats instead of leather.
Those Silver Monarchs are really great looking. There was one for sale here recently, I don’t like leather and fell in love with the red velour. Nice to hear someone at CC owns one!
Just looks like an incredible mishmash of every Ford styling cue from the 70s. A Maverick roofline, a Mark III grille (I know it doesn’t have hidden headlights, but I still think there’s a resemblance), and T-Bird/Marquis hubcaps.
That visor has got to go,like wearing a baseball cap with an Armani suit!It looks like something from a chop shop,the straight edge front and coke bottle rear don’t work well together.
My uncle had one like this for a couple of years. This model was known as the Rolls Royce-front/grille LTD, might not be an obvious thing from a north American perspective but I can’t think of any other local car that had the same grille shape (comparatively narrow width & height) with vertical fins.
Ford sold 6000 of these in 2-1/2 years, 1000 less than the earlier model. They cost $13,000 versus a base model Falcon that started at $5500.
Yeah John they are quite rare cars on both sides of the Tasman most of these things went into government service most ordinary mortals couldnt see the value over a well specced Fairlane.
Its like a bad rejected US Granada/Monarch/Versailles design.
Also, 1979? The center (centre?)shape screams 1969-1973.
This model debuted in 1976, a facelift of a 1973 model which was based on the 1972 XA Falcon. It was only in production for a few months of 1979 before being replaced by the gold car featured last week.
An alternative design maybe, but not bad.
Big news from Down Under. After making vehicles in Australia since 1925, Ford is closing its remaining manufacturing plants.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/23/ford-australia-stop-making-cars
http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-news/ford-confirms-plant-closures-20130523-2k22c.html
I’d buy an Australian designed and built Ford LTD any day over the American built Ford LTD.