images by William Rubano
(first posted 3/18/2016)
3M’s DI-NOC Architectural Finishes have graced many a fine Wagon Queen Family Trucksters (in the generic sense), but there’s little doubt in my mind that this Marquis Colony Park used more square feet than any other production wagon. Or have I forgotten an even woodier one? Well, dark wood “paneling” was the hot thing in the seventies, and folks were covering up the cracked plaster in their old houses (and newer ones too) by the square mile. And what better way to haul home stacks of 4×8 paneling from the home improvement store than in a matching Colony Park?
I don’t have to remind you, do I? It was everywhere…
Like a plague descended on the land.
Don’t get me wrong; I like wood, and genuine wood on the walls, when done properly, can be very tasteful. But this stuff was fake and plasticky, and depressing.
Maybe that’s why I’ve struggled with these wood paneled wagons. But I’ve finally detoxed all the formaldehyde that I inhaled from all those depressing paneled apartments in Iowa City, and can at last look at it (the wagon) without feeling my bronchials tighten up. I suppose the same applies to big Fords and Mercuries of this era too, as most of you know by now. I’ve come to appreciate them (from a distance) as the cultural artifacts that they are, even if it is a culture I struggled with (more like against) at the time.
Unfortunately, looking at this shot of this interior isn’t helping much. Sorry; I’m just not a fan of this dark pseudo-club house look. And there’s not enough “wood” on the doors.
But then there’s the front end, without a whit of wood-grain DI-NOC to be seen. And there’s even hidden headlights, as a consolation to those that are missing it already. The Family Truckster did have wood on its hood.
No wood, but there is vinyl, padded even, on the headlight covers. What a brilliant idea: padded headlight covers (Update: I’ve been told they’re not really padded. So they’re fake padded headlight covers; even worse). The Mercury designers were really on a roll in the seventies. And there’s the Marquis deMercury’s coat of arms, too, right in the middle of them. Wow. Now I’m really breathless. And speechless.
Padded vinyl headlight covers – More Brougham than Brougham.
Actually, the headlight covers are hard plastic pieces molded to look like padding. My dad had a ’77 Grand Marquis Brougham sedan.
So they’re fake padded vinyl headlight covers; that’s even worse! 🙂
“Fake padded vinyl headlight covers” that highlighted the location of……the hidden headlights! One would think the purpose of ‘hidden’ headlights was to hide those lights behind a smooth, uniform panel as on the ’36-’37 Cord to contribute to the cleanliness of the styling. Mercury stylists just misunderstood their purpose a bit…… Like the photo-faked wood-grained household paneling, everything about the Mercury is so typical of the pseudo-luxury, faux culture of the times.
Right! Looking at the front end, though, and with the hidden headlights and corner-mounted turn signals, the designers were probably thinking of a way to add some visual interest to what might have been two, flat planes. I’d love to see some of the other proposals for the Marquis’s face! I’m thinking it could have been much, much worse than the crested, hard-pillow looking things on those headlight doors. LOL
For an interesting contrast look no further than the Lincoln Town Cars of that era. Large upright waterfall grille flanked by hidden headlights with very little decoration – almost Cord like in the minimal decor. It was certainly a design of significantly more restrained elegance than the Mercury.
Yes it is. I also own a 79 Lincoln with the Town Car Package. It is more regal looking. But I like em both.
I wonder if they considered replacing the padded vinyl look with woodgrain for the wagons?
I was thinking they same thing. They missed a trick by not putting wood grain in place of the vinyl.
I can tell by the air cleaner cover that it’s not a 460.
99% probability it’s a 400.
The family room in my 1969 brick ranch house is slathered in wood paneling. I really, really need to rip it off. I hope the wallboard below is in okay shape.
I tried that in a room in my house. “What Lies Beneath” was more than a movie title with those walls, but just as scary. I nailed the paneling back up and put a more attractive finish on it. A little more “Old English Club Room” and a little less “Double Wide.” 🙂
I’m far from a fan of paneling but wallpaper (di-noc?) is worse. My house in Hannibal was chock full of it, having been built in 1977. When I remodeled the hall bath, and removed the wallpaper, the first piece off revealed graffiti that said “Reagan-Bush ’84”.
The kids had had a field day prior to the paper going up. Coming off, it liked to pull chunks of drywall with it.
If Steve McGarrett was a family man instead of a perennial bachelor, he’d have one of these. While you’re renovating the house, you might want to make an addition to the garage.
No doubt he would. Steve did drive a ’68 Colony Park in one early episode when he went to LA to visit his sister.
I’m now in a different house making different renovations. I just bought the one acre lot behind me and need to borrow a goat for about a week!
Same with our 1918 “four square” farm house (in quotes because it started out as a two-room house and was added onto multiple times). Pic shows the living room when we were “looking.” Almost every vertical surface in the house had been covered with cheap paneling or wallpaper (the bathroom had six layers).
A true “hat trick” would have been bringing home the stacks of 4×8 paneling in the di-noc’ed Merc!
I actually painted the paneling in my basement white. Took two coats of primer and two paint, but looked pretty good when it was finished.
The house I grew up in (early 70’s ranch/rambler style) was covered in that paneling. WHen my parents remodeled it, they found some really thick wallpaper-type stuff made to cover paneling. You “paper” over the paneling, then paint it, and voila, it now looks like drywall. So you can get fake wallpaper, to cover your fake wood paneling, so it looks like drywall (fake plaster walls) !!!
Dodged a bullet on the paneling–several houses we looked at had it (it seems especially popular for former screen porches enclosed into small rooms) but the one we ended up buying is blessedly paneling-free despite being almost 70 years old.
My in-laws’ house (1930’s bungalow with a 1970’s addition) has it in almost every room though. Mother-in-law keeps threatening to paint it white, but my father-in-law evidently likes the stuff.
I have to smile at those pictures of the wood paneled hallways, as in the 1970s, my grandfather the do-it-yourselfer was a huge fan of it. In the early 1970s, he and my grandmother had a house built on Cape Cod which they intended to retire too (it ended up just becoming a summer house). After the exterior shell and supporting walls were completed, he did most of the interior outfitting himself. Nearly every room had that wood paneling until they gradually did some renovating in the late-’90s/early-00s. God did I hate that paneling 🙂
The living room and dining room in my house are wood panelled, in one room it was put up to “conceal” a door, in the other it was put up to build a “wall” of sorts around the HVAC unit that in other houses in my area is located in the attic.
At some point, the wood panelling was “whitewashed” a la Tom Sawyer.
IMHO, the worst looking wood “siding” is on early 70s Dodge wagons.
I actually like the stuff on 70’s Dodges, though it might be more a function of the unusual placement than of the dinoc itself.
A beautiful wagon – would love to own it – or just get a ride in it.
I had no idea (until I followed that link) that Di-Noc was still a thing. At least on that Mercury, it seems to have held up fairly well. Is this the stuff with which to vinyl wrap things? Can it be purchased in DIY quantities?
I hate wood paneling. This isn’t the worst example of it on a car though.
I was so comfortable with fake paneling on everything I saw growing up, what I find egregious is padded vinyl anything. The Mercury Cougar had a padded vinyl trunk hump, like the behind of a lady wearing Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Why would there even be padded vinyl anything? What was it supposed to look like?
I get Di-Noc. It is supposed to look like wood. But what is a padded vinyl headlamp cover, trunk deck, roof supposed to emulate?
Why would anyone want their car roof to look like it is constructed out of pillows?
Having the vinyl roof is mildly excusable/explainable, as it recalled the roofs of old Duesenbergs, Packards, etc. All the others just seemed to be the gross excess of the decade applied to cars.
Wood Paul wood.
https://youtu.be/Hn0_QVXuXuk
I have a 76 4dr Grand Marquis. Thank God it was not available with di-noc. I hated it then and 40 plus years later it looks worse. Don’t know about the wagons, but in 76 out of 17,650 4dr Grand Marquis built, 14,618 were 460’s. All others were 400’s. The 351M didn’t become the standard engine till 78. And if those 17,650 only 801 were painted Light Gold but 4170 had the Gold Halo Vinyl Roof.
Brings back memories…My dad had a 1973 Colony Park, 460. A rig that weighed more than a ’73 Ford F-250 4X4…
Our family had a ’73 too. The headlight covers are extensions of the lattice grillwork, and I think they work much better than the later versions. They hide the headlights, not call attention to the covers. The same brown interior, but it really worked with a bronze gold exterior, complete with color-keyed hub caps!
Di-Noc with chrome trim, not the fake light colored wood, always seemed more upscale to me. Mercury wagons had a great run from the late ’60s through the mid ’70s. Big, soft, like driving a cruise ship. No, they didn’t handle, and they gulped gas, but all that weight made it one solid car.
Anselm Adams did it best …
That’s a lotta Di-Noc. I never liked the wood treatment on these, the huge expanses of fake wood trimmed with chrome strips never looked right. At least the Fords used the fake light wood trim around the edges. I remember riding in one of these (sans paneling) one night while some other kids shot bottle rockets out of the back window. At traffic. I only say so now because I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run.
And a Roman messenger-god who actually had a family coat of arms – who knew?
When growing up in Fort Wayne, I lived through the heyday of paneling. I remember the incessant weekend TV ads for “The Panel Mart” with the oh-so-funny pitchman (not really) hawking paneling for every conceivable use. Ack! I am all in favor of old-school woodwork on walls (the darker and shinier the better) and I rather like the genuine tongue-in-groove knotty pine boards that finish the walls of my 1958 basement family room. But that 4×8 sheet crap was just awful.
My dad paneled the den and kitchen of his primary house and “all” the walls in the summer house in Mississippi. I spent several summers tacking that crap up with left over pieces from the local “Unclaimed Freight” store before it became a franchise. IIRC, the stuff was imported from Taiwan (this is the 70’s before mainland China too over all imported items).
By the way, I still love woody wagons including the ones with “simulated” wood grain paneling. Reminds me of the wagon used in the 60s version of “The Thomas Crown Affair” movie.
” Get a Ford ,the big one with wood On the sides” . Only did America produce large wagons for 6-8 passengers. The ” whale” Caprice was the last before the dreaded SUV took over the market. Do you agree with Tyler Hoover of Hoovies Garage that they should be reintroduced?.
I went to the Di-Nox website. Under surface preparation instructions it recommends as a filler to use what else “Bondo”, on everything but sheetrock.
In late 1976, with fond memories (Mom, not so much Dad) of their “Suburban Status Symbol” AKA Mom’s 1966 Ford Country Sedan bubbling in their heads; Mom & Dad went to look at and drive the exact duplicate of this article’s station wagon.
After their visit to the Merc dealer; they came home quite subdued. Mom mumbled something about “just too darn long & wide for me”; and Dad had vivid, un-Christian words about the Merc’s lack of acceleration, front bumper nose diving brakes and single digit gas mileage estimation. “Gutless, numb and bovine” were his kindest words.
The 400-4 barrel Chrysler Cordoba they bought two weeks later was just as nice on the inside, out handled, stopped and flat out sucked the headlights out of the Merc wagon they THOUGHT they wanted. With all but one of the four kids gone, they didn’t really need another station wagon.
This pretty much happened with 70’s/80 era parents, they got sick of wagons and went for the “sporty” personal lux coupe. And kids crammed into the back seats.
[My folks got a Monte Carlo and a few other 2 doors for a time, after wagons]
Yup! No station wagon ever graced my Parent’s driveway, ever again.
Mom’s battle cry was “No more boring 4 doors, EVER AGAIN!!” as she and Dad went thru various Hondas & Mazdas and a Benz coupe over the next 20 years. (The Cordoba got sold to my brother, who sold it to my youngest brother. Even 20-somethings couldn’t kill that Mopar!)
Mom reluctantly accepted my Dad’s new ’96 Nissan Maxima (advertised, at the time, as “The 4 door Sports Car) after she stomped it hard to merge into traffic filled I-10 and discovered “that frumpy four door of your Father’s RUNS!”
I was truly blessed with two post-Korean war generation car enthusiasts with union pay scale jobs to support their various automotive habits. Must be where their eldest son gets it from?
We never had a wagon either. Our ride thru the 70’s was a 69 C10 Chevy that got traded on a 81 F100 Ranger in 81, and a 65 Impala SS until May 11th 1974 that got a $700 trade in towards a 74 Mercury Montego MX Brougham 2dr that I currently own.
When I win the jackpot, I am going to personally fly cross-country to the eBay seller selling one of these things and Holiday rooo-ooo-ooooaaad my way back home with it.
What a treat! This car (and the caved in white ’85 RWD Cutlass by Mr. Dennis) lit my eyes right up when I logged on to CC today. Once again I say: “I love this website!!”
A million times, thanks!!
I grew up with the Country Squires (in a FoMoCo family, yet), and sort of “imprinted” on them; I guess I’m partial to the ones bordered by the (fake) maple/birch rather than the (more formal) chrome strips.
I suppose a pivotal decision for the auto industry (early 1950s) was to stop using real wood, *but* to keep making wood-look cars. Was there any kind of exterior-grade adhesive wood-grain product out there at the time, or did Di-Noc come up with the stuff ’cause the auto industry asked?
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4×8 Paneling: yeah, I grew up in that age, too. It’s fun to be old enough to look back on things with from a different vantage point, and to accept being pawns of the designer/marketing industry as well all are. I tell my former students they’re equally victims of it all (granite countertops, man-caves, whatever), and that they’ll likely live long another to mutter “why did that look so good to me back then?”
Paul, I’m happy to see that you’re more accepting of these cars than you once were. Me, I’d be happy to give one a good home; thanks for the article!
These wood trimmed wagons are what [non-car enthusiast] buyers think of when they say “I’ll never own one!”
I like woody wagons but this isnt one its cheap crappy plastic and looks awfull, these dinoc disasters were never sold out here for good reasons.
I always liked these big wagons, but I would have gone for a different coloured interior. It’s too bad the wagons only came with leather or vinyl seats, I think cloth was only available on the sedans. Yes, that awful dark wood paneling was everywhere in the ’70s, you just couldn’t get away from it! But more importantly, look at the tiny TV screen those guys are watching the game on – LOL!
Frank: I believe the ’77 LTD II Squire and the ’77 Cougar Villager woody wagons were sold with not only cloth interiors but plaid cloth.
I remember distinctly a Colorado front range ’77 Cougar wagon in that common dark green, with Di-Noc and the plaid (mostly green) cloth interior. I wanted to buy it. Think the combo could be done in dark blue metallic with blue plaid too.
I’ve got the sales brochures and trim books for those years. When I get home, I’ll look and see.
I had a friend in Grade school and Jr High. We went on a class trip to ski at bogus basin. I rode with this friend in his dad’s mercury cougar villager wagon. The seats were vinyl. or incredibly hard leather.
Looking at that 12″ TV, I’m reminded that our video watching has gone in either direction, We have 60″ TVs in our living rooms, But how many of us also soak up Netflix/Hulu/YouTube on a 5″ phone or 7″ tablet!
An antihistamine and mouthwash?
LOL!
The real crime of that 4 x 8 fake wood paneling was that it was allowed to be installed by the DIY crowd. The installations were very rarely as neat and tidy as the pictures posted from the project books.
My sister’s first house had an accent wall of the stuff around the fireplace. On a budget around 1995, she painted it off white in a low sheen paint and I’ll be damned if it didn’t actually look good. Maybe it was the vast improvement over the dinged up fake walnut color that convinced me.
Those guys laughing their asses off at the poor guy’s tiny T.V. are just plain mean. He looks humiliated.
Oh – the car, I’d have to agree with Paul that those brown vinyl interiors were pretty depressing. The sedans with the cloth interior were much nicer.
“Death has come to your little town, Sherrif.”
I guess the wagon in that movie didn’t have the Di-Noc.
I never had that di-noc panelling in my hoke, but of all things there was a lot of it in my middle school. They hadon’t gutted half the academic wing in the ’70s to go with the whole open school philosophy and when that crashed and burned, they redid the walls with that stuff. By the time I got there in 2000, it was nasty, bubbling, cracked, nails were sticking out, you name it. I would hate living with the stuff, especially with some of the pukey flooring in those pictures. I can take or leave it on the wagon, but to my eyes, the Ford and Mercury wagons from this time to the downsizing looked way overdone with or without it.
Long before anyone ever thought of a Lincoln Navigator or MKXTC, this was as close as you could get to a Lincoln wagon and the fake wood was always a pricey option.
‘Course the Grand Marquis station wagon was based on the sedan (car) chassis, NOT built up from a lowly, workman’s class pick up truck chassis (Navigator).
The Lincoln MKC/X/T are all built on car platforms, though. And the MKT certainly does have an air of bloated excess to it. It’s even available in brown!
Did these come complete with a pair of brown corduroy flares to go with the interior and exterior decor?
I remember gluing sheets of the printed fake wood stuff in my parents hallway. It covered the former owner’s wallpaper job. The paneling did come home from the lumber yard in the back of a non-DI-NOC ’65 Impala wagon.
Full sized wagons never look right without DiNoc. Bare metal makes them look like coroners’ vehicles. That said the Merc’s application is humdrum, simulated ash trim always makes it look classier.
This is a beautiful wagon. My Dad bought midsize, mid market GM wagons, Pontiac or Chevy. He did buy a full size ’67 Bel Air wagon once. Man was that thing cheap looking! I would of loved to drive one of these around, My Dad also had a ’63 Lincoln which I would occasionally drive to high school. I love all those big luxury wagons. If only my wife didn’t actively hate them. She has been really cool about my other old cars buys though.
In the battle of the DiNocsaurs, this would have given the Merc a close run for total square footage?
My daughter is currently house hunting. Let me assure you that there are neighborhoods in Philly where there are many houses that still have lots of that paneling. Occasionally people have painted it over. That’s a mixed bag.
ahem….I take it this might not be the place to admit that in 1996 I bought a 25 year old house solely because it still had EVERY room on both floors done with its original fake paneling? and when I sold it in 2003 it was still the same….cause I really, really liked it.
signed
yes I have no taste 🙂
There is an old farmhouse near me that is about 150 years old. It was given the classic remodel job back around 1966. It is now an antique store. I go there every once in a while not because they have great stuff but because the paneling and green wall to wall carpet and colonial kitchen decor take me back 50 years every time I go in there. It’s just like going over to someone’s house in 1970 who has acquired alot of stuff.
I’m a huge fan of wood paneling too. I just recently moved into a 1950 house that had (real) wood-paneled walls throughout the entire lower floor. The previous owner apparently grabbed the old cabinets whenever neighbors remodelled their kitchens and stuck those all over the lower floor as well. I didn’t want the old cabinets so I took some pictures and posted free cabinets on Craigslist so someone else would do the work of getting rid of them. Nobody wanted the cabinets, but three people responded to ask “how about that paneling in the background, any chance you’re giving that away too”? I actually did have to give most of it away since we were moving walls around to make better use of the space, and it would have been too difficult to rearrange the paneling to fit the new rooms. I’m glad my paneling lives on in another home though. (and in mine as well in one room we didn’t change).
I grew up in a 1964 house with a wood-paneled rec room (no longer solid wood like my current house, but at least the veneer was real wood rather than the imitation stuff that took over in the ’70s). This made me appreciate the practicality of wood paneling – that room served as a soccer arena when I was a kid, and 40 years and no maintenance later it still looked like new despite having footballs bounced off it hundreds of times. Try that with painted drywall….
Hmmm. I’m not so much down with the DI-NOC experience. Wood paneling? That is a somewhat different story. Our house, which we bought in 2000, has one room that has walls of wood paneling. The odds are good that the wood is original; the house was built in 1971. We have left that intact. Neither of us goes for change for the sake of change. However, we did take up the carpeting in the living room, dining room, and hallways to put down engineered hardwood floors, because we’re not great fans of carpeting except in bedrooms (warmer on the feet). What did we find under the carpet? Well, we found a vast area of concrete slab in the living room, avocado patterned sheet vinyl in the dining area, and orange patterned sheet vinyl in a hallway area. Seems perfect for a 1971 house! Glad we don’t have to look at it now.
My mother’s conservative/traditional taste in decorating meant that our circa 1927 “craftsman” style house had painted walls and original woodwork, So I (unfortunately?) missed out on the “Plastic Paneling” school of architecture (at least at home.) OTOH, I’m fine with the stuff on station wagons! Maybe it’s nostalgia, But a ’50s-’70s wagon without it just looks to much like the ubiquitous “white van” from the cable TV company. And the big Mercs headlight covers are so ’70s, it’s perfect!
Count me as a fan of the DiNoc Saurs like this old Mercury wagon.
I sometimes wax nostalgic for our old ’86 Chevy Celebrity wagon. White with DiNoc and red velour interior. Iron Duke, of course! Purchased for $1,500 in 1995, that car was a real trouper. Rust finally killed it, somewhere around 2004. The engine and transmission were still going strong.
Oooh, now I think this is a pretty wagon. DiNoc has held up quite nicely. But I would like it in a color other than white. Maybe a very light blue or yellow.
As for the interior panelling, some of my family members own a small law firm in the suburbs (my first job out of law school was there). Senior partner bought the building around 1965, and outfitted it for use by his firm and an accountant’s office downstairs. Naturally, he did so with all the “modern” elements of the professional look c. 1965–the panelling and built-in bookshelves, the deep shag carpet, and the glass blocks in the walls.
They’ve never redecorated since, and while I don’t love the look in any other context, in its somewhat worn state after 50 years of use, coupled with all of the family pictures and artifacts that have ended up there since then, it has a certain vintage charm that makes it classier than the “I designed this place with the assistance of an image consultant and a Ramada hotel furniture liquidation sale” offices of so many other attorneys.
I just like how Mercury was able to keep the Coke bottle styling to a minimum on this wagon. Wagons look best when they use as many straight lines as possible, IMO. See also: 74-78 Chrysler Town & Country.
I was just thinking the other day, “What would my Volvo 740 look like with some wood?”
Here is what I came up with. I kind of like it.
It would be fun to “restore” one of these with the whole car being DiNoc except for where the original stuff would have been.
I have two wagons, 86 LeSabre Estate and 92 Caprice…love em. Big comfortable fullsize cars with all the space in the world in the back when necessary. But the wood graining (which mine don’t have ) always seemed funny to me. Stop making wagons out of wood, cause metal bodies work better, then add fake wood which nobody thinks is real. Why not a phony hand crank sticking out the grille? Those were there before the starter was invented…
Fake. Padded. Headlight. Covers….
This car officially wins the ’70s
Love it
I drove one of these all over LA as a “delivery truck” for a wine distributor in the 1980s. Packed full of cases, it was tail-down, nose-high hopeless. But empty, with air shocks pumped solid, it’d do a block-long pegleg burnout, provided you could find a patch of water or oil to get started in. It consumed about a quart of oil with every other (frequent) fill-up.
I’m very much anti-paneling in houses (probably because I was born after the trend died down, so it’s always looked old and out of style to me) but for some strange reason I like it on wagons. This Colony Park is a fine example, fake padded light covers and all.
Maybe it’s because we never had a wagon when I was a kid (only child) but I always kind of wanted one. A classmate’s mom had an Electra Estate Wagon, probably an ’86 or ’87, in a dark gray with dinoc, alloy wheels, and tan leather (or at least rather convincing leatherette/vinyl). I was quite jealous of that one!
My father’s Dodge Royal Monaco wagon had trim around the Di-Noc, that was Di-Noc. I remember him lovingly applying oil to it to prevent cracking. Within a few years, the wagon was rusting out, but the Di-Noc still looked new!
Im still not a fan of plastiwood siding on a car and somebody found and posted a pic of a Hillmam Superminx estate with plywood sides attached, still not a fan.
Who else remembers the “wood” sided Mercury Monterey convertibles from 1967-68?
Our house was built in 1971. One of the bedrooms was designed also to be a den, with a wall of built-in bookshelves. The room is paneled. At least it was done with real wood, and probably as the house was built. These days, besides having my music file cabinet and far, far too many LPs, the room has become a place where things go to be (maybe) filed and eventually die. The prospect of cleaning the junk and dead paper out taunts me.
I’ve read that DiNoc was and is used on clay models in car design studios to give them the appearance of painted sheet metal.
Di-Noc was great at covering parking lot dings and dents.
Never a fan of the Brontosaurus class cars in general, or wagons, but maybe they did have something going for them, the ability to carry a 4X8 sheet of plywood, paneling etc. With the 4 door pickups that are so popular today, damn few pickups can carry a 4X8 sheet of stuff.
I’d never heard of the term Di-Noc before, but I probably have a roll of it. I acquired it when a cousin of mine who did real and fake auto wood restoration passed away. I was temped to put some on a BMW E28 I had for a decade and had become bored with, at the bottom of it’s value. I thought a woodie, even fake woodie, BMW would be cool. But I just sold it instead. I did put a small piece as a test on top of the recycling barrel. It’s faded slightly, but hasn’t broken down. Face up, full sun and rain for 13 years. How come the stuff on car exteriors didn’t hold up this well?
For some reason I always thought Ford and Mercury did the best with their 1960’s and 1970’s Di-Noc, especially on a white, nicely chromed vehicle like a Country Squire or Colony Park, trimmed in light or medium brown brocade seats. The coolest moms picked up or delivered their kids in these things (aka “Stacy’s Mom Has Got It Going On”). The cars always seemed to smell better too – if Stacy’s mom smoked, she didn’t do it in the car. And just then the medium blue baby-mooned Dodge Coronet wagon with the sticky and stinking vinyl seats pulled up and the fantasy was over….
“Mom! That weird old car is looking at me!”
Are those headlight covers supposed to be alligator skin? The hits just keep on comin’!
Dad did up the basement in fake wood panelling in the early ’70s. I added carpet squares in a yellow, orange and black Persian pattern that curled up within months on the concrete. Love that glorious Football Watching Guys disaster. I can just see that as a tableau vivant– the stage curtains pulling away to reveal those guys trying hard to maintain their animated poses. It’s a minimalist version of an ad agency He-man Woman Hater’s Club: “I found a bowling trophy we can put on the TV. Turn the mustard bottle sideways, Jack — this isn’t a Gulden’s ad we’re shooting…”
Those shots of the 70s house is like the one my folks bought in 1979, right down to the pattern on the floor covering.
I think those guys are laughing at how small his ‘brand new color TV’ is. Probably an ad about how you can buy a bigger/better one for the same cost. Any self-respecting family had one of those ginormous 500 pound consoles that they bought at Sears or Montgomery Wards with a 19″ TV screen and a record player / 8 track sound system under the hinged wood top.
I had a 1975 Mercury Marquis Colony Park wagon and I loves it! My friends all made fun of it because of the woodgrain paneled sides. But it was the go to car when we all wanted to go places together. It was a white with high quality vinyl interior. It had every available option including ATC. The system, and the headlight doors were powered by engine vacuum, it worked well and had a smooth slow action, very cool. My friends called the headlight doors padded upholstered looking doors. The ATC system made hissing and weeding sounds as it automatically adjusted the temperature and 8 fan speeds. When I attempted to replace the woodgrain panels, I learned way more than I ever imagined. Mercury changed the color of the woodgrain panels every year. The Colony Park woodgrain did not have the black lines on it like the Squires had. For the woodgrain to blend with the color of the car, there were clear areas in the grain to allow the color of the car to blend with the paint, who knew, and the chrome trim went with the upscale styling of Mercury over Ford. The wagon required 9 panels of the DiNoc that were packaged in cardboard rolls. I cleared the entire country of the 75 Colony Park panels. It took about 3 months to find them all, but when I did, the car looked brand new. The mighty Ford 460 was a perfect fit to the full-size Mercury wagons. And yes I could lay several sheets of 4×8 panels in the car with the back seat down, I was impressed. The Colony Park was the Lincoln station wagon that Lincoln never offered. It was elegant and stylish like a Lincoln and shared the same high quality interior materials with Lincoln, including the thick shagg brown carpeting. I kept the engine in top operating condition at all times. That 460 would power my wagon at 75, 80 on highways and could climb the steep grades of the High Sierras with power to spare, although it would sometimes lose vacuum to power the accessories in the higher altitude of the Sierras, but I was told because it was a California car it could have been down jetted in the carburetor and that would fix the vacuum loss at high elevations. I never did that because I thought it would have hurt engine performance and I wasn’t willing to that because I was very impressed with the power the 460 provided. I would consistently get 10 mpg no matter the driving conditions, and for a big car with a big engine I thought that the 10 mph was acceptable after all that was a big American luxury car and those cars were about class, not gas. I hated to see the wagons go. I know I’m not the only one that does, the introduction of the SUVs as our new station wagons never really happened. I never bought that for a minute. I would like to see the return of the Big American wagons with today’s technology, and I’ll take mine with the woodgrain paneled sides thank you very much. Yes, if course it looks fake, we all know that. But those big beautiful American Luxury wagons were an American family status symbol, and the woodgrain paneled sides are a very important part of the symbol. I say do what you will with the boring SUVs, and bring us back our beloved station wagons, woodgrained or not, but as I said, I’ll take mine with. And one more thing while I’m talking about bringing back cars, I want the Big Three bring back sedans along with the wagons. The Big Three say Americans don’t buy sedans, that’s just not true. Check it out the next time you’re stopped at àn intersection, you will see tons of sedans, and wagons, problem is they’re all foreign. I hate that! We are at an automotive crossroads. While we are dealing with EVs but we now see they’re not the answer. I say stick with the ICE, but with a different combustible fuel, sometimes that’s clean burning fuel. I know that is what we need. To this day my 75 Colony Park still ranks as one of my all-time favorites. I miss it