I know the Panther love runs deep around here. So, for all you connoisseurs of the big Fords, may I present this elusive beast.
This bone-stock Crown Vic coupe has been puttering around town for the past few months. I’ve seen it in traffic a few times, but this was my first chance to get a picture – just as the camera battery died.
Instead of the grandmother-or-grandfatherly type I was expecting, I was slightly surprised to see a couple in their thirties drive away in it a few minutes later.
I would like to see more of this old beasti
Looks completely stock and very clean. I’d have it stashed away for the winter.
I haven’t seen an LTD Crown Vic coupe in ages! There’s a guy in my town who owns a Grand Marquis 2-door of this vintage among several other panthers though. Great find!
Most likely they inherited the grandparents’ car? Appears to have been garaged and cared for – and those were the days of real “bumpers.” Nice to see it is being used and enjoyed.
that’s a nice one, I haven’t seen one of those in years. One of my teachers in elementary school had a lite green metallic LTD coupe, it had single headlights so Im guessing it was an 80 or an 81? I used to daydream in class about jacking it up and putting Cragars and sidepipes on it (it was the early 80s) Nice car! From the taillights Im guessing 84ish.
I love two door Panthers. Even Mark VI’s….although they are not as well liked by some here. It is so clean and original too. My 88 Town Car looks a little tired compared to this beaut.
Absolutely identical to my father’s last new car. He visited Ford dealerships in like a 60 mile area before he found the one he wanted. It was between this one and another in light blue but with cloth seats. He did not like cloth seats and the burgundy one had vinyl so that is the one he chose.
It was a good car that he drove until his death in 1995 and my mother drove it for about a year after that. Only difference I can see is dad’s had wire wheels and this one has the standard wheel discs.
Nice car!
Mr. Bill
Hamlet, NC
A couple in their thirties? I would say they are very smart people and know a good thing when they see it.
Didn’t find these 2-doors to be attractive when they were new but their looks have grown on me.
Nice car and nice color. Those attractive wheelcovers have had probably one of the longest production runs I can think of: about ten years. They were introduced on the full sized 1975 Fords.
Most of these had the black-background center emblem but a few years the emblem had a very pretty blue background and I think one year the background color was a maroonish color.
The earlier version had four wimpy retaining clips and was by far the most common hubcap in my childhood hubcap collection. I amassed around 300 hubcaps by the age of ten, nearly all were obtained honestly (picking them off the side of the road).
Some caps I had two or three of… but I don’t think I wound up with four of the same style. But this style? I think I had eight: that’s pretty bad!
Some time in the early 80’s Ford redesigned the retaining clips making them must less likely to commit suicide.
Really liking this car: color, body style, and I like those wheel covers SO much better than the nearly always seen wires. Looks like the Crown Vic coupe owners were saving big money at Menards 🙂
I saw a pretty nice baby blue four-door at a used car lot last week. I actually spotted it at an Applebee’s last year and briefly spoke with the owner. I guess they got a new car.
“Looks like the Crown Vic coupe owners were saving big money at Menards”
Indeed they were!
I, on the other hand, was there to spend big money (the grand total of $50) on PVC pipe and compressed air fittings, in order to build my dog his Christmas present: a pneumatic dummy launcher. He’s a Labrador retriever, so he’s got lots of energy and loves to fetch – making it the perfect tool for the job.
(It launches sections of dowel or retrieving dummies 300+ feet downfield for him to fetch. The record so far? An aluminum baseball bat, at 95psi, into the wind, with the barrel tilted at about 30° – landed 375′ away. It’s quite the contraption!)
Wow, that sounds entertaining!
It sounds along the lines of the potato guns the guys at the shipyard used to make out of pipe and a source of compressed air, of which there are many around a shipyard.
Oh and for what it’s worth, I’m 33 and bought a Town Car last month.
I think there’s a support group for that 😉
That taillight and trim ran from 1983 – 1987 on the two doors, which was the final year of the two door. This one looks exceptional and a quite desirable color!
It must be a 1983-85–no CHMSL.
Beautiful panther. I would love to have. My first brand new car was a 79 Mercury Marquis Brougham 2 dr. Coupe identical to the one in the brochure except no cornering lights or bumper rubstrips. http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Mercury/1979%20Mercury/1979_Lincoln-Mercury_Brochure/1979%20Lincoln-Mercury-02.html
I bought it in May of 1980 for 1000.00 under invoice, around 6500.00 with all the taxes ect.. I think window sticker was 9100.00. Financed about 4500.00 at 17% interest through Ford credit. Pretty decent rate at the time. Was loaded with dual power seats and a power booster amp. 302 with a 3 speed auto. At 25 years of age I was so proud of that car. Nothing so plush had ever been in the family and I got it for about the same price as an X car. Thing had set about a year and a half on the dealers lot. Battery was dead when I wanted to first test drive it. Car used a quart of oil every 1500 miles until it got about 80000 miles on it and then quit using it at all. At 90000 miles, the timing chain snapped and the funky variable venturia carb. never worked well. Lost intermediate band in transmission at 22000 miles and a complete rebuild at 100000 miles. However, I always loved the way the car drove and considered it pretty sharp at the time. Sold it to my brother in 1987 when I found a 77 Lincoln Town Car.I had to have. He kept it about a year or two when he bought a pickup.
Something was bugging me about those wheel covers. According to the 1983 Crown Vic brochure, 14″ wheels were standard. These wheel covers are 15′ only. The next year up sales lit I have with any detail is 1986, which states 15″ wheels were standard. I don’t know exactly what year this change took place, but I do that in order to get the 15″s prior to this, you had to get the Heavy-Duty Fleet Package, and the 15″s were bundled together with the 351 engine. This package was almost the exclusive province of stripped-down, 4-door, fleet spec “S” versions. How a 2-door came to be equipped like this is puzzling.
I have 14″ on my ’85 C/V with the 351, but I believe the brochure listed 15″ as an option. I think that the subject car might be an ’85 based on the grille.
Could 15-inchers have come with a towing package?
My ’87 sedan had the towing package and traction-loc axle. For what it’s worth, it did come with 15-inchers. But they may have been standard by that year (also the last year of the coupe).
That’s probably the case. Mine has the 14 in/351 with true dual exhaust, but I think that you could get 15″ as an option, and the 302 with single/dual as well. Because it is a Canadian spec car, it wouldn’t surprise me if we had more options/combo’s to chose from in ’85 than US bound cars.
Happy belated Turkey holidays!
Needs turbine wheels and dual exhaust to be perfect. 😉
My first car was an ’87 sedan, and also in town was a youngish blonde driving a blue LTD Coupe just like this one. Never got to meet her but would always check out both her and the car. Sold my sedan in 2004 and haven’t seen her cruising around probably since before that time.
Box Panther coupes have met with a lot of criticism. I can agree that the Town Coupe was not so hot looking with two doors, but I think the Panther coupe better suited the Mercury and the Ford (by quite a big margin over the Merc or Lincoln) looked best of all! It’s easy to see why they stopped producing them, however; they just didn’t have that “personal luxury” look and presence about them at this size that had sold so well the previous decade in their bigger predecessors. Instead they almost seem to ask “why do I only have two doors?”
I always thought the 2-door Panthers looked like a swollen Granada-Monarch.
+1
Very nice wheel covers. I’ve been hunting some decent 15-inch wheels/covers for my Fairlane since 13-inch tires are nearly impossible to find these days.
Speaking to the comment above, I found the early Panther LTDs could look very similar in appearance to the Ford Granada. As in 1979 they were available with a two headlight front clip. Similar in design and look to the Granada front clip. Though the Granada had the parking lights located under the headlights.
The Ontario Provincial Police had many ’79s with this two headlight front end.
(This is not an OPP patrol car pictured.)
A smart couple indeed. I’d bet they picked the thing up for a song. Nobody wants these dinosaurs because they are “hard on gas.” You can buy a lot of gas for what you’d save driving a car like this. If it’s clean and low mileage, a cheap five years is entirely possible.
Have to say that I never particularly cared for this 2-door CV as it appeared as just a little too square or boxy for me. However, I like the color and appreciate it as a very fine example of a car rarely seen in some time. It certainly shows that it has been well cared for.
I bought my moms 85 Vic sedan when she replaced it with a new 93. Like some others, I never warmed to the 2 door version, but I kind of like it now. That body style was a really slow seller.
That is a really pristine car anywhere, but especially in Minnesota!
Saw a four door, same color and probably the same year that was destroyed in the cash for clunkers campaign. It was supposed to be very low mileage and looked perfect, at least on Youtube.
Really sad. Wonder how many other vehicles were lost?
it has always interested me how full size two doors went from highly desired halo cars to extinct in a space of ten years, especially considering the full size car shrank and solved the mid 70s issue of the coupe doors getting quite long and heavy.
I’ve noticed several of my younger acquaintances are driving these older rides in rather good condition. Some passed down through families, inherited from Grandma, or bought for cheap at an estate sale. A previous poster noted the economics of driving these old cars. Get into something like this on the cheap, or as a freebie from family, and the money saved buys a lot of gas, as well as not having a car payment (not to mention cheaper insurance). Not having a car payment makes it easier to get a home loan too. Another plus is that these old cars have plenty of room to haul tons of kid stuff as well as the kids. It’s not just old farts that see the value in these oldies but goodies.
Memory jog. back in high school one girlfriend’s dad had a red coupe just like that.
In the late 80’s I was selling them.
Not sure I’ve ever seen a 2-door Crown Vic before, but now I’m having fantasies of merging one with a station wagon, to create a 2-door wagon…what’s wrong with me? 😉
My dad had some crazy cousins growing up who would buy beater BOF wagons and take the torch and welder out to create shorty two doors. Why? Because they were farm boys with too much time on their hands during an Ohio winter!
What a beautiful car. Best full size 80s car made.
Why, I used to have an ’84 four-door that, aside from wires, looked just like this.