Image from the web, color adjusted to reflect author’s memory.
It was 1976 and my dad needed to buy a decent used car for my sister Sandy. You see, she’d recently gone through a divorce and landed on our doorstep with two of her three children.
Back in the day, everyone had that guy. You know, usually named Johnnie, who guy owned a service station where you’d buy gas, oil changes, tires, and even find that perfect second-hand car.
So my dad was telling his guy (who was, incidentally, named Johnnie!) how much he wanted to spend on a car for Sandy. True to form, Johnnie had the perfect car: a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham two-door. My dad arranged to have the owner come by the house.
Upon arrival, my dad was surprised to meet a local TV celebrity, Jerry Beck. He hosted the All Night Show, where he’d show movies, regale viewers with fun pokes about the movie, and generally have fun.
Jerry turned out to be a fun man, and he told Dad his history with the LTD. In Columbus, we had a large Ford dealer, Graham Ford, and Mr. Beck was given a car to drive in exchange for advertisement.
Starting in the late 1960s, he always drove a convertible. However, by 1973, Ford had stopped making full-sized convertibles. So Mr. Beck threatened to drop his sponsorship and go to Jack Maxton Chevrolet, where he could get a new Caprice with the drop-top feature.
This wasn’t an excellent option for Graham Ford, as the advertising was beneficial. So they called Ford. They were told that, for 1973, they would be offering a sunroof option but that not everything was ready. Still, the dealer took a chance and had one built to show Mr Beck.
(I can personally vouch that this was a custom build because I used to roll back the interior headliner to lubricate the sunroof mechanism. There, in factory crayon, were the words “1973 T-bird roof”).
A ’73 LTD for sale with the rare sunroof option. Image from the web.
Sunroof action seen up close. Image from the web.
I would learn many years later that this was, in fact, a rare car indeed. Ford made just 629 with the sunroof option. It was a very nice car that I was supposed to get someday. But then, my sister Sandy happened, and it was all downhill!!
Sandy treated cars like a pair of socks—use them with little care, throw them away, and start over. In just three short years, she managed to crash the LTD twice, make the 400 sound more like a spoon in a disposal, never wash the car, and even drove it at highway speeds in second gear until it overheated the transmission. That made it smell kind of like a ruined gourmet meal!
I recall one incident –and believe me there are many more– was the day she came up to my room at 4:30 in the afternoon. She asked me if I could help her with her driver’s door because “It wouldn’t latch…”
Thinking it was a simple situation, I grabbed my can of WD-40 and headed out to the driveway with her. She had been T-boned and the door was pushed in so far that it was touching the side of the driver seat. Stunned, I asked her what had happened. True to form the first words were “Don’t tell dad!” Then she admitted that she was lighting a cigarette, not focused on her driving, and pulled right out in front of somebody who was only a few feet from her.
With the help of the seat belt, I got the door tied shut until she could get it to the dealer for repair. She then asked Dad nicely if she could borrow one of his cars and he loaned her his 1976 Cadillac.
At the office that day, Sandy came back from lunch and told my dad, “There is something wrong with the turn signals…” Dad went out to find she’d broken the signal lever off
Heavily angered, Dad told her to find out how much longer the work on the LTD would take. Sadly, the dealer responded, “…another two weeks”. Dad then told Sandy to instead drive his 1967 Ford Country Squire, which I had written about here.
Our ’67 Country Squire. Family photo.
That was the wrong choice. She was driving me home from babysitting one night –maybe on the second day she had this car– and promptly hit the ice and slid into the back end of a Ford pickup. She then backed up and continued driving!
At the traffic light, there was a vast and furious man banging on her window, yelling: “You just hit my truck, and you’re going to pay for the damages!”
She calmly told him that she was only a few blocks from dropping me off and that she’d be right back. He followed her. Upon their arrival, that was Dad with rockets ignited!
“The LTD was sold next spring…”
The final straw came when the LTD was only two days from delivery, and Dad sent her on an errand in the Cadillac. You guessed it—she broke the signal lever off a second time!
I heard him say, “Sandy, you will never drive any of my cars again!” By the way, he stood by that!
So there you have it—a local celebrity, a rare car, and you’ve got to meet my sister, Crash!
The LTD was sold the next spring after my dad had Johnny go through it. Yeah, it was too well-worn by then.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1973 Ford LTD – It’s Not Easy Being Green
Curbside Classic: 1973 Ford LTD – Bring On The Bloat!
Curbside Classic: 1973 Ford LTD Brougham – Slathered In Icing
Vintage Review: 1973 Ford – Paul’s Favorite Wins The Award It So Richly Deserves
What a car! What a sister! YIKES! Yes, you would have babied that special LTD. Today it would be a treasure at classic car shows let alone how you could show off. Excellent essay! Tom
1973 was the first year I went to an auto show and came home with a reasonably complete collection of literature from every brand on display. I still remember that page in the 1973 Ford brochure showing the new LTD with its open sunroof. This now reminds me that all these years later, I have never seen one in real life.
I hate it when someone gets a nice older car and grinds it to dust within a year or two.
Ah, the days of beautiful, thick slick paper literature showing off the cars in all the many colors offered. I miss those days.
Now? You go online and look at 10 different shades of grayish silver covering SUV’s and the pictures are so dark you can barely see any detail. Not that there is any real detail to look at.
Here I thought my wife’s
“DRIVING” was bad!! She has wrecked/damaged 5 cars, but ONLY 1 was totaled…..only. :
🙁 Sadly I don’t have any photos of her various damaged vehicles. DFO
Some people are just really hard on things as well as themselves. My younger son wiped out a number of cars before he finally wiped out himself. It can be hard to accept that someone just has a (self)destructive streak. At least cars can be fixed or replaced; people can’t.
I’ve got a younger son like that – wrecked innumerable cars through sheer foolishness and an inability to consider the consequences of that folly. I was at my wit’s end , sure that it would end in tears.
Fortunately after a particularly bad crash they took his license away for a few years and threatened him with jail. That seems to have worked and he drives like an old lady these days.
I have a relative who has wiped out more cars than I can remember and it is never his fault. And, technically, it usually isn’t. He just does not drive defensively. Where most people I know are aware of the traffic around them and prepared to jam on the brakes or drive away from a potential collision, if someone runs a light or a stop sign or drifts into an incorrect lane, he is oblivious to those kinds of things and never prepared for them.
Dear Paul, my heart goes out to you and your family for the loss of your Son. I’ve wanted to reach out, but didn’t know when or where would be appropriate. Another great thing about CC is that many of the writers including the author of this article bring a very personal touch to the articles thus almost creating an extended family. We are here for each other. Best wishes.. John
Thank you, John.
While my ‘73 LTD (my first car) was not as special, just a 2-door hardtop, no Brougham, I kept it really nice when my parents gave it to me upon graduation from high school in 1978.
Using it as my daily driver, I washed and waxed it frequently and it always looked new.
Upon deciding to get a more fuel efficient car in September of 1979, I went with a Fairmont Futura… a ‘79 when the ‘80 models were just coming into inventory. Seeing that I was upset about trading the LTD in on it (I loved that car), my Dad ponied up what the dealer was going to give me for it, and kept the car in the family.
Enter my own sister. Much like your sister, she treats cars very poorly. Accidents, lack of maintenance, never washing them (in her defense on that last point, she lives on a farm), and other neglectful things. She needed a car in 1980 or ‘81, and my Dad gave her the LTD. I think its condition at the end of her tenure was worse on me emotionally than had I simply let it go in 1979.
As to the sunroof, thanks for the stats on how few of them were built. Like JPC said above, I too have never seen one in real life. The only ‘73 LTD I’ve ever seen with a sunroof was the one in the brochure picture you’ve posted here, until you shared the lede photo. I really thought that white one was the only one that Ford ever built!
I have found that just as some people are naturally good at devices (it seems like that can apply to mechanical things and/or digital things like computers and phones) there are other people who are the polar opposite. These are the folks who inevitably do things like break off the turn signal stalk, routinely break zippers, drag heavy items across finished wood floors gouging them irreparably, always have a broken phone or computer screen, etc.. I suppose it varies on a case by case basis, but I’m not sure that this kind of lack of sensitivity to the physical universe of things is any more intentional than the opposite “natural” ability to understand how stuff works and to tinker with and fix devices. It takes all kinds.
Still, it’s always painful to me to encounter someone who routinely trashes stuff that I know really didn’t “need” to be destroyed, and its easy to believe that someone with your sister’s inclinations really could have tried a bit harder to care about the destruction (automotive at least) that she left in her wake.
If I’d been your dad, I think I’d have stopped letting her drive my cars well before he did.
A very enjoyable story Chip.
What a fun/interesting and yet sad story to read all at the same time. I had to laugh at the part where you said she overheated the trans by driving in a low gear. Where I grew up on a farm in the mid-west, our veterinarian (they came to the farm for horses and cows and other large animals) always drove Chevy trucks with the vet box in the back. When GM started offering diesels, he purchased one for the better MPG and soon after he had a loaner truck as his was out with a trans issue. Weeks later he was at the farm with his truck back in service and told us that the issue was that he left it in low gear and drove from one town to the next (12 miles) in low! So he fried the trans. A few days later my dad and I were outside and we heard something sounding like a diesel wound up to high RPM’s only to then see our vet drive past the farm in low gear at 55 mph. Dad laughed and said that Doc would be needing a new trans again soon.
Sad that your sister trashed the cars so badly. Sounds a lot like my ex-wife. Sadly, I think our daughter will be the same way. Hopefully, our son will get my ways in that department. But the thing that hit me the most? How in the world did she break off the blinker lever twice in a 1976 Cadillac? If I recall from my parents 1975, they were made more solid than the plastic ones they went to in the 80’s.
That lead image is rather attractive with something of a poor-man’s Lincoln Mark III vibe.
Depending on one’s taste, some might say it’s even better than the Mark IV sans the affected C-pillar opera windows, hidden headlights, and fake Continental trunk hump.
We share a sister. I thought she was named Trish, though-
Whenever I see an LTD Coupe of this vintage I always think of TV private detective Barnaby Jones.
A good story, too bad about that sweet Ford .
My ex wife leaned to drive on the ’63 Nova four door I bought from the original owner, she repeatedly dragged the sides and corners against bollards, that poor thing went from cream puff to worthless trash in a year or two, she never accepted any responsibility for that or anything else she trashed .
-Nate