(First posted 8/28/2014. This was probably my favorite CC For sale I found in Eugene) Let’s celebrate Two-Door Sedan Day with this 1965 Ford Custom two-door (“Tudor” in old-time Ford-speak). It’s the perfect bookend to the ground-breaking 1965 Ford LTD too; not only is it the very lowest man in the full-sized Ford totem pole, but it’s exactly the kind of American car that the LTD soon abolished from the (non-fleet) market. It was the victim of the perpetual ratcheting up of the name hierarchy, ironic since the Custom itself was once at the top of the pecking order. That’s ok; even the LTD would eventually fall by the wayside, superseded by something more grandiose. But it wasn’t just the name alone; the whole full-sized two-door sedan era was drawing to a close.
The first Ford Custom appeared in 1949, with the all new models that year. Ford had already depreciated the old regular Ford, Deluxe and Super Deluxe hierarchy, and decided to start with a clean slate: Standard and Custom. Of course, that wouldn’t last, as it never does.
By 1952, the Crestline Series pushed the Custom back into second place. That was a short run at the top. 1954’s Fairlane bucked the Crestline out altogether. And by 1957, eight years after its arrival at the top, the Custom now slid into low-man status, as the Fairlane 500 pushed everyone down, the Mainline right off the edge.
With the Galaxie’s arrival in 1959, the plain Custom was now the next victim, being replaced by the ever-so slightly more prestigious Custom 300. In 1962, things get odder yet. With the arrival of the new mid-sized Fairlane, Ford kills the strippers, and the lowliest big Ford is a Galaxie sedan. Not exactly luxurious, but still with carpets on the floor unlike the rubber-matted Custom.
That lasted all of one year, and in 1963 a “300” appears for those just needing to have those black rubber floors. By 1964, order is restored, sort of, as the Custom and the new Custom 500 settle into the new pecking order that would now actually last longer than usual.
1972 would mark the last year for the un-numbered Custom, and the last Custom 500 would be found on the 1977 models. It was all LTD, all the time, until that uppity Crown Victoria showed up in 1980. Of course, that CV wasn’t a new name, having graced some top-line hardtops in the mid-fifties. And by 1991, the LTD too was tossed overboard by the CV. For some reason, that never sat well with me; the LTD name should have stayed right to the bitter end.
Back to this Custom, the cheapest big Ford that year. It listed for $2313 ($16,862 in 2013 dollars); the elusive stripper $9,999 Nissan Versa of its time. Just to put the Ford hierarchy in perspective, here are the prices of the four-doors up the whole line: Custom: $2366; Custom 500: $2518; Galaxie 500: $2678; LTD: $3313. The LTD did have a standard 289 V8 and automatic; the rest all started with the 240 (yea!!) six and three-speed manual. Power steering and brakes, automatic, and god forbid A/C and electric windows were all optional. So just who bought a Custom two-door anyway?
The four-door was obviously bought by Police and taxi fleets and such, which explains why it outsold the Tudor two-door two-to-one. Misers, one assumes. My Dad made a tradition of such choices, although never anything as large as a full-sized car, God forbid, despite having four children.
I remember climbing into the back of full-sized two-doors like this; kinda’ odd really, to then suddenly find yourself in such a roomy rear seat. So it was in the olden days.
Now since we’re prattling away on the Custom’s history, how about the Ford two-door sedans? 1969 was the last year for the full-size two-door sedans. Since the 1970 Fords were only slightly refreshed using the same body, the Custom Two Door must have died in 1969 of natural causes: not enough interest. These just screamed “flintskin” or “fleet”. And even the fleets were done with them. If memory serves my right, Chevy and Plymouth pulled the plug that same year too. The end of the Tudor era coincided with the beginning of the Brougham Epoch.
I like this particular Custom a lot, despite being the kind of car I loathed as a kid. Needs dog dish hubcaps, though. Its almost endless tail has a bit of rakish uptilt, and sports a Hurst floor-shift conversion for the three-speed manual that backs the 289 (4.7 L) V8. Simple, plain, rugged, easy to fix, no problem finding upholstery for that. It’s the sedan counterpart to my ’66 F-100. I’ll bet it has manual steering and brakes. Even the brake drums are the same; and in stock at the parts store too. How many fifty year-old cars can say that? Someone will end up with a keeper (don’t call though; that was a while back; it’s long gone).
Is the 65 ford customs till there
In the early 90s I bought a partially-restored ’61 Rambler Classic “Deluxe” which = miser special. 196ci six, three-speed column shift, no overdrive, no options at all save a heater. It was a beast to drive but once on the highway it’d cruise at 70 all day, once you got there. The body was pristine and rust-free, but the interior was a mess and the engine needed a rebuild; I think that car contributed significantly to the Los Angeles-area smog problem for a few years from severely-worn rings. I sold it to a guy who drove out from South Carolina and trailered it back to swap everything off his rusted-out version.
I have owned or driven ’59, ’61, ’62, 3 -’63’s Ramblers & 2-’65 Rambler Ambassadors without power steering and had absolutely no problem driving them. I learned to drive on a ’63 Rambler V8, Auto, R&H and nothing else. If nothing else the 6 cyl cars were a bit easier to steer, being lighter in the front. Took my drivers license exam in ’66 with the ’63 V8 and breezed through it even having to parallel park. Never owned a car with PS or PB’s until the late 80’s, the less there is the less there is to go wrong and I have never paid over $1500.00 for a car to this day. It is rather hard or next to impossible today to find the stripper like cars I drove for years, but I try to find the ones with the fewest options as possible.
My high school/college friend still has the 1966 four door Penalty box version of this article’s car. 240 six, three-on-the-tree, manual steering & brakes, cloth & vinyl bench seat, no floor carpeting, Wimbledon white exterior and turquoise interior.
The only options on the car: heater, AM push button radio, dealer add on “knee knocker”, round vents A/C unit.
He loves it, I struggle to keep my opinion of it to myself, the few times I drove it.
Man,1000USD!That Is Practically For Free.Down Here That Is What We Pay For A New Vespa150 cc.You Guys Are So Lucky.God Bless America.
My first thought on looking at this car today is how amazing it is that those wheelcovers are still on it. Those really flat 65 wheelcovers (coupled with the cars’s slightly flexy wheels) got thrown into ditches quite regularly back when.
I always wondered why those had a circular tail light in the same housing that the more upscale models had, but which fit the housing with a different shape, a more diamond-like shape.
No back-up lights. It’s hard to imagine a day when you could get a car so stripped it didn’t have a heater or back-up lights. In fact, I wonder if they were even optional and, if so, did you get the normal Galaxie taillights or were there some sort of special, Custom taillights that included back-up lights.
Perhaps this is of some help: A buyer of a 1964 Ford Falcon Standard Series 2-door sedan could buy optional back-up lights for the car. I’ve seen pictures of ’64 Falcons w/out the back-up lights, but I have them on mine.
There was no cheaper model that I’ve seen for the 1964 Ford model year than a 2-door Standard Series Falcon and b/up lights were available for it so I’d figure all Ford cars from the 1965 model year had back-up lights as an option.
A grand??? Oh baby… I would have been all OVER that Custom for a measly grand!!!
In ’65-’66, you could get the same 2-door sedan roofline as the Ford Custom on a Mercury Monterey.
For a stripper, that Mercury doesn’t look half bad. With the more horizontal lines and complex sheetmetal stampings, the styling comes off better integrated with the 2-door sedan roof than the Ford. Of course, I doubt you could get a Monterey anywhere near as cheap as a Custom.
A stripper meant something completely different until about 1990 than it does today. Stripper cars were real hair shirt penalty boxes with crank windows, freezing in winter searing hot in summer cheap vinyl upholstery, no radio, no a/c, tinny cars with all semblance of comfort removed. Today in 2017 you can buy a base model economy car which has more features than a luxury car from 1987 and is in some cases roomier and more powerful. The quality of the materials isn’t as good as it was 30 years ago, but a stripper isn’t a bargain basement hell like it used to be. Manufacturers figured out that a) it was cheaper to equip all their cars about the same, with at least a minimum level of equipment and whatever profitability was gained by advertising a hair shirt model at a low price and then making the hair shirt models so awful that most people would buy a slightly optioned model at a considerably higher price wasn’t worth it and b) no one was going to buy a vinyl seated, crank windowed, no radio/no A/C compact in the face of the Korean compacts which were fairly decently equipped for less money. Since now the luxury features of 20 years ago have migrated downwards, I am happy with a stripper car although I would have fled from one 20 years ago. It always felt like a false economy to me to save a few hundred, or a few thousand bucks, when you noticed every dollar that was taken out of the car in comfort and convenience. A few options made the car drastically more comfortable in those days.
Some of the gadgets and toys on a contemporary car, like power doors and liftgates on a minivan, have a bad reputation for breaking expensively but most of it seems pretty well engineered nowadays.
Even for a stripper, the two tone blue interior is quite attractive especially compared with the cheap plastics that would follow in the 1970’s and today’s black and gray plastic caves. I don’t much care for the proportions of the two door v. the four door, the two door seems to have a mismatch between the size of the greenhouse and the body. Chrysler seemed the worst at tiny greenhouse- enormous car ratios.
“Since now the luxury features of 20 years ago have migrated downwards…..”
I like to call it “Trickle Down Ergonomics”.
My 2016 Honda Civic for example (although not a stripper, but more of a mid-range EX-T) has push button start (personally, my first car so equipped).
I seem to recall Infinity making a big deal out of that feature in their top of the line Q-45 in about 1996 or so with their TV advertising.
Funny you should mention 1990 as a turning point; I read in an article how auto loan interest rates were lowered sharply during 1987, before which it made a lot more sense to buy (finance) as cheap a car as you could get away with and buy your upgrades for cash over the counter. So you had those ’80s strippers you described getting decked out in short order with aftermarket stereo, fluffy faux-sheepskin seat covers, pop-up sunroofs and the like. Once the factory tires wore out, why not get a set of aftermarket alloys for the new summer tires and keep the stock nekkid steelies for the snows? Even aftermarket AC stuck around a long time although it was never a big thing up here. Every town had at least one soup-to-nuts auto accessory store.
Since then, as standard equipment levels have risen, auto loans extended with rock-bottom interest rates, and old standards like DIN/double DIN radios have been moved away from, the accessory business has declined but the ones that are still in business will often still do that stuff even though their bread and butter is now in outfitting and wrapping commercial fleets.
The Fairlane’s debut was for the 1955 model, not the 1954 model.
Also, the 1955-1956 Crown Victoria was not a hardtop, but rather a pillared sedan/coupe with frameless doors.
It’s interesting how the full sized two door post disappeared at the end of the 1960s only to reappear in the mid 1970s. In the 1960s, high end coupes were hardtops while low end coupes were post sedans but in the mid 1970s and later even the high end coupes had B pillars (and fixed rear side windows). The B pillars were added in anticipation of federal rollover standards that never came to fruition. GM four door hardtops lasted a bit longer than two door hardtops.
If I could go back to the 1960s, I would special order two cars: One would be a Custom like this one or a Biscayne with most available options and a big engine. Power seats, brakes, windows, steering, A/C…virtually every option available with the exception of an automatic transmission. The other car would be an LTD or Caprice with very few options. While the V8 was standard on those cars, in those days one could order a car pretty much the way they wanted it within reason, and I’m sure the right dealer could hook me up with a six cylinder/3 on the tree LTD or Caprice. In 50 years when the cars were classics and ready to be restored, the owner would think “what kind of a nutjob would order a car this way?”
Power windows and seats were not offered on Custom & 500 series until mid-70s.
V8 & auto were standard on LTD from 1965-67, then the auto went away in favor of 3-on-the-tree to quote a lower base price. No six cylinder LTDs until the 1983 Fox body.
The Ford Mainline was replaced by the custom 300 in ’57. There was no “custom” in “57, 58′ or 59′. These custom 300s came with full carpeting, not rubber mats. If your going to write about automotive history get it straight….
Of all the first gen models, this one is probably your best buy. The XK Falcon was a bit of a disaster with front-end durability issues, but they had been effectively eliminated by the time this model arrived. To change the negative perceptions within the Australian market, Ford conducted a 70,000 mile endurance test at the company’s You Yangs circuit with five examples of these model.
I have a 1965 Custom . It’s a nice car, it’s in the Ford Museum . Its the gold colored one. It’s in there because it’s a winner of its class. It has a 352 in it. It’s a real fast car. The only problem I had with it , is that you need to own a gas station to keep it going. I’m told it worth a lot of money. I don’t have a way to upload pictures right now. If you want to see it it’s at the Ford Museum in Dearborn MI. I’m letting Louie Ford borrow it for a while. I don’t know what the class is called but it’s show room floor original. Like I said before it’s fast ! ! !
My father bought it in 1965 brand new , I was 16 at the time so I learned to drive in it .
Then he gave it to me in 1970. I raced it all over town.This was in
Daly City, Ca.
Back when things like Customs, Biscaynes, and Fury I’s were available, and options could be ordered on an a la carte basis, Consumer Reports used to advise full sized car buyers to start with the base model and add only the options they really needed, to get the car with the lowest price and also potentially the best gas mileage since it was lighter than an LTD or Caprice.
You have to smile looking at those circular tail lights in the rectangular housings. With the additional surrounding trim and relatively low production volumes I doubt if Ford saved any money on them, but they probably pushed a lot of buyers up a notch to the 500.
Just a slight additional measure of ‘shame’ artfully applied…marketing in action. :-).
I always wondered what was up with those circular taillights. Left over in the parts bin from earlier vintages I suppose.
The 500 also had round lights. FWIW it’s apparent by this early pre-production factory photo that they briefly considered carrying the theme over to 1966.
I had to look twice, the lower crease on the doors looked like some one had scrapped the side of the car.
I’ll pass on the strippers. (car wise)
I was fifteen and a half at the time, so I had my learners permit . My DAD wasn’t rich and he traded in a 1957 Custom on it . But I’ll tell ya , that thing just guzzled gas . He was glad to get rid of it, he gave it to me in 1972. It went like stink ! ! ! He got a brand new Maverick .
Paul
Too bad that the last two digits of the regional code of the tel # on the window are not inverted
Those 1965-1970 big Fords were really nice cars!