(first posted 5/1/2012) Ah, the Country Squire. What says 1960s to 1970s upper-middle class suburbia better than one of these? Before minivans, before SUVs, and before crossovers, these were the ne plus ultra family hauler for upwardly mobile moms.
The Country Squire had been a Ford staple for many years by the time the 1975 model came along. Introduced in 1949 as a two door steel-roofed wagon with real wood inserts in the doors, quarter panels and tailgate, they were soon a family staple. The 1975 model was a restyled version of the 1973 Ford. ’75s had new front and rear styling, and several new interior options across the board. The Country Squire gained a new grille and hidden headlights, shared with the plush LTD Landau series.
All LTD wagons were powered by a 400 CID V8, backed by a Select Shift Cruise-O-Matic transmission. A 460 V8 was optional. Other standard features included power brakes, power steering and a power tailgate window.
Country Squires added the usual woodgrained vinyl sides and tailgate, framed by light fiberglass woodtone moldings. An extended range fuel tank was optional, adding an extra eight gallons to the already good-sized tank.
These were the biggest Ford wagons would get, with a length of 225.6″, 121″ wheelbase, and 79.9″ width. You did get a lot of space though, with 94.6 cubic feet of cargo volume – more than 100 if you counted the below-deck storage.
An interesting feature was the dual facing rear seats, which turned your Country Squire into an 8-passenger wagon. It was very different from the rear facing seats found on most Detroit wagons of the time, with the exception of the 1971-76 GM B-body wagons, where the third row actually faced forward. Ford’s famous Magic Doorgate made it a lot easier to get in and out of the jump seats, too.
If the standard interior wasn’t to your liking, there were several optional interior choices. The Landau Luxury Group was the best interior you could get, with embroidered split bench seating, shag carpeting and – ooh, an electric clock! It was essentially the same interior found in top-drawer LTD Landau sedans and coupes.
Only slightly less plush was the Squire Brougham option, which featured a split bench seat with fold-down armrests and passenger recliner. It was, as you might have guessed, lifted from the LTD Brougham series. Most Country Squires were loaded, and popular options included the SelectAire air conditioner, Automatic Temperature Control, vinyl roof and a luggage rack with built-in woodgrained wind deflector.
Now, if you didn’t want to flaunt your good fortune, you could get a plain-sided LTD, load it up with options, and the neighbors wouldn’t be the wiser. But then you’d miss out on those cool hidden headlights!
Whether basic or fancy, these wagons were just the thing for hauling the kids to the Grand Canyon or towing your boat up to the lake for the day. If National Lampoon’s Vacation had been done in the ’70s, this would have been Clark Griswold’s ride.
Thanks are in order for PN, who shot this well-traveled Squire a while back.
It has the rare “distressed” Di-Noc® synthetically genuine patina’d option.
The sales tagline was 🎵 “If it’s a-PEELIN’, lets start dealin’.🎵
I think it’s the hidden headlights that put me off this one. The photo of the LTD with the regular headlights looks so much more natural. Hidden lights on a wagon just seem – like — no. Keep them for the T-bird or the Lincoln or Merc. A wagon has to work harder than those, it doesn’t have time to mess with headlight doors.
Ah the unshakable 400 2-BBL of the era (of which I owned several). City traffic or highway cruising, 20 MPH or 80 MPH: The one constant; 10 MPG.
Di-Noc may have had its drawbacks, but you never saw a Squire/Colony Park with rusty normal to heavy dings when protected by Di-Noc. That is unless the car was so old that the Di-Noc itself was cracked or peeled.
A comment my cars sometimes received was “so new, it’s still in the shipping crate”.
If the memory of station wagons live for a thousand years, Di-Noc will be the first thing remembered.
I see Di-Noc is often a built-in punch line here, but perhaps it’s time for a Di-Noc CC essay. Founded in Cleveland in the 1920s, it produced all kinds of photographic film/plate items for photographers, printers, engravers, industry, military, and so on. Forty-plus years before today’s Squire was assembled, Di-Noc was already doing the wood-like veneers for Detroit’s dashboards:
There was a heavy duty camper towing package- 460 V8, C6 automatic with extra cooling, Posi rear, HD suspension components, power steering cooler, and four wheel disc brakes. It would out pull an F-150 and was a real terror stoplight to stoplight.
In some sort of strange variation on classic CC effect, a couple of months ago my friend Geoff sent me memories of the family cars of his childhood. And then what should be featured on CC only weeks later, but a ’75 Ford wagon! Strictly speaking, Geoff’s parents’ car was a ’75 Ford Custom 500 “Country Sedan” rather than a “Country Squire”, but hey, it’s still a full-sized Ford wagon of the same vintage, right? Anyway, here are Geoff’s memories of this particular car:
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1975 Ford Custom 500 Country Sedan
Pale yellow exterior
Dark green vinyl interior
V6 engine (I think)*
Thin whitewall tires
Since the purchase of the Country Squire in ’64, two more additions to the family had arrived by the mid-’70s and there had been no departures. As we got older, my two older siblings had each acquired vehicles so situations where we were all in the same vehicle at the same time were infrequent. Still, when it came time to get a new car, a station wagon was still the only option and Father remained resolutely a Ford man. The Squire had been around for over half my life and I confess a degree of melancholy to see its elegant taillights for the last time.
Father was proud of his new acquisition in the late spring or early summer of 1975. He was anxious for an opportunity to share his enthusiasm with his now-much-less- enthusiastic adolescent, teenage, and young adult progeny. Using a trip to Frosty’s on Corydon at Niagara for ice cream cones as bait, he wrangled mom and about six or seven of us for a drive in the new wheels. What could go wrong?
Dad found a parking spot, ignored all requests for the more exotic menu items on offer, and went into the shop for 7 or 8 vanilla soft ice cream cones. I recall there being wasps swarming around a nearby garbage bin, so car windows had been rolled up while we waited. Father emerged carefully transporting two sort of flimsy circular cone trays containing the order. He approached the front passenger-door window, which my mother had partially opened, to pass through the first tray of cones. As he did so, the bottom of the leading cone made contact with the top of the partially lowered window.
As my mother attempted to deal with the combined cone and ice cream debris that was landing in her lap, Father stood transfixed as he watched molten ice cream run down the inside of the window, traverse the “fuzzy caterpillar” gasket and proceed down the inner door cavity. Undoubtedly, memories of a previous ruinous, dairy-related incident harassed his cranial tranquility. The situation released a performance-enhancing-drug-like response. With disappearing lips and a clenched jaw, my mild-mannered father assumed the persona of a ‘roid-altered Soviet discus medalist and hurled the trays with the remaining ice cream cones skyward “frisbee style”. They were last seen heading in a north-easterly direction, spraying their centrifugally-disintegrating contents to the amazement of anyone they might have encountered on re-entry.
The trip home was discussion-free as we admired the quiet purr of the engine; the smooth-riding, vibration-free suspension; and richly-appointed vinyl upholstery of the new family car. Us kids also silently pondered our new respect for Father’s previously-hidden athletic prowess.
The following summer I took my last road trip as part of the family in this vehicle on a tour of North and South Dakota and Minnesota. I confess that an ulterior motive was to go LP shopping in as many record stores and delete bins as I could find. I remember very vividly our family’s discovery of the Sturgis South Dakota Harley Davidson Rally. As we traveled from Rapid City to Sioux Falls we had an endless escort of leather-clad, tattooed bikers and their -ahem – female companions on their deafening, intimidating, chrome-crusted rides. In general, they bore no resemblance to attendees of the Gospel Chapel Easter Conference, and Mother and Father spent most of the time averting their gaze in the restaurants, motels, and stores where we inevitably encountered our unexpected fellow travelers. But I do have fond memories of this “rite of passage” vacation.
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*I questioned the V6, and replied:
To me, the ’75 was a big step backwards, aesthetically, from the ’64. I don’t believe Ford had developed a V6 engine yet at that point – rather, I think it’s likely that the big V8 in the ’75 Ford wagon was a neutered beast that delivered the power of a 6 and the economy of V12. Starting around 1971, manufacturers were required to rate an engine’s HP in Net, rather than Gross, terms. Net involved deducting the parasitic drag and losses caused by the accessories (water pump, alternator, smog pump, power-steering pump) and the drivetrain (transmission and differential), and represented actual power available at the drive wheels. Besides the psychological hit of the lower HP numbers, cars of this era were saddled with increasingly complex carburetors and mysterious emissions controls that affected drivability negatively. ’75 was right on the cusp of catalytic converters too, which meant additional restriction in the exhaust system. All in all, there’s a good reason the automotive era of c. 1973 through the mid-1980s is known as the Malaise Era.
… and Geoff replied:
According to (brother) Paul it was a 400 cu.in. V8 under the hood of this gas-guzzler. No wonder my father had conniptions about the fuel bills. Having seen your in-depth analysis of power plants, I am definitely out of mine.
My Dad moved up to full-sized wagons with a ’69 Country Squire he bought new at Luzurne Motors…in a way he was “copying” an earlier purchase my Uncle made of a new ’69 4 door LTD hardtop right before he graduated college (something he unfortunately repeated in 1984 when my sister bought a new ’84 Pontiac Sunbird, which for my Dad turned out to be the worst car he ever bought. Prior to the ’69 he had a series of smaller wagons: a ’61 and ’63 Rambler, and a ’65 Olds F85 (with the 330V8, his first V8 car).
He followed up with a ’73 Country Sedan, which although a lower model in the pecking order, was much better equipped than the ’69….other than his ’78 Chevy Caprice wagon, it was probably the closest thing to a luxury car he ever owned. Besides being the first car with air conditioning, power locks (but no power windows), and AM/FM stereo radio, it had the trailer towing package and probably some other options I’m forgetting. The ’73 had the 400 2bbl, whereas the ’69 had a 351. Oh, and both had front disc brakes, since Dad also had a ’68 Renault R10 with discs, he only had cars with front discs from that point forward. Also, both wagons were 6 passenger; he preferred the “empty” space in the back we used for storing stuff during our camping trips such that my two youngest sisters could still sleep in the back cargo area….he called it “the well”, and we didn’t need the 8 seat capability.
The Ford was comfortable cruiser for long trips, but my Mother found it cumbersome around town, she referred to it as a “boat”…but as she’s tiny, 4′ 8” and 83 lbs, driving the large car wasn’t much fun for errands in the city. The ’73 was purchased about 6 months before the first gas crisis, and as it got crummy mileage, my Dad tried things to get better mileage, like the electronic ignition kit we installed (then removed when it burned up the coil). He even sold his ’68 Renault R10 so my Mother could drive his “2nd” car, since the R10 was standard and my Mother never was comfortable driving standard. I’m sure our family mirrored lots of others, we liked our gas guzzler but were concerned about availability of fuel for it. He eventually traded the ’73 on a ’78 Chevy Caprice wagon with a 305, which got better mileage, in time for the 2nd gas crisis..
One thing that stands out on the ’73 was the loud turn signals. Maybe because it had the trailer towing package (don’t know if they substituted heavy-duty relays for standard ones in the package?) but you could really hear the loud clicking of the relays when turn signals were on. Don’t remember hearing similar clicking when braking; maybe it was just turn signals. You always had a constant reminder when they were activated, so you wouldn’t drive far with them activated inadvertently.