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do you think that the interior of a similarly equipped 73 Ford LTD Brougham is actually any more luxurious than a similar 72 LTD Brougham other than the new styling?
I'm not sure the question as neither were luxury cars. They were nice cars for the average Joe that needed decent but not expensive transportation. If you wanted reasonably priced luxury in the Ford family you were driving a Mercury. Best luxury was a Lincoln. But a Ford is a Ford and back then assembly was lousy, hoods didn't fit, doors didn't fit, loads of wind noise, all versus a current production car by Ford. They also ate gas like it was water. I don't see anything desirable about either of them.
We owned a 1972 Ford LTD for over 10 years and had none of the problems as stated above. It was a well built family car for the era and we never had any problems at all with the the car. We did regular maintenance and only had to get new tires at 60,000 miles and brakes at 80,000 miles plus a new battery every 4 years. The car got 16mpg and gas at the time was about .35 cents a gallon.
It was also a popular car with the police as many departments were using them across the country.
Full size Fords in the 70's were actually pretty good cars, and were built better than what was being typically produced in the 70's ( poor build quality, large body gaps, crappy materials, unreliable, weak engines). Mercurys and Lincolns by far were one of the best luxury cars made in that era, even better than Cadillac and GM car's if you ask some old timers.
But even so, the 50's-60's cars were assembled much better overall.
trapper l may be right about wind noise and overall quality of the Fords.
CR's test of 1972 Galaxie 500: " a recent Ford ad showed violin music being taped from the backseat of a moving car. Unfortunately our test Galaxie was not nearly as quiet as those ads imply. Although we judged the Galaxie to be fairly quiet, the tires hissed and rumbled, wind whistled around the windows and door seals and the exhaust droned during even mild acceleration
CR test of 73 LTD: THE LTD wasn't as quiet overall as the Mercury or GM cars. Coarse road surfaces provoked road noise and vibration throughout the car's body structure and at higher speeds, wind noise was noted
the Marquis' in 72 and 73 were top rated by CR's. but i think the 72 got even worse mpg than the 73 (7-15 mpg in normal driving; 11 mpg on a 300 mile trip). I think the 72 Marquis had a 4 wheel disc anti skid braking system that CR's especially liked
does anyone have a link to a 1966 Mercury "Montclair" or Monterey? I think i remember my dad testing a 66 Montclair or Monterey and tho he liked it, he didn't buy it because it barely fit in the garage
Actually from that era I prefer the 71 LTD's. When they went to the simpler egg-crate grill and front bumper cross bar on the 72 that totally ruined the look for me. The 71's looked much richer I guess you could say. I also hate the bar type grill on the 72 Thunderbird as well. Only a Lincoln style grill looked right on those. I would kill for a Metallic Blue 4dr Hardtop 71 LTD Brougham. Like the one used by Ray Liottas character in the French Connection.
do you think that the interior of a similarly equipped 73 Ford LTD Brougham is actually any more luxurious than a similar 72 LTD Brougham other than the new styling?
The 1972 and 1973 LTD interiors were very similar.
They were both very nice cars, but my styling preference would be for the '72. Also, few '73s ran as smoothly as their predecessors because of the new emissions controls that year. A lot of dealers (of all makes) just gave up and told their customers....look, it's a '73 - that's the best we can do.
Generally, I would say that across the spectrum of American cars, there weren't many '73 and later versions that matched their predecessors overall. One notable exception, IMO, would be the '73-'77 GM A-bodies. The Montes, Grand Prixs, and Cutlass coupes of that vintage were incomparable.
i started to lose interest around 1975 when rectangular headlights started to make the cars lose character and all look the same. i thought the big Fords grilles and rear lights were just boring and insipid from 75 onward. I still liked the Caprice from 75 and 76 tho not as good as 74 and 73. to me those were classics
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