73 LTD (I)

So somehow, the subject of a car I owned long ago came up.  The car was a 1973 Ford LTD, built before the OPEC Oil Crisis of 1973-74, so there was no thought of fuel efficiency in it.  Anyone who knew me then remembers the car even though I only owned it from 1984 until 1989.  My mom/stepfather found a little old lady and bought it from her for $500.  When I went off to grad school, they found a family with a 16-yr old girl looking for a car and sold it to her for $500…it died barely a month later when she was rear-ended at a stop sign and the back half of the car was crushed in (admittedly that could be because much of the back was badly rusted with the bumper bolted on…).

Put the pedal to the floor and it would eventually fly (I got it up to 120mph once though I never told my mom…or anyone else I’m currently friends with…until this point), but the price for acceleration, the need for speed, was an ungodly amount of gas–you could watch the tank needle move.

I couldn’t drive it down some streets in Davenport–cars parked on both sides and the LTD would be too wide to fit down the middle of the road.  Parking…never in a crowded parking lot, and it had the wonderful 60s-70s Ford steering–turn the wheel 360 and the car would START to turn.  You’d have to rotate the wheel 45 degrees before it’d make a difference…that’s a lot of play!

Of course, you had the black vinyl interior with metal decorative additions.  That’s why I kept a towel in the car–no way you could get in the car and sit on a summer’s day.  You’d get 2nd degree burns.  That’s why I kept a winter glove in there, too–the black steering wheel would get hot, too….always enough of a temperature difference to steam over my glasses.

Bench seats could seat six comfortably though we crammed nine in once to head to a college intramural softball game.

Worth remembering.  I ever wind up a millionaire (I’ll wait for you to stop laughing), I’m going to find me a 73 LTD again and rejoin the Big Car Cult.