Sedan Wagon?! The name of this 1973 Ford Galaxie 500 Country Sedan Wagon is almost as long as the car itself. If you need a gigantic, relatively-inexpensive car to haul things around in, this one can be found in Ironton, Minnesota on Craigslist with an asking price of $2,200. This is basically all the info the seller has provided: “Tires, Battery, Rear Shocks, Brake Lines, Fuel Pump, Accelerator Pump. Used gas tank. In storage for 17 years. Runs and rides good.”
This car is just about 19-feet long and it weighs 4,800 pounds, but it seems even longer and heavier than that to me. I like the clean look with the painted steel rims and chrome caps and that light blue color is hard to argue with. I can’t really tell if there is any rust or not from the two exterior photos that are provided. I know, we’ve been over that well over a million times, give or take. Folks, when you’re selling a car, especially when it’s a free service like CL is, please, please, please provide more than two measly photos! I’m assuming rust will be found just because this is a Minnesota car, even though it was in storage for 15 years. It’s still 44 years old which means 29 years riding on Minnesota roads and with no mention of the miles that it has traveled, well, this is getting far too complicated. Just expect to deal with rust!
Here is the one, lone, solitary interior photo. Sigh. At least what is showing, other than possible seam separations on the front bench seat (?), it looks pretty nice. The Country Sedan was actually a wagon, so by adding “Wagon” to the name, I was just trying to at least slow down some comments about the name but I may have made things more confusing. Ford made the Country Sedan from 1952 to 1974 and it was one trim level down from the Country Squire, which I’m sure we’ve all heard of and most of us instantly recognize that line as a wagon. In 1975, they were known as the LTD wagon. There is no mention as to whether it has a 351, 400, or 429 V8 engine, but the bigger the better with this car. If this one runs as well as it looks this price seems pretty fair. Did any of you ever own a wagon this big, or would you drive one now?
I have a ’65 Country Squire with 44K miles on it. It was featured here on barn finds several years ago. Two tone green and patina. Love it!
You ask if anyone ever owned one, I have two, a 72 with a 429, and an 80 with a 460, but I bought them for the running gear. I drove the big one 100 miles, and it drove surprisingly well.
Bob
I’m confused about the 1980 with the 460 that was not available in the downsized car which started in 1979. Maybe a 1978?
Even though the featured car has the lower trim front end I think it looks better than the other style.
I sold a wagon like this a few year ago.
It was a 1973 Country Sedan white with the camel vinyl interior. It was a very nice car but it was a Mexican Spec car which means that it had no air or heater/defroster.
The weather had to be perfect to drive it or the window fogged up and it got dangerous.
You might notice the ’72 style hubcaps on this car. Those were the hubcaps this car came with in 1973. I guess they had extra sets and put them on the Mexican cars.
I bought one of these from a co-worker in 1980 for $250. Mine was Gold
in color with a matching cloth and vinyl interior. It ran a 400 CID V-8 mated
to a C-6 auto tranny. the engine seemed unique to me as it had a set of
what may have been Cleveland cylinder heads (small spark plug holes)
on it. It also had the towing package which featured the heavy duty 9″
rear axle and a factory Reese trailer hitch. Man, I loved that car. It ran and
drove great! And even though it was a snowbelt car, there was little or no
rust showing. I recall going to pick up some relatives who lived out of town
when we were rear ended by a gentleman driving a brand new International
Scout Ii 4X4. My wagon suffered only very minor damage, (slightly bent
tail light bezel, barely sprung tailgate) while the the Scout was towed away
and later totalled. What a way to start the Christmas holiday! Thankfully,
no one was hurt and we had a merry Christmas all the same. Wound
up selling it to my supervisor at work to use as a service vehicle for
the apartment complex where I worked at that time. From the minute
I saw this car, I wanted it! Why if I wasn’t starting college next month,
that wagon would be here in Central Florida parked in my driveway
for my family to drive and enjoy.
Has that utilitarian look only a Ford lover can appreciate! Nice. As far as engines go it can get a bit confusing when it comes to Ford as they made so many different ones especially in the 351-400 cubic inch range. Instead of improving an existing engine they would just design a completely new motor. Bunch of mad scientists over at the blue oval.
This brings back the memories. A neighbor had one identical to this back in the day. He got a new Ford wagon every two years as a company car. He sold auto parts wholesale.
In the early 90’s I had a coin laundry chain and my employee who traveled around and cleaned them always had a crappy car and couldn’t get to work. My solution was to go to the local car auction and get him a $500 beater. Usually I got pure garbage for that price, but one time I got a ’73 Country Sedan, gold, with a 400 and all the options. It was low mileage grandma car and near perfect. He drove it a while, but later it developed a fuel problem and I went over to his house to troubleshoot. A backfire in the carb set the engine on fire and we frantically searched for baking soda in the kitchen to put it out. Ignition wiring burned to a crisp. That was the end of that beater and went on to the next.
For a burned ignition wire, really?
351 Cleveland and 400m are similar looking but the 400 is a dog.Think the m means made in Mexico. Lower end problems, did a bunch of Crankshaft replacements on the 400.
The M in 400M means Modified. It’s a complicated story.
http://grantorinosport.org/bubbaf250/history/history03.html
Common problem was over oiling the top end at the expense of the crank. High volume(not high pressure) oil pump and restrictor plugs in the oil galleys in the back of the block usually took care of the problem. The (M) was for “modified” where they used a tall deck Cleveland block with a big block bell-housing pattern(“Cleveland” was a a small block) for the versatility of switching between the between 460/429 and 351M/400M using same transmission.The worst problem with the smog heads was the thumb-sized boss cast into the exhaust ports for the AIR-injection(grind the restriction out and fill in the AIR- ports with nickle-rod provides a considerable gain especially with the simple swap of the timing set(lose the nylon cam gear) to a 1971 or earlier cam set(cam timing was retarded for emission purposes-retarding was cheaper for the factory than designing a whole new cam profile). The heads could also be swapped onto a 351-Windsor with minimal machining to match water ports and using a “Track-Boss” intake to yield a 351-“Clever”. The hot-rodders at Ford were always looking for ways around the EPA and the corporate bean-counters.
That 351 “clever” would be pretty much similar to a Boss 302, only with a longer stroke?
Troy S. – Pretty much, a more available option considering the rarity of authentic Boss motors. Though with all of the options available today, some say it is more sensible to just buy bolt on parts or a crate motor – but THAT is not true to the spirit of hot-rodding which is based in backyard(and local friendly machine shop) modifications that the factory did not offer. The weak point of the Cleveland was that it was designed for high rpm Trans-Am racing – with a steel crank with small journals. Using a cast nodular iron crank, the Winsdsor’s large journals fare better for a street motor. With the 400M crank, the mains can be turned down and the rods turned off-center to stroke a Windsor out to a 427 – with the plentiful 2 barrel 351/400M open chamber heads, you can build a streetable lower rpm/high torque 427 Boss small-block “Clevor”(I misspelled it before)(Cleveland/Windsor).
Thanks for the input! Much appreciated.
The “M” in 351M is there to distinguish it from the 351C. There’s no such thing as a 400M. They only made one style of a 400. I owned several back in the day, and they certainly weren’t dogs, nor did they have crankshaft issues.
Sedan Wagon, or station sedan?
Oh man. We had a wood-tone Ford LTD of this era with a 390-auto. It was my brother’s gig-mobile. He played Farfisa thru a 145 Leslie. Plus my 5 piece drum kit and some PA equipment all transported in one vehicle. Let’s just say it wallowed over the bumps of the Garden State Parkway.
Our family had a 9 passenger ’57 Country Sedan in England. A huge car over there! Loved it! Had to go when fuel became to expensive to run it.
Grew up with a 73 Country Squire that my parents bought as a demo car from the local Ford dealer (Johnson Ford in Chariton, Iowa). Always reliable with a 400 v8 and C6 transmission, it also had the automatic climate control, high back front bucket seats and those beautiful turbine blade hubcaps with the blue centers on a gold body with the required wood grain siding. Loved that car. It was hit four times over the years, always on the driver’s side and always repaired. The only original panel on that side was the driver’s door! It also had the fold up facing seats in the rear! Mom liked the fact that one kid could ride shotgun, one in the middle and one in the way back. Cut down on horseplay that way!😸 Her favorite feature was the rim blow steering wheel. She could honk at someone and they couldn’t guess who had done it by the hand on the wheel position! Learned to drive with this car in the winter snow as it had lots of protection. Missed it horribly when the folks traded it for the 1980 Mazda GLC.
Decent looking old wagon. I dig the blue rims and poverty caps. The local police department had some that looked a lot like this back when in the day.
Wrong color, but it really reminds me of the one John Cusack drove in “Beter Off Dead”.
The Longmeadow, Ma. Pd had LTD cruisers back in the day. Green. Always liked them.
I’ve had a ’65 Country Sedan with a 351, and two ’83 and one ’84 Country Squires.
The Squires all had 302 with AOD. The last one went over 200k miles, and all were a great ride.
65 Ford’s used the older 352 FE
engine. Came with a four-barrel,
but designed to run on regular gas.
A good set-up.
Rust is observable on the r/r corner by wheel well and again on r/f fender.
Our family got 137K of sluggish miles
out of a 73 Ford LTD wagon. The 400
engine was much less responsive than
our 68 Ford 390-2V had been. The
previous commenter is correct. The
400 had timing-gears that seriously
retarded the camshaft. Sluggish
performance, but fantastic heat.
There is also an unusual “bypass”
thermostat that must be used instead
of a conventional one.
Yeah, some guy named Bubba wrote a
good online article about these.
The quality-control on some cylinder
blocks was not very good: Cracks.
Thin cylinder-walls. Low-compression
heads mean that even aftermarket
pistons can’t raise the compression
much above 9:1. Replace the stock
timing-gears with aftermarket.
Conservative camshafts only.
My best friend’s mother has one of these in Orange with the fake woodgrain exterior. He learned how to drive in it as well as his fathers 81 Plymouth Reliant. His younger brother used to borrow the car all the time and eventually stalled out on the local expressway where someone slammed into it totalling both cars. I think it had the 400 V-8 which was more than enough power to haul stuff home from the local home improvement store. What was nice about the car is you could load it up with 4 x 8 sheets of anything.