24 cars blue sky: Junkyard Find: 1976 Ford LTD Country Squire

04 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin The perceived usefulness of full-sized station wagons of the Malaise Era dropped down to about zero when minivans and SUVs became mainstream family-hauler options in the late 1980s. You see a few wagon freaks restoring these things nowadays, but for every Country Squire that gets restored (or even preserved), a hundred others get sent to the knackers. Here's a well-worn '76 that I spotted in Denver a couple weeks back.
16 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin We saw a '75 Country Squire in this series last fall, but big Detroit wagons have become very rare sights in junkyards during the last half-decade or so.
09 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin Growing up a Malaise Era kid, just about every family had a Country Squire or its GM or Chrysler counterpart; these cars were the Voyager and Explorer of their time. My family had a Chevy Beauville van instead (bought new for a Minnesota-to-California move), but the idea was the same: rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame construction, big V8, kid-barf-proof cloth or vinyl interior.
14 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin This is the 460-cubic-inch big-block, good for 202 horsepower and 352 foot-pounds of torque… and about 9 MPG on the highway. Yes, the horsepower number is depressingly low, but torque was what mattered with these cars.
07 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin The faux-wood trim succumbed to the Colorado sun decades ago.
17 - 1976 Ford Country Squire Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin After 37 years, this car has been used up.