Rusty But Trusty

Update, 3/14/14: Revisiting a cached version of this listing today shows the same seller listing what appears to be the same car, again with different plates, fewer details, and a couple of higher resolution but older photos, at $3400. So perhaps the demand was enough to prompt him to increase the price by $550, but the changing details and photos are enough to make the sensible buyer approach this one with caution, even if the rarity won’t make you shy away completely.

Original post, 3/13/14:Here’s an interesting car. Supposing you liked the performance of a Mustang/Capri or Thunderbird 5.0 (well, as it was back in the mid-eighties), but you needed four doors, or your driving record required you to appear as if you’d just rolled off a rental car lot. That very thing is possible, because while the Ford Fox platform is most well-known in its Mustang guise, it was also offered as the Ford Fairmont/Granada and Mercury Zephyr/Cougar, as well as the Ford LTD/Mercury Marquis. And there were also the Lincoln Continental sedan and Mark VII. So as you can see, most of the cars on that platform were painfully boring and/or forgettable, but for a brief run in the mid-1980s, Ford decided they wanted to try to annoy BMW by dropping the 302 V8 in their plain-jane sedan. They also threw in bigger brakes, stiffer suspension, 4-speed automatic and limited slip differential. You can find this 1985 Ford LTD LX for sale for $3950 in the Dublin/Pleasanton/Livermore, CA area.

(more…)