YACFMP - 1972 Ford LTD Country Squire Station Wagon

Yet Another Car From My Past

I am pretty sure this is the first car from my childhood that I can explicitly remember, though if it's not, it's a damn good guess, because Ford sold a boatload of these land yachts.  Measuring nearly 19ft long (to put that in perspective, that's longer than a current Chevy Suburban) and weighing two and a half tons, and available with a 460cid V8, these disco era toddler barges were whales even by the standards of the day.  The coolest features by far were the 3-way magic doorgate and the flip up third row seats.  Although the "wayback" was big enough to host a threesome, The magic 3-way tailgate wasn't as kinky as it sounds. Though undoubtedly a double entendre, the 3-way referred to the ability of the tailgate to open like a door, or fold down like a pickup - which given my age at the time seemed magical enough.  At the drive in we would park backwards, drop the tailgate down and the three of us kids would lie in the back in sleeping bags to watch the movie.  As well as sledding innumerable families to the movies, the Country Squire appeared in well over 100 movies and TV series, and seems to have been especially popular with the producers of  "CHIPS".