1989 Ford LTD Crown Victoria

I'll be honest, I always liked the look of the Crown Vic. In particular, the "civilian" versions of it that basically drove like you were riding couch.

My very first car was a 1979 version of the Crown Victoria which I had when I left home to work at my first job in a city that was about a 5-hour drive away.

With no air conditioning and only an AM radio, it certainly didn't fit the image most people would have for these cars.

It did have a 302 V8 engine in it though, and for a 19-year old kid, that was the only option I needed, though I did collect the occasional speeding ticket.

I drove that car for a couple of years, doing that 5-hour drive to visit "family" (OK - the girl I was dating at the time) until one night in February the oil pump gave up the ghost and left me stranded literally hours from anywhere.

Even though it let me down in the end, I always had a soft spot for these cars so I was quite excited to find this one since the majority of the Crown Victorias that you see these days are the Police Interceptor versions.

Finding one that started life as someone's personal ride is a rare treat indeed.

This Crown Vic was the second year for this particular revision of the LTD which changed the exterior look of the car in order to make it more aerodynamic, rounding off the edges of the front and rear fender a little bit.

The grille also incorporated an egg-crate style that was fairly prevalent to Ford cars that that time.

This particular Crown Vic spent its life bombing around my local area before it found it's final parking space here in the junkyard.

It's actually not too surprising that this is a local car since this type of car is considered a "farmers" car along with the Olds Delta 88 since a lot of the farmers in my area have a lot more faith in a car that had a traditional chassis built on the frame design since it was similar to their "main" vehicle - their pick-up truck.

This car also didn't stray too far from its place of birth since the St. Thomas assembly plant was only an hour away.

This particular car also had the 302 V8 with electronic fuel injection (versus the carburetor that my '79 had)

This one also had a lot of neat toys for the time including an auto on headlight feature - a bit of a novelty for the late 1980s.

As an extra bit of luxury, every passenger had their cigarette lighter and ashtray in the door handles and everything was covered in a nice rich layer of red velour.


I was a bit surprised to see that this car only had about 167,000 kilometers on the clock, a fairly low number considering the overall condition of the body and the fact that the 302 engine had a good record of reliability, so I am a bit curious on how it ended up here.

My suspicion is that it was once Grampa's car and nobody really wanted it when he couldn't drive it anymore, which makes the most sense because the last time the car was licensed was in 2010.

And so it sits.