Junkyard Gem: 1971 Ford LTD Brougham 2-Door Hardtop

North American automotive customers within the early Seventies had loads of selections when it got here to huge, highly effective Detroit hardtop coupes at reasonably priced costs. Common Motors led the 1971 big-coupe-for-small-bucks gross sales race with the Impala and Caprice, with Pontiac providing good offers on Catalina Broughams as nicely. Ford was proper there with the LTD and its Mercury siblings, and in the present day’s Junkyard Gem is a type of automobiles: a 1971 LTD Brougham, present in a Denver-area automotive graveyard just a few months again.

Initially, a brougham was a kind of horse-drawn carriage that was highly regarded among the many rich within the center 1800s. Within the early twentieth century, it turned the title for a automotive physique wherein the driving force sat outdoors the enclosed passenger cabin. By the daybreak of the Seventies, it had develop into a classy-sounding trim-level designation, utilized by GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors. It seems that the ultimate use of the Brougham title on a brand new automotive was by Nissan, on the JDM Cedric VIP.

This automotive has Brougham badges in lots of locations, together with the sprint and door panels.

In 1971, the LTD Brougham got here customary with a V8 engine, energy entrance disc brakes and a swanky inside known as “the Entrance Room.”

1971 LTD Brougham consumers needed to pay additional for an automated transmission (as a substitute of the bottom three-on-the-tree column-shift handbook) and air con. Almost all of them did so.

The AM radio was an extra-cost possibility as nicely.

The MSRP on this automotive, previous to these pricey extras, was $4,097. That is about $31,408 in 2023 {dollars}, and dangerously near the $4,557 sticker value on the LTD’s Mercury-badged sibling, the Marquis Brougham.

The bottom engine within the LTD Brougham for 1971 was a 351 Cleveland V8 rated at 240 horsepower. That seems to be what we have got beneath the hood of this automotive, although it is also the nearly-identical-looking 400 Modified and its 260 horses (or it could possibly be the eleventh engine swapped into this automotive throughout its life; in any case, it is some member of the Cleveland/Modified V8 household).

There’s the standard rust-through you get on this type of local weather, right here and there.

Loads of physique filler as nicely.

Value fixing up? In all probability not, nevertheless it’s unhappy to see it meet such a destiny.

All the things is getting noisier, however the LTD stays quiet inside.