Faults:

Nothing in the 4 months I've driven it.

But when I got it, the front speakers were fuzzy, orange illumination of the main dials in front of steering wheel were gray and dull, metal louvre on the inside of rear window hadn't been taken off, obviously because the rear window was very dirty, and sometimes hard to see out of.

Just little things really.

General Comments:

Fantastic car! Very smooth; the faster you drive on the road, the more the car tends to float over the bumps kinda like a Cadillac. That's the thing I love most about it.

Plenty of power when you need it; has a power button and four gears to play with, gets up hills with ease.

Mine has a fully velour interior, which is good for its age because a 1994 model with the standard leather seats would have been uncomfortable.

Some come with sunroofs, but not mine.

It has a subwoofer and six stacker in the boot as standard equipment, woodgrain along the doors and in the middle of the dash, and also around the shifter and power window buttons.

Remote/keyless entry with excellent security and tibbe locks. Central locking, climate control, power mirrors; ahead of its time.

A very long car. The long wheelbase is so bad for parking and reversing. No good on corners of course, but excellent for freeway driving.

It's sitting on 2000RPM at 110Km/h with the redline being 5000RPM, so an awesome economy low profile car. Although low RPM's mean if you put your foot down, it will change down 1 or 2 gears automatically, which can be annoying, so I just manually change down, which is easily done.

All power options work great, except the rear windows power down slowly because the rubber seals are hard, and one window has scratches from it!

Electric seats are great fun. I rarely get to sit in the back, but when I do it's heavenly comfortable, and of course roomy, which brings me to my next point.

Sitting in the drivers seat, the visibility outside the car isn't too great. The rear view mirror is quite wide and seems like it fills the entire windscreen from my point of view, and that's with the seat lowered as well. I am average height, and when I stop to look both ways, I find myself leaning forward to check.

Very nice chrome grille and hood ornament, although I replaced it with a gold Cadillac hood ornament, very nice.

Very clean lines, clear front indicators, body coloured door handles and sidestrips as well as plastic chrome lower sidestrips.

This car is unique; not many around and only 1800 of these made, and they were $59000 when new I think. Ford never made too many LTD's, and now they aren't making them at all. Forget Fairlane and the lesser Fairmont, get the flagship luxury model.

They stopped making this model in March 1995, and this model is the last model that was LTD unique before they started giving it a Falcon body and look. I will be getting a 1997 DL V8 model for my next car; the AU models made around 2000 are ugly in my opinion. Lots of LTD's on LPG now too.

Faults:

Only age related stuff, like rust, instrument connections, etc.

General Comments:

This was the nation's number 1 limosine in its day...A stylish way to travel, with a "sittin in ya rocking chair" don't-care attitude.

The Australian Ford LTD of this era is more a deriverative of the US Lincoln type. The cabin area is more a stretched Falcon, with a large boot deck, and a nose similar to a Lincoln Mk 111 with single 7" headlights and inboard 5" diving lights.

The engine is a 351 Cleveland.

I bought the LTD in 2004 as a bit of an art project. I had always admired the shape and wanted to model something on George Barris' "The Car" (Movie of 1977).

So mine ended up satin black with hammertone gunmetal roof, de-chromed, flat alloy wheels, with a few other minor custom details like spoilers, scoop, and flamethrowers just to add to the theatrics.

Despite the rust in the doors, and dodgy power windows, the car had been very well maintained by an old guy used to tow his horses to the races, and pull his trailer on vacation.

He updated to a later model Fairlane, but two months after selling the LTD to me was phoning to see how it was and telling me the problems he was experiencing with his newer car. He was lamenting the simplicity and driving pleasure that the old LTD gave him.

The car is heavy on gas. 95% of the time I run on LPG, but this is only returning about 9 mpg. Luckily this fuel is cheaper to buy, but still an indulgent exercise.

The great thing about the car is despite its nearly 30 years and 460,000 it is easy to maintain. A few electrical problems are usually traced to bad earths, fixed with a bit of scraping and screwing.

The turning circle is ancient with some of the newer drive-thru's best avoided.

As one can guess, the biggest letdown is not being able to afford to drive this baby more often.

Cars are best used and not sitting too long, so my advice to anyone contemplating this era LTD; Go ahead and preserve or custom your piece of nostalgia, and enjoy a driving style that the seventies was famous for.

It's an easy ownership and maintenance icon.