Four-Door Five-Oh Fox Body Is the Rare Sedan You Really Want
It was an extreme rarity in Ford terms — having only produced somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 examples in 1984 and 1985 — but the Ford LTD LX is the Mustang for the family man. It was an interesting turn of events that led Ford to build this car, which involves Bob Bondurant’s racing school, and a few Ford execs simply deciding to make it happen, come hell or high water.
The Bondurant school had long used their pair-up with Ford to shuffle students around the track in Mustangs, but shoving them in the back seat had become an ordeal, and they realized they needed a four-door platform to make teaching easier. Luckily, Ford was already making the Fox-platform LTD.
Bondurant took the opportunity to shove some Five-Point-Ohs under the hood of the sedan and mate them to manual transmissions for driver demonstrations. It isn’t clear if Bondurant built these, or if Ford’s Skunkworks built a handful of the special sedans and shipped them off to the school, but they were built in any case. FoMoCo President at the time, Donald Petersen, went for a ride in one of the completed cars; he was so enamored with the result that he rode the program all the way through to production the following year.
The Bondurant car was a HiPo with a stick, but the production models were saddled with a four-speed auto, and made just 165 horses from their throttle body injection V8s. Zero to 60 in 9 seconds. Quarter-mile in 16.8 seconds. Top speed of 115 mph. The LX had a limited slip diff as standard, thicker front and rear sway bars, sports seats, a standard tachometer, 14″ Goodyear Eagle GTs, and lightweight alloy wheels. Comparable to other sports sedans of the day, it was a relative bargain.
Personally, I’d love to pick one up, pump up the power to a reasonably streetable level, and fit it with all of the suspension tech 2016 can throw at it. This could be a great daily ride. Like a Mustang you can fit all your buddies in.
Read more on the history of this car at Hemmings and Bangshift, then let us know what you think.
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