What's the Most Comfortable & Luxurious Station Wagon 1974 Mercury Colony Park (460-4V Engine)

Hello , this is Adam and welcome back to rare classic cars today .

Something for those of you who say , well , why don't I own a wagon or do I own a wagon ?

Well , I do .

And this is a 1974 Mercury Colony Park wagon .

Kind of the last of the big wagons .

They did produce this until 1978 .

But it was this platform that came out in 1969 for Ford and then ran all the way until that 1978 model year in between this and the GM clamshell wagons from 71 to 76 also the Chrysler wagons .

This is really the last of the truly big wagons with the big block engines .

And if you have to ask me what is really the best wagon that delivered upon its mission in terms of spaciousness , ride , comfort , passenger comfort , seating comfort , probably this wagon and I would say good power .

Yes , it's 1974 and this 460 under hood which was optional by the way , only makes 195 horsepower , but it's plenty peppy .

It does not feel like a slug at all in spite of this vehicle weighing almost £5000 .

It is a heavy , heavy vehicle .

And as I said , I think that this wagon is really the best and most true to its mission .

And of course , the GM fans of which I am one are going to say , well , what about those clamshell wagons ?

How can you say that this is better than those , you know , the clamshell wagons , I think are something that people look back on romantically .

But if they were daily drivers , they really had a number of impractical elements to them .

Most notably , that clamshell feature , which if you drove those in winter climates , the wagon gate tended to fall off track .

It didn't always work that well .

And the glass has the bend , by the way , on those , it bends at about a 15 degree angle going up into the roof and you have to sit there and wait for the whole thing to the glass to go up the tailgate to drop , for you to load things .

You can imagine that wasn't great in the rain .

This , you just open up the back door and it's a two way tailgate and it's pretty easy .

The Chrysler also , I think you are really stout wagons , great engines .

They could tow £7000 on a unibody chassis .

But the thing to me that I really don't care for the Chrysler wagons is that they're noisy on the inside , especially the fuselage .

Here are Chrysler wagons they're not overly quiet and they're not super comfortable .

They ride like a truck and that's not necessarily a bad thing .

It's just my personal preference .

This wagon does not ride like a truck .

You go over a set of railroad tracks or undulating pavement and it just perfectly straight .

No pitches , rolls anything like that .

It rides beautifully and the seats are super comfortable .

This car does have the optional Colony Park luxury trim , which we'll talk about in a second , but it just does so many things .

Well , for a wagon you could fit tons of people in here .

This is one that has the rear facing seats as well .

But I think that for my money , this is the best .

These Colony Park wagons in particular from 69 to 78 .

Although they dropped kind of the upper end , you know , let's say trim after the mid seventies .

So let's take the camera off and talk more about this wagon and why I think some things are special about it .

Ok .

So here you are with the Colony Park wagon and let's do a walk around .

What's special about it ?

Well , how many wagons do you know they have hidden headlights ?

Yes , there were the Plymouth Fury .

But really other than that , I can't think of too many other wagons that had the hidden headlights outside of Ford , hidden headlights weren't a G M thing .

This 1974 front end is a one year only front end , I talked about this in other videos but for those who haven't seen this grill is now plastic and 73 it was metal 71 2 .

It was plastic , but it also doesn't spill into the headlights like the 73 .

Does .

This car also has what mercury called yacht deck paneling on the side .

So it's got like a wood grain , but then it also has these black lines in it and this car does have the original wood grain on it .

It's in decent shape .

It's got some checking though , but it is all original as is the paint .

So I have not touched it .

I do have a set of the turban vein optional wheel covers that are going to look much better on this .

I would love to have an N Os set or near N Os set .

If somebody has one , I've got kind of a driver quality set .

I would say as we walk around it , let's just take a look on the inside and this is where this wagon really shines .

I got the seat belt buckled because this is a 74 with the seat belt interlock .

It won't start unless the seat belt is buckled .

So first you have , this does have , as I mentioned , the Colony Park luxury trim , which really turned this wagon into a marquee brome from an interior perspective , aside from the fabric used , which is this really durable Ford call that actually dur a weave on their wagons on the country Squire , but it's a wonderfully durable fabric seats are super comfortable , very poofy armrest .

And you can see it's got the mercury dash similar to the Ford car has a lot of options that has automatic climate control .

You can see there just set the temperature .

It does have , I think four or five fan speeds .

It just selects between low and high and low .

And if you want to force it on the max setting , you can turn it up there .

It does have AM F M radio .

It has a clock that still works .

You can see it's moving power rear window , tilt , telescoping wheel first year for the red slash orange index pointers there 73 they were white power windows , no power locks on this 4 60 V eight under hood power driver seat .

You can see there in the rear facing seats .

Oh , let me unlock it .

Take a look how much room you have back here .

Pretty roomy .

These station wagons were actually off of the L T D wheel base , 121 inch wheel base as opposed to the 124 inch wheel base .

Super spacious inside doors close , great , just like forwards of the air .

It does have the locking hood release which is good and annoying .

You could say I just leave a key in there .

Not too worried these days about somebody stealing it and look at this carpeting shag carpet , just what you want on your wagon .

Feels like a pillow under your feet going around the back here .

You can see I've got the rear window down does have the air deflector , kind of a cool yacht deck paneling on the back that says Mercury open the tailgate here and you can see the seats there .

They are one on each side .

I don't think they'd be comfortable for the long trip , but they exist there .

And here when you open this side , you got this handy dandy little button that you push and it releases the seat so you can fold the seat if you want down and carry more cargo .

I love that yacht deck paneling and by the way , this is the spare tire bulge down here .

Ford's did that unique feature .

Let's take a look under hood and somebody is going to love this under hood base detailed .

The previous owner actually did it .

But there we go 4 64 Venturi , all 190 horsepower .

But don't let that fool you .

I mean , this , this wagon scoots pretty well .

It's not going to be a rocket ship , but you certainly don't feel like you're accelerating away from the stoplight slower than modern traffic .

If anything , you feel like you're accelerating away faster here is the seat belt interlock button .

That's the override that if there was a problem with the system , you could push the red button and it will let you start the vehicle once without your seatbelt buckled , does have air conditioning and tons of coffee cans under hood for vacuum reservoirs .

Its engine runs super smooth .

It started up just great .

Make sure .

By the way , you check your fan clutch , particularly on these 4 60 they tend to go dead and then the cars run warm .

I've replaced , this one does have dual exhaust exhaust in the wagons face sideways so that they don't backdraft into the open rear window , just a great running vehicle .

And I think the best thing of all of this vehicle is it has that Ford ride from the seventies and even the sixties that very nautical soft , some would say mushy ride , but I don't care .

It's great in this wagon .

This thing rides so much better than the G M clamshell wagons which also tended to have a little bit of rattles .

There's no rattles in this vehicle .

It's completely tight , even over bumps and it's quiet on the inside of the freeway .

It's very , very quiet .

The Chrysler wagons that I've driven , as I said , are quite noisy on the inside and it really , to me detracts from the overall experience , which is unfortunate because the engines and transmissions in the Chryslers are really , really good .

Let's take this for a brief ride and see what I'm talking about .

Ok .

So here we are driving down , this is not great pavement here , but , oh my gosh .

This car just soaks it up no issues .

These Fords of this era , particularly the 73 74 model years , I would say the 71 s 2 , 69 70 s those really ride great .

But the 73 S and fours are just on a whole other level .

So silent , so smooth .

Mercury used to advertise ride by Lincoln Mercury and it wasn't just words .

I mean , this thing is so comfortable with the power seat .

It's cushy arm rests and you've got relatively good power from this big block .

I mean , this car isn't going to be super fast .

It weighs £5000 and it's only 190 horsepower , it's tons of torque and you really don't miss the extra horsepower .

Sure .

It would be great to have 500 horsepower under hood .

But this is just , just fine .

And after this , it really didn't get any better for wagons .

In my opinion , they really don't make wagons today .

There are a few , but they are very , very rare and this is the last of the wagons you could get with a big block .

These can stand with the 400 V eight .

This is the 460 but the big box just makes it so much more enjoyable whether it's this or the Chryslers or the GM wagons .

After this , you get into wagons with downsized engines .

And then in the eighties , like the G MS have the old 37 which are a Chevy 305 which aren't bad engines .

They just , they don't have the , the power and the torque to take away from a stoplight or pull away from a stoplight with that little shove in in your back .

This wagon does and I will say for a very heavy car , it does corner and especially a Ford , relatively level .

I don't detect a huge amount of body lean as I go around this corner like this pretty gaar level .

I think these Ford wagons of this era are just excellent , excellent driving vehicles .

You know , if you own one , the only real drawbacks I will say are the carburetor which we've talked about in other videos , but you can swap that out , put Edel Rock or Holly on it , work a lot better .

This car still has its original auto light 4300 motor 4300 but probably better for you to swap it out .

And other than that in the power window gears , they have plastic torque pins that like to shred themselves .

Those are kind of the worst issues with these , the engines , transmissions , rear ends very , very durable .

The Colony Park is also super rare .

They only made about 10,000 of these in 1974 .

And by the registration database , it's not publicly available but that I have access to .

There's only about 20 registered in the US .

There may be more out there but they're super rare .

They just did not make many Ford , made a lot more country Squires .

About 60,000 Country Squires in 74 a couple of years earlier , Ford was selling over 120,000 country Squires .

Mercury is selling about 20,000 colony parks .

The Opec oil embargo in 73 really just killed the sales of these big things you can imagine , especially ones with the pig blocks .

They aren't getting good mileage and gas was expensive .

But whoever ordered this really wanted a Lincoln in a station wagon form because this car's window sticker with all the options .

Total $6700 .

A Lincoln was about $8000 base price .

So you're really approaching Lincoln territory with something like this and it rides like a Lincoln .

Hope you enjoyed this video on the 74 Colony Park .

Thanks again for watching .

Until next time .

Take care .

Thanks for watching .

If you enjoyed the video , be sure to like , comment and subscribe , check out the video thumbnails at bottom , left and bottom , right , for some suggestions for you .

Thanks again .