The old picture is worth 1000 words (1024 for digital images) adage is an extremely tired cliché and I’m not even sure what the current exchange rate is for words to pictures, but every now and then I’m reminded of why it exists at all: because it’s generally pretty true. What makes it interesting is the kind of words a given picture evokes, and I think in the case of this 1970 Ford LTD brochure, those words feel pretty, um, culty.
A specific sort of culty, even; a particular type of often-California-based 1970s-era cult, the sort that has strangely charismatic leaders and a general aesthetic that’s a weird melange of megachurch and the more unhinged sort of hippy and maybe a good dose of Stevie Nicks.
I’m not exactly sure why this sort of aesthetic was chosen to sell LTDs, which were pretty establishment sorts of cars, but Ford seemed to be giving it a go. I mean, look at this:
How else is one supposed to read this image of a bench seat set in a green field, with artfully out-of-focus flowers and an alabaster-clad mother and child? It’s a deeply strange way show off seats. Also, removing those seats would have been quite a chore; they were heavy things with complex tracks and runners and electrical connections. This isn’t some 2CV in picnic mode, after all:
This brochure isn’t about picnics, though. It’s about how well a new Ford could fit into your quite regimented cult lifestyle, and how much such a car could benefit the Exalted Leaders, seen here:
There they are, the Glorious One and his Chosen Consort, by the beautiful forest green LTD gifted unto them by their adoring followers, the Children of the Light or some shit like that.
Check out the pillar-less coupé version of the LTD here, too, seen with another angelic mother and child, bathed in the golden light of both the sun and devotion to the Glorious One.
These LTDs always had a very owl-like beak, I always thought, and the covered headlamps somehow just emphasize that beak even more. These were odd-looking machines, but the profile of the coupé’s greenhouse is quite nice.
This photo is a clever way to remind people these LTDs had power disc brakes, and in the context of a cult, I like to imagine it as showing the maximum distance one can get away from the Main Compound before one must stop, otherwise the Glorious One will be very displeased, and you know what that means: a night in The Box.
I had hoped we were past this, but I can see you still have some growing to do.
This last image I could be including because of those could be the Chants of the Children on that 8-track or maybe the Words of the Glorious One, but it’s really because I didn’t read that hand as wearing a glove at first, and for a moment I thought their hand model had really and disturbingly wrinkly skin, which freaked me out a bit.
Fortunately, it’s just a glove, thank the Glorious One.
That is some very weird art direction presumably transparency film manipulation. I suppose a 4×5 view camera might have been able to be adjusted in such a way that the depth of field could tweaked as some of these were.
I wonder what Werner Ehard, of est fame/infamy drove.
And if I remember correctly, Bagwan Shree Rashneesh founded a cult in Oregon with a commune being built in the early 80s and his members presented him was a Rolls-Royce Corniche. Apparently one of many. Trying to dust off some very old braincell here are bunch of interesting articles and even documentaries about that place. That was a rabbit hole I went down. LoL
Ironically, Rashneeshpuram is now a YoungLife camp, mainly used in the summer.
I think the bigger thing here is that Jason is susceptible to cults and thus sees them wherever he goes.
They were a little ahead of their time. The Scientologists actually built a customized Ford Expedition for Tom Cruise. There was a blog post online several years ago by one of the Sea Org members who built it. For rank and file cultists I envision base model sedans or passenger vans.
Remember Neil Young’s silver spaceships flying around the chosen ones? There you go. All in a dream, all in a dream. The loading had begun.
“How else is one supposed to read this image of a bench seat set in a green field, with artfully out-of-focus flowers and an alabaster-clad mother and child? It’s a deeply strange way show off seats.”
I have two words for you:
Panty Cloth
Much more succinct than I was.
It really does look like a cult or a government program designed to look like a cult. I thought that first picture was a girl next to a bruitialist building like a cult headqaurters. The acid trip seat is an quite something. Would be an interesting point start a madmen type show from the 70s. Would be fascinating to know who was the ad agency if the people involved had interesting back stories. Or they were just trying to sell to people of the time or match the culture of the era ? If I recall there smaller Ford dealer in Richmond that turned to Ted turner possibly? Who was decribed as kind of hippie like working out of some small office around that time and he created an ad campaign that ended up doing extremely well and others adopted.
If you were going to use that best in class back seat for it’s intended purpose and didn’t want to start a family the glove was essential. Is that 8-trak glowing by the dash board light? That big STOP! is either 7 years ahead of the song or this brochure was part of the songs inspiration.
As the son of a Ford dealership manager during that era, let me add three things:
That’s not a focus difference. That’s a ring of vaseline applied to a filter mounted on the front of the lens, to blur the peripheries (regardless of distance). As popularized by Bob Guccione in… a popular magazine.
I’m beginning to think that Torch has recently eaten a bad burger from Cook Out after reading this.
It wasn’t bad. It just had some rye with a funny blackish-red fungus growing on it ground into the meat, and it made Torch’s eyes look all funny before he started screaming in tongues!
Insinuating ergot poisoning? Interesting theory.
You should all be worshipping at the cult of me.
But I don’t look good in black…
We have a statue of Patricia Morrison made specifically for you to conduct your sermons next to.
Althrough we had some serious structural issues with keeping her hair in place intact. It kept bending the entire torso over.
The Leader is good, the Leader is great!
We surrender our will, as of this date!
I tried to hail you once, Adrian… but that’s the hard way I found out you weren’t operating a taxi.
Sounds like a lot of work and I’m lazy. Are there cookies?
Avoid the Kool-Aid.
Yuck!
Come to the “Temple of Love”, O’ my children!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjvGiT0fWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj0BnjKJGCQ
There are so many to choose from. What benefits does your cult convey?
Nah – I’m here for Emilio Pucci.
He’s waaaay more groovy.
Not sure the Rodius really helped to strengthen your traditional cult leader appeal.
“This so-called ‘new religion’ is nothing but a pack of weird rituals and chants designed to take away the money of fools. Let us say the Lord’s prayer forty times, but first let’s pass the collection plate.”
The truth is, people’s faith in established institutions was so shaken after Viet Nam and Watergate that cults actually looked like a sensible alternative.
^ that. All that social shakeup didn’t help. People were in shock over the quick changes they were seeing to society. How many doomsday cults arose in the 1970s? Practically all of them.
The news footage of Americans getting evacuated off the roof of the embassy in Saigon was like a 2X4 upside the head.
For my dad it was Watergate. He wouldn’t shut up about it. I kept hearing about it well into the nineties.
Today though I think he’d beg to have Ol’ tricky Dick back.
Sounds just like my old man. He went Carter because he considered Nixon a dick and Ford a dolt, then swooned back (with glitter eyes like a modern cartoon) for Reagan.
And the transformation of anti-establishment protest music from Guthrie-Seeger folkies to punk.
And I can easily imagine punks driving a ’70 LTD much more so than hippies. It helps that it would’ve been an old used car by then.
James Garner was always being chased by bad guys driving LTDs in the “Rockford Files.” Must’ve been snooping around Sciento … er, anonymous cult headquarters.
“Scientography! Those fiends!!” – TV detective man
*Tom Cruise enters the chat*
https://www.tmz.com/watch/0-iwqstbny/
I think the next season of True Detective, whenever it occurs, should be inspired by that brochure. A mysterious series of deaths at the cult ranch.
Ahh, yes, they drank the Flavor-Aid…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjvGiT0fWo
Welcome to the Cult of Brown.
We don’t care that there are lots of colors in those photos, they are all brown now.
Bow to Brown.
I remember Torch exploring this same question regarding 1970s Mercury ads:
https://www.theautopian.com/cold-start-is-this-a-cult/
And I’m glad to be here for it! That imagery is delightful to look at. Getting The Exorcist meets Twin Peaks vibes from it.
Here’s some music to add more atmosphere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hMaHDTw-pI
Yup, definite cult. Victor French drives an LTD when he picks up Michael Landon in Highway to Heaven.
Back then, cultists had to worry about The Car and Christine. Cars were not just less safe, they were possessed and had a thirst for blood.
Cult of Vinyl and AC/DC on 8-Track cassettes will attract your future Stepford wife!
If you played Blue Oyster Cult on your 8-Track what did you attract?
Bivalves.
Farmers looking for their missing cows.
The Reaper…
Mike Damone telling you he doesn’t have Blue Oyster Cult tickets.
People who may or may not be burning for you. Godzilla, for example.
A Soft White Underbelly?
Certainly a dark, cult look to those ads. Channels memories of the many avant-garde cinema releases of the time.
Well, it’s either that, or the drugs were really kicking in. It was the early 70s, after all. Too cohesive for LSD — more likely ‘shrooms and some really good weed. And then just wait until we get to the cocaine-fueled late 70s and 80s…
There is definitely a man burning to death (outside of the frame) inside the carcass of a bear in that “bench seat in a green field” picture. I just know it.
His crime? Sullying the Great Leader’s presence with a Chevrolet.
Gaaaah! I’m glad I’m seeing that gloved hand in the morning and not at bedtime. I have a whole day’s thinking and doing to wash it away.
what the hell is on that 8 track that requires that glove. Rock and Roll’s greatest hits recorded backwards?
Mere mortals cannot be directly exposed to the contents of the 8 track.
I listened to it once. I cannot recall a single note of it, nor the events of the three weeks I spent at the cult compound. I don’t know what happened to the hypnotherapist who was helping me recover the memories. I don’t think I want to.
It’s good to see he got work between the Addams Family being cancelled and the Hamburger Helper ads. Those paid the bills for a long time until he got caught up in OJ’s Brentwood crowd and spent all of 1994 in an LAPD evidence locker.