What If…1955 Ford Crown Ranchero | The Daily Drive | Consumer Guide® The Daily Drive

1955 Ford Crown Ranchero

Two of Ford Motor Firm’s most memorable automobiles of the Fifties have been launched inside a pair years of one another. Launching for 1955 because the flagship of Ford’s dramatically restyled passenger-car line, the Crown Victoria two-door hardtop introduced a brand new stage of glamour and magnificence to the model. Two years later, the 1957 Ford Ranchero melded the passenger automotive and the pickup truck right into a “better of each worlds” proposition—at the very least for some buyers.

1955 Ford Crown Victoria

The ’55 Crown Victoria’s, ahem, crowning contact was its “tiara-top” therapy. Accenting the hardtop-style roofline was a stainless-steel band that wrapped from the bottom of the B-pillars throughout the highest of the roof. Add within the flashier grille, hooded headlights, refined tailfins, “checkmark” bodyside trim, and eye-grabbing two-tone paint colours of the 1955 Ford’s restyle—to not point out the out there Plexiglas fastened sunroof—and the Crown Vic was essentially the most dashing regular-line Ford but.

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1955 Ford Ranch Wagon

The thought of a passenger-car-based pickup was not solely new when the Ford Ranchero debuted for ’57—a number of American automakers had beforehand supplied automobiles that adopted the identical primary idea, and the car-based “ute” was already commonplace within the Australian auto market. The Ranchero, nonetheless, was arguably the best-looking, best-integrated instance of the breed, and it was comparatively easy and economical to provide. Like different mainstream-brand automakers, Ford had a two-door station wagon physique in its passenger-car lineup, and it wasn’t an enormous endeavor to shorten the roofline, part off the cab behind the motive force, and set up a pickup mattress within the again.

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1955 Ford Nation Squire

A mash-up of those two fondly remembered Fords is a tantalizing concept, and one which Collectible Car journal writer Frank Peiler couldn’t resist placing to paper. What if Ford had moved ahead with the Ranchero idea a pair years earlier, and what if it had determined to provide it as a top-line mannequin in full Crown Victoria regalia? The end result might need seemed identical to Frank’s “Crown Ranchero” rendering proven right here, resplendent in Aquatone Blue and Snowshoe White two-tone.

As Frank’s illustration exhibits, the Crown Victoria’s decorative roof band is a swish solution to cap off the Crown Ranchero’s cab, although the slanted door body on the rear would necessitate particular components not shared with station-wagon fashions. Ranchero “steer’s head” emblems rather than the Crown Victoria badges and an abbreviated tailgate (to line up with the two-tone paint scheme) are different refined touches. It’s uncertain that People would have embraced a full-lux Ranchero in numbers adequate to justify manufacturing, however had Ford made it, it virtually actually would have been a sought-after collectible at present. “What if” certainly!

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