Join the world’s most patient Ford salesman as he takes an unusually demanding shopper for a road test of the 1973 Country Squire.

Folks don’t often take pity on car salesmen, but this one is entirely deserving of our sympathy. A simple road test turns into an all-day adventure as a lady shopper tries out a ’73 Ford LTD Country Squire on her daily errands, including a trip to the lumber yard, picking up the kids at school, and finally, towing a travel trailer on a remote mountain road. We’ve heard stories over the years from our friends in sales about some remarkable excursions on customer road tests, but nothing ever like this.

Of course, all this was simply a clever setup in the script to show the audience all the Country Squire’s attractive features. Here they included Ford’s signature two-way Magic Doorgate (see our feature here) and dual-facing rear seats, the wide, flat cargo deck that could handle 4X8-ft panels, and the Class III towing capacity. Ford put special effort into its wagons, in both engineering and marketing, and it shows in the tagline here: “Ford’s Country Squire is more wagon than anyone else’s.”

Ford’s big-car platform was treated to new styling for ’73, no doubt helping the Country Squire to score its best sales year in history at nearly 143,000 units. Ford’s big wagon lineup that year also included the base Ranch Wagon and mid-range Country Sedan along with the wood-trimmed LTD Country Squire, and there were Pinto and Torino wagons, too. While rival Chevrolet once again bested Ford in total sales, Ford outsold Chevy in the wagon category by a comfortable margin. Video below.