The Monterey originally started out as little more than a rebadged Ford Custom sedan. By the 1960's, the car had become quite large as it transitioned into a twin of the Ford Galaxie, one of the bigger cars of its day. These are the cars that would gain the nickname of boats, along with some other huge American cars of the time made by Chyrsler and Cadillac.

The V8 engines for these cars would match their extreme length and width. The smallest option was a 390 cubic inch V8 on the 4th generation Monterey, which was the Galaxie twin. The largest option was a 428 cubic inch Cobra Jet.

These cars got huge at the end of the '60's and into the 70's. I'm talking about novelty huge. If you crossed paths with one on a two-way road, chances are you'd have to pull over on the side of the road to make room. These cars weighed about as much as a bus and had a turning radius of 8.4 miles. Stopping distance from 60 miles per hour was about 4,000,000 feet, so don't step in front of one. I was driving one of these once when my morbidly obese neighbor tried to step out in front of it to tell me to slow down. Let's just say she lost a lot of weight that day, while the surface of the road gained a few pounds.

These cars can be found on the collectors market, or even being sold as a used car in some places. You can find them cheap or even as gutted project cars on eBay, along with thousands of parts for you grease monkeys out there.