The Meteor name may be puzzling for many of our MyStarCollectorCar readers, so we decided to fill in the blanks, Meteor was a Canadian brand sold by Ford of Canada from 1949 until 1961, and then again from 1964 until 1976.
The main reason for the Meteor was Canada and the United States had separate automotive manufacturing industries because there was no free trade agreement between the two countries regarding vehicles.
Jim Sutherland
In fact, there were major tariffs applied to vehicles sold to customers in either country to discourage cross-border automotive sales. The 1965 Auto Pact agreement eliminated the tariffs and opened up automotive trade between the United States and Canada.
The Meteor brand was eventually phased out after the Auto Pact agreement, but not before it etched a legacy in the Canadian car hobby.
Meteors were sold by Mercury dealers to customers who wanted a less costly vehicle but did not want to buy a Ford. In essence, a Meteor was a rebadged Ford with enough trim differences to give it a unique look.
The Meteor created plenty of confusion during its heyday and is still a head-scratcher for most Americans and younger Canadians since many of them were not even born when the car model was last sold in Canada.
Joe Donoghue is a young car guy who knows all about the Meteor brand, even though he was born many decades after his 1951 Meteor Country Squire station wagon left the factory. His wagon is incredibly rare because so few of them were built and practically none of them are left in 2026.
The Country Squire name is shared with Ford’s 1951 station wagon mode–and so is its wooden exterior components that gave both Ford and Meteor long roofs their famous Woody Wagon nickname.
Joe is a huge fan of the 1949-51 Ford products, so he understands the differences between a conventional Ford and its Meteor counterpart in Canadian automotive history. In 2023, Joe discovered his 1951 Meteor station wagon sitting in a pasture facing an uncertain future in a losing battle with nature.
He bought the ’51 Meteor wagon and began the process of bringing the car back on the road. The license plate on the car indicated it was parked in 1964, so Joe knew he had a challenge ahead of him.
Joe told MyStarCollectorCar the Meteor’s “wood was gone-the floor was gone–and it was unloved”, but he chose to tackle the challenge and restore the car “from the inside first”, in his words.
The Canuck Country Squire now sports a new interior with new floor panels to make it very comfortable on the inside while Joe formulated his game plan for the exterior, starting with the wooden components.
Joe decided to keep its original 239 cubic-inch flathead V-8 engine and its three-speed manual transmission with overdrive because they are a period-correct powertrain combination that still perform very well, according to Joe.
He added the car can handle 70 mph (roughly 110 km/h) very easily on modern roads because of the overdrive unit.
Joe should be proud of his accomplishments thus far because he brought a very rare Canadian-only Ford product back from the dead and gave it a bright future.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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