I've been spending a lot of time in wrecking yards since the early 1980s, and during that time I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of these 5-1/2"-by-1-1/4" black-on-silver decals slapped in various locations on the dashboards of Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury products built during the mid-1960s-to-early-1980s period. A couple weeks back, I decided that I needed to find a new-old-stock example of this sticker to put on my travel laptop.

Since owners of the affected vehicles were mailed these stickers, there was no standard location for their application. Murilee Martin

The Ford "park-to-reverse" story was long and complex, but it came down to a design defect in automatic transmissions used in 23 million 1966-1980 Ford products; the detent in the shifter mechanism that separated the Park and Reverse positions tended to get rounded off and the shifter would slip into reverse. Much legal wrangling ensued, and the upshot was that Ford— which likely would have suffered financial obliteration via a 23-million-vehicle recall to replace major mechanical components, this taking place during the darkest days of the Malaise Era— was allowed to mail out warning labels instructing drivers to shove the shifter into Park real good and then mash that parking-brake pedal before shutting down the engine. Those of us who owned such cars back then generally knew about the flaky-shifter problem and double-checked shifter engagement while holding down the brake pedal during engine starting, and few actually applied those goofy stickers.

My much-battered and heavily-stickered laptop looks much better with a Park-To-Reverse decal in place. Murilee Martin

When I'm doing my race-organizer thing for the 24 Hours of LeMons, I use a beater laptop computer— sort of the electronic equivalent of a '93 Tercel with duct-tape upholstery patches— for tower-to-penalty-box communication, and of course that computer accretes thick layers of stickers. Now, thanks to an eBay seller with an NOS Park-To-Reverse Avoidance decal for a few bucks, I've got this piece of history located just to the right of my Re-Elect Nixon In '72 sticker and just above my Rob Ford—Stop The War On Cars sticker. Next up: a genuine mid-80s Honda CVCC Vacuum Hose Routing Diagram sticker!

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