Dad was a Ford man dyed in the wool, I followed right along his footsteps. The oldest car I recall him having when I was a kid was a 1955 Ford fordor with the straight six. Mom said she'd made him trade his '50 convertible for it because the p***enger door flew open and she fell out on a hard turn... She had a nice scar on her ankle to prove it. Dad built a Comet/Falcon hybrid out of three different cars, including the floor and dash out of a Mustang, around 1966 (he worked for a salvage yard driving a tow truck).... The car was a Comet 4dr body with Falcon front sheetmetal and the interior/dash from a wrecked '65 Mustang..... and, no, Dad didn't weld..... sheetmetal screws. I kid you NOT. And not one picture of that little red and white contraption exist today. But I remember riding in it many times, until Dad replaced it with a 1967 Mustang totalled in a rollover (roof down to the dashboard) that he rebuilt (properly!) by hand over four years (FOUR YEARS) of spare time... Mom couldn't drive it for ****.... factory 289 four speed, Sherwood green... But that Falcomet.... that started the Falcon obsession for me. I can't see three feet in front of my face anymore but I can spot a Falcon under a tarp behind a barn a quarter of a mile through an overgrown orchard in a thunderstorm at night if the taillight is showing! Then there's the shed full of Model A's Dad had..... and many a bank of blackberry bushes did I crawl through to verify the iden***y of some old jalopy he'd spotted while driving!
I'm not a Ford guy by nature, but there is a really cool 63.5 Falcon Sprint on Denver CL right not, 260 v8, 4 speed, 60k orig. miles, and has the Sprint tach still....love the '64 and '65 Sprints! Cool cars. 1963.5 Falcon Sprint LOW MILES - cars & trucks - by owner - vehicle... (craigslist.org)
When I was very young, we had a 59 Ford. I don’t remember it, was too young, but remember the car that replaced it, a new 67 Ford Custom 500, the cheap version of the Galaxie. Learned to drive in that barge, manual steering and brakes, no AC, those hot clear plastic seat covers, little 289 C 4. My first two cars were also Fords, 67 Stangs. I strayed to the GM side for a while then, but eventually came back to Fords. Had good and bad in all of them, but had better luck with blue ovals. The old man wasn’t a mechanic, about all he could do was change plugs and points and change his oil. He was amazed when I was able to do a brake job for him, me without any formal training, only what I had read in books. Wish he had been still alive to see my 47, he would really be amazed.
The Jalopy Journal
