Ford’s original Mustang was based on the company’s small-car platform, which makes today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Falcon the four-door Mustang we never got, right? Let’s see if this long-dormant donor deserves its reawakening.
I’m going to be perfectly honest with you—I haven’t got the first clue about the cosmetics industry. Hell, my shampoo-buying decisions are based solely on whether or not it says “shampoo” on the bottle. I don’t even repeat after lathering and rinsing. Eff the establishment!
That being said, I am pretty familiar with Mary Kay Cosmetics, simply because I’ve seen that company’s Cadillacs driving around. Those serve as a perk for their top sellers, as well as advertising, and are typically painted in the brand’s corporate pink colour.
We saw one of those yesterday, a 1988 Cadillac Allante that had been a Mary Kay car before its lease ran out and it was sold off. Now, usually, Mary Kay cars are resprayed once their tour of duty is up. They don’t want people faking it, after all.
For whatever reason, that Allante escaped with its pink intact. That fact, and a $US6,500 ($9,892) asking price didn’t seem to play in its favour, however, as 71 per cent of you considered the combo an imperfect match, resulting in a Crack Pipe loss.
The Ford Motor Company has a bit of an interesting naming convention for its product line here in the States. With a few notable exceptions for legacy products, they like to anoint their cars with names beginning with ‘F’ and their SUVs and crossovers with names beginning with ‘E.’ That’s all kinds of limiting but has given us great names like… well, I don’t know. Focus? Eco Sport? Do you see what I mean?
Back in the day, however, Ford dropped an F-bomb on the world in the form of the Falcon, and in terms of corporate cachet, it is perhaps one of the most influential cars in the company’s history. That’s because the first Falcon served as the basis for Ford’s Mustang sporty coupé, a car that would eclipse its Falcon forerunner in both fame and longevity.
Now, Falcon is a great car name. And that makes it a shame that here in the U.S. we only got to enjoy it for little over a decade. The OG Ford Falcon was introduced here in late 1959 as a ’60 model and it was dunzo halfway through the 1970 model year. Here it was replaced by the Maverick, which to be fair, did carry on much of the Falcon’s underpinnings.
That original Falcon’s tooling was shipped to Ford Argentina where it amazingly served for another two decades. In Australia, the Falcon soldiered on until 2016, albeit with ever more modern styling and enhanced features. It died along with all other localised Ford production down under in 2016.
This 1965 Ford Falcon sedan is claimed to be a “BARN FIND sort of.” Don’t you just love equivocation?
The ad explains that the car has been sitting for a decade under a cover, and that does make it a car in need of rejuvenation. Sadly though, there was apparently no actual barn involved in its years of stasis. That’s just how things go these days.
This is a fairly plain-jane example, the kind of thing that until recently hipsters drove ironically, although these days it seems that sixties iron has fallen out of favour with the beard wax bunch. The car is presently not running but apparently does roll as the tires are said to hold air. That shouldn’t scare you too much. The “Thriftpower” inline-six under the hood is one of history’s great engines, and it shouldn’t require any heroic measures to bring back to life.
As evidenced by the faded sticker on the air cleaner housing, this is the 200 cubic inch edition, the largest offered in the car. That features an iron block and head, uniquely with the intake manifold moulded into the latter.
The only major issue here might be the Motorcraft carburetor which is likely done for and may demand hard to find parts. When new it made 105 (gross) horsepower and 156 lb-ft of torque and would do so all day and night with little to no complaining. These are simple and good engines.
A three-speed automatic with column shift backs that up and is probably more likely to cause reawakening headaches than will the mill. Brakes, of course (non-power drums all around) will need a rebuild before you test either element of the driveline.
The bodywork looks solid, although with a patina of surface rust once valued by those aforementioned hipsters. It’s still perfectly drivable as it sits and a good washing and maybe some sort of paint rejuvenation would likely do it wonders. It looks like three hubcaps are accounted for, with just one appearing to be AWOL.
The interior is pretty funky, with its colour-keyed blue carpet and drapes and a grandma quilt covering the front bench. There are a number of little issues here, but nothing that would make the car unlivable. Plus, who doesn’t love a strip speedometer?
The title is clean and, in fact, the ad notes that the car was once owned by a NIKE fashion model. That’s all kinds of WTF. I’m more fascinated by the fact that in the Sixties, Ford licensed the Peanuts comic strip characters to advertise the Falcon line. The interchange between Charlie Brown and Lucy at the end of this brochure is oddly downbeat for a car advert.
OK, today’s car is not a drive-away. It is in fact, a roll up your sleeves project that, honestly, you could likely get sorted out in a weekend if you have a decent auto store nearby. Considering its role in creating Ford’s compact car niche and siring the Mustang, it’s also a car that represents a lot of history for fans of FoMoCo. What might that all be worth?
The asking price is $US2,000 ($3,044) and while it’s not that exciting a model, it’s a seemingly solid example. Do you think it could be worth that two-grand asking to bring this Falcon back into the fold?
You decide!
H/T to RevUnlimiter for the hookup!