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1960's Ford Falcons
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The Philadelphia Police Department used 1960 Ford Falcons as patrol cars, but promptly disposed of them since they couldn't take the punishing urban environment and the rigors of police patrol.
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
It runs fairly well for the size of the engine.
It can sit for 2 weeks and I can get in it , pull the choke knob(remember those?) and it will start in about 2 seconds of cranking.
As I remember, the 170 had the blue valve cover while the 200 (3.3 L) had red.
Anyway, I'd imagine 0-60 in the lower 20-second range for the 144. Maybe 17-18 seconds for the 170? Just wild guesses here.
We had the '61 and '62 Falcons, both with the mighty 144. Maybe it only made 60 mph in neutral and going downhill ........
The numbers seem to favor the Falcon. It had stick with 3.89 gears while the Corvair had Powerglide and 3.27s.
My Falcon's engine was in good shape while the Corvair had mostly STP in the crankcase the night I totaled it.
Even the weights were roughly comparable, 2305 pounds for the Corvair 500 sedan (but add a few for Powerglide) and 2558 for the Falcon wagon.
Of course the Corvair's flat six was inherently balanced while the Falcon six was a thrashy four bearing thinwall wonder. You heard, felt and sincerely believed it was working hard.
It also could be that (gasp!) the Falcon six wasn't putting out near its rated horsepower.
And it's long been my contention that in normal driving an underpowered car feels less underpowered with automatic. I know this flies in the face of accepted wisdom, but I think with automatic you're not always fighting to get the car rolling so you're less aware of the lack of power. You had to work with the Falcon to get it from Point A to Point B.
But most likely it's because the 'Vair was faster than the wheels I had before it, a Raleigh ten speed.
Makes me wonder about the 140 hp rating for my one-time 1979 Mustang 302 V-8.
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
But with some engines their net was closer to their advertised gross than others. Pontiacs were usually under-rated to make them more competitive in class drag racing, while Fords were often over-rated for better ad copy.
I have a feeling the 144's 85 horses were malnourished. I've driven many a gutless dog--'50 Plymouth and '54 Chevy pickup come to mind--and nothing was quite as slow as my Falcon.
I always got confused, I guess, because I thought net hp WAS at the wheels. Anyway, here's my take on it, so correct me if I'm wrong...
Gross hp: engine only: no exhhaust, alternator, water pump, intake restriction, transmission, etc.
Net hp: engine with alternator, water pump, stock intake/exhaust, etc, but not accounting for transmission, driveshaft, and the rest of the driveline
Wheel hp: whatever's left over by the time the power gets to the wheels.
So if something like a Falcon 144 is rated at 85 hp gross, I guess it's down to 60-65 net, and maybe only 30-40 or so at the drive wheels.
As for gutless wonders, I think the worst I've ever driven was my college buddy's 1980 Accord. We timed it from 0-60 once with a stopwatch. It took something like 30 seconds to hit 60, but that was with 3 people on board.
Falcons must have been pretty durable cars. I remember seeing them on the streets all the time when I was a kid. The herd seemed to thin out in the late '70's/early '80's, but I guess that says something for a car that ended production in "1970 1/2"!
After they made these modifications to the Mustang [I forget what they were, but they mentioned it cost $1000] the rearwheel horsepower had gone up to 188, I believe. Anyway, it would be interesting to see a table with all the HP ratings for cars-net and at the wheels.
The Falcon actually shared quite a bit with the intermediate Fords starting around 1966 or so. Whereas a Dart and a Coronet were on completely different platforms, same with, say, a Chevy II and a Chevelle, the Falcon became a truncated Fairlane. The similarity was especially striking with the Falcon wagons, which were on the same wheelbase as the Fairlanes, but with the Falcon fenders, hood, and grille.
Later that day, a guy passed me going the other way in a red 63 2dr-again, the cheaper looking one. I could see and hear him shifting the 3spd on the column [winding out first gear to about 7mph!] and I remembered what it was like to drive those [or any 60s Ford] with the 3speed column shift. They were particularly clunky to drive just because of the shifting and clutch action. That's why floor shift conversions caught on so fast in the 60s. But that clutch linkage was also so cumbersome, and the clutch action itself hard to get used to. I think Ford could have made a lot better car to drive if they'd worked on the ergonomic things like that. Not to mention the slow steering.
Anyway, we've done a lot of bashing here of those early 60s Falcons. But, I was thinking-back in 1960, in the $2000 price range-if you wanted a car that would hold 4-6 people, room for luggage, get good gas mileage, [high 20s] and be fairly dependable and cheap to repair, what were your choices?
Just look at the imports available at the time-in that price range [$2000-plus or minus a little].
Would it be a Simca, a Panhard, Opel, or maybe a Vauxhall? A Renault, or a Hillman? The Peugeout and Volvo cost a bit more. The Japanese cars weren't even around yet. How 'bout a Fiat 1100, or a Skoda? When you think back to the 1960 context, and what else was available at the time, the Falcon looks pretty good. Never mind it was gutless and not fun to drive. Some of those imports weren't much either. People didn't buy Falcons for that. For just reliable, basic transportation, with the support of a huge dealer network/service/parts, hey, it was OK.
I think I might have bought a Valiant, though.
Just think, though-the Falcon was the basis for the Mustang, and with some upgrading/tweaking, the Mustang was fun. Look at the Shelby GT 350.
I wonder who will buy that forlorn little white 4dr I saw for sale.
Still compared to a Falcon, a VW Bug was built like a Mercedes Benz, wheezy engine though it might have had. Most of the other imports were no great shakes that's true. Well, little Borgwards were good cars, and the Volvo 544and Mercedes 190s were excellent, albeit more expensive.
Basically, American car companies refused to believe that you could make money building small cars. Their slogan was "small cars = small profits"
The Japanese proved them very very wrong about ten years later. Also, the Japanese got lucky with the 1973 oil embargo and with the wonderful little Honda CVCC.
And American companies STILL didn't get it about smaller, good handling, economical cars until the 1980s.
I see a couple of Falcons and a Comet on the road here weekly. Actually see them on the I-10 headed to down town PHX, AZ
Besides my 62 Falcon that I see daily... LOL
Tony
Just out of curiosity, what kind of demographics did the typical Beetle driver have back in, say, 1960? I'd imagine that most people bought the Beetle as a spare car, or it was bought as a car for high school and college kids who hadn't started a family yet. GM, Ford, and Chrysler seemed more intent on making a car that could substitute for a standard-sized car or even replace it, rather than merely accent it, as the Beetle seemed more suited to do.
As for the Big 2.5, sometimes I question whether or not they've gotten it together with their small cars, even today!
Of course, the VW advertising was truly brilliant, and this played a large role is re-fashioning American drivers' attitudes about small cars.
In this sense, VW probably helped the American compacts. I say this because resistance to small cars was so fierce in the 1950s that no American company dared to try and sell one, even Falcon sized.
You'd think that when cars as cheap, bad and homely as the Rambler sold in large numbers, that the Big Three would have awakened and said "My god, if they can sell THAT, we can sell anything!". Hard to believe, but people were buying Rambler Americans with flathead engines in the 60s!!
I remember these cars. The labels for the dash knobs were actually glue on decals, and right side sun visor was optional.
The first car I ever owned was a 1964 Falcon Sprint. Bought it about 2 weeks after getting my licence for $575. It had a 260 V8, 2 speed Fordomatic, buckets, and all the Sprint trim (chrome engine kit, center console, fake woodgrain steering wheel, wire wheel covers, etc).
One of the many things I learned about old cars is that they always seemed to need new batteries and radiators. I got pretty good at replacing those after a few cars....
Anyway, after a clean up and whatnot my best friend and I took it cruising on Van Nuys Blvd. This was 1981 and the whole cruising phase was winding down on places like Van Nuys Blvd due to massive police presence. Still, growing up a car crazy kid in LA meant Van Nuys was a critical right of passage and had to be cruised; kinda like earning your Combat Infantrymen's Badge.
On the way home I "raced" a friend who had a '68 Camaro SS with a 396 in it. Driving north on I-5 leaving the Valley I was doing about 105 and the car was allll over the place. My friend must have been doing 130+ because he completely blew my doors off. Ahhhhhh, youth.
I kept that car a good long time. Had it repainted in the original color (that 60's gold color), had some interior work done, and eventually put in a 289 and C-4. It was fun to drive in a wild and wooly sort of way. Pressing on the manual brakes was a real adventure - you could feel each wheel cylinder doing it's job one at a time and with 3/4 turn loose steering, it was a real chore bringing that car to a straight stop.
My roommate eventually killed it by driving a U-Haul truck into the LR 1/4 panel and messing up the best part of the car, the body, which was arrow straight and totally rust free being a CA car its whole life (it was built in San Jose and was sold originally in the SF Valley). Ended up selling it to a parts guy for $1000, IIRC.
Still, Falcon's are pretty cool in their own right. I get the urge every once in awhile to dig up another one but there are soooo many cars vying for my attention.
Great thread.
Anyway, my sister had borrowed that car once to drive home from Stockton, CA to San Francisco-a 2 hr drive or so. On one part of the trip, she came to a hill, and had to shift to second gear to make it up the hill. As she shoved the lever in to second, it came right out of the column in her hand, leaving her stranded. Had to get towed.
My bro-in-law traded that car soon after, for, um, a 61 Rambler American 4dr, flathead 6 and 3sp stick. This was in 1968.
Some of us used to joke about the cars he had in those days, and the stories that went with them...
Now all you need are American Racing 17" wheels, a little more rake, have Ernie Elliott build you a 340 stroker, pop in a Jerico Slamshifter (do they still make those?), about 500W of stereo, some flames.............
But as it is it looks very cool.
EDIT: This is the tranny I'm thinking of:
http://www.jericoperformance.com/products/clutchtype4speed.html
I have all 3 of the major manufacturers covered in the car........LOL
What kind of tranny do you have in it?
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
IIRC the 273 is the old polysphere 318 with newer heads circa 1964, which would explain the size of the block, but I may be wrong.
One of the quickest visual cues is that the old A engine had heads and valve covers that had kind of a sawtooth pattern on the outer edges, whereas the LA engine has normal rectangular valve covers.
Just from eyeballing it though, the 273/318/360 engine looks bulkier than the Chevy smallblock, which then looks a bit bigger than the Ford smallblock.
I installed a custom crossmember with Mustang II suspension into the Dodge.
I used parts that I had around the house for the build up of the Lancer.
My web site is a bit outdated but here it is:
http://www.geocities.com/crosley_az/lancer.htm
My Dad had two '48 Crosley wagons-the first he bought for $40-the second, better one for $100.
This was in 1957-58. These both had the cast iron blocks-not the laminated ones.
I remember helping him remove the engine from the first one-after everything was unbolted, he just stepped inside the engine bay and lifted it out!
Interesting engine, that was used in many different applications.
Always interesting to see different stuff!
1962 model. Good running 170, 3 speed. I have a found a 78 200 and C-4 tranny for it.
Little rust (6 x 9 hole) in the front floors
She drove it until early 1969, when she was rear-ended by a late 1960s Chrysler in a chain-reaction collision. The collision damaged the gas tank (it was leaking), so she bought a 1966 Dodge Dart 270 sedan.
IIRC, there was an episode of "Legends of Motorsport" describing one of the MC Rallies showcasing the Falcon effort. Gotta tape that show one day........
What I mostly remember about the Falcon (other than it was pretty gutless) was getting it stuck on the railroad track off some farm road. I managed to jack it up and push it off the jack a couple of times and got back on the blacktop 20 minutes before the Memphis freight passed. I'm not sure if anyone in the family would've minded it getting smashed.
Steve
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Thanks
Maybe try going to www.google.com and searching for "1966 Ford Falcon Repair Manual" or something like that? Might return some useable hits.