Hello, my
name is Bob Smith. I became a Falcon owner at age 16 when my dad inherited a 1964 Falcon 2 door post car with a 260 V8 "3
on a tree" manual transmission. I drove that car for about 9 years until it finally rusted through so bad it was
no longer safe to drive.
My recent
acquisition is a 1965 Falcon Futura Hardtop. I bought this car on eBay after I had "toyed" with the idea of reviving
an old hobby. I always fixed my own Ford Falcon in my youth and had friends that fixed theirs too.
Most of it was out of necessity, but with a group of friends, it was fun. I even went through a period where I was living in Alabama and I bought and fixed-up old
cars and then sold them up north.
But, for
the last 15 years I was not involved in anything with cars except maintenance on my daily driver. After I started driving
Ford Rangers, I even feared I had lost my mechanic's skills as I found these vehicles to be almost bullit-proof
compared the the absolute junk I found in the 1974-1984 Chevy Monte Carlo phase I went through.
Anyway, I
went way out of my comfort zone on eBay one day in January of 2007 while looking at Ford Falcon's on eBay and placed a bid.
I had one Falcon-bidding experience prior to this one...got beat-out on an "unmolested" 1964 Sprint V8 4-speed car
that had been in a warehouse for the last 20 years. I would be in a much different place today had I won the bid on that
first Falcon (I lost the bid in the final few seconds by $100). That car needed "everything" and I might have never finished
the project in retrospect. This 1965 Falcon Futura, however, was drop-dead gorgeous right out of the box. People
came to it and gazed every time I stopped on the interstate while trailering her home from South
Carolina to PA. Even though I bought this car via pictures only, without a test drive and paid more than it
was worth, I didn't care...it was the Falcon for me.
Now, I will
admit to you that I did get ripped off buying a car this way. If this car had been on a local lot close to
home and I had spent the time and effort that buying an old car requires, I'd have not bought this car, or I would have
set a much lower "best offer" that I was willing to pay for it. Even though it drove for my test drive before I
loaded it on the trailer, it never made it from the trailer into my garage when I got it home. This car needed everything...I
mean everything down to the lightbulbs behind the dash. I have to laugh that the guy I bought it from said that "you
could probably drive it back to PA". To this day, I don't know how it even test-drove; all luck, I guess.
Working on
the car has re-kindled an old flame and drive that I have not had in years. I find it invigorating to pull the transmission
3 weekends in a row trying to find the "shudder" I get when I let out the clutch. I don't mind the fluid-stained driveway
and garage floor from fluids pouring out of every seal, gasket, fitting and connection in the entire car.
I enjoy hunting for and replacing virtually every mechanical part on this car.
The good part
through all of this is that it I find the car drop-dead gorgeous to look at. I almost don't care if it moves. When I
take this car out for a spin, it is like being in my own parade. There isn't a drive I take in it where someone doesn't
go out of their way to come to me and say how beautiful this car is. It makes all the hard work work I put
into it very worthwhile...actually, priceless!
