The Ford Fairmont Futura (and it’s twin, the Mercury Zephyr Z-7), are love-it or hate-it cars. From the doors forward, it’s Fairmont. But from the doors back, you are looking at what was originally supposed to be a Thunderbird body shell on the Fox platform, from that weird, upswept “basket handle” B-pillar to the funky rhomboid quarter windows. The overall shape of the car was pleasing enough, and of course there’s the “it’s a Fox” rationale for building one at all. If the parts bolt, then why would you look past one? Fairmonts, for all of their shortcomings, did one thing right: lightness. The most optioned out version would struggle to cross the 3,000 pound curb weight mark, so a mildly warm 302 would be amusing and a B-cam, tricked out 5.0L would be a riot.
So, to our pick of the day. Where do we start? The four-speed shifter jutting up from the floor? The swapped-in four-eye Mustang dash with the 170 MPH BBK speedometer? How about the running gear yanked from a 1987 Mustang, fitted with a four-barrel and headers. This Futura is a bit on the ragged side, but there’s so much going for it that we’d just spend the leftover cash making repairs. We could go into the big build, with the five-speed swap, the five-lug swap, the Ford LTD nose swap, paint and so on, but there’s a pleasing honesty to the raggedness of this Futura. If that Iron Maiden shirt comes with the car, pay the seller the $4,500 in full.
I took my driver’s test in my Mother’s Z-7 in 1979. I always dreamers about doing extensive fox body mods to that car.
They definitely have street/race-cred –> Bob Gliddens Pro-Stock Fairmont and Animal Jim’s early Pro-Mod Z-7 “Zeke”.