I was sitting in my truck, parked on the street about 5:30 this morning waiting for this place to open up so I could make a delivery when I saw this beat up old primer gray Falcon tooling down the street, probably being driven to work by its owner, when I realized, "Holy crap...that car is 50 years old."


(Kind of like this)

http://bridgetownblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/1961-ford-falcon.jpg

I still see these cars around, unrestored and being used as daily drivers. Not a whole lot of them, but I almost never see any other cars from that era anymore being used as work cars. And I see more Falcons than I do certain models of cars that were built 20, 30 years later. When's the last time you saw someone driving a Pinto or Escort to work? 

Sure you might see old Mustangs quite a bit but that's because Ford built something like 2 billion of them in 1965. And Mustangs are sporty high-performance cars that have high collector value.

Not the Falcon though. These were dumpy, plain-Jane compact family cars that Mom used to get groceries and Dad used to drop the kids off at the pool. Yet they're still out there just doing their jobs. Not so much the later 1964-70 models but the first ones, built between 1960 and 1963.

I wonder if, sometime in the 1960s, there was a board meeting at Ford Motor Company headquarters in Dearborn and a high-ranking engineer stood up and told Henry Ford II, "Mr. Ford? We have made a real breakthrough. After doing thorough testing we have determined that the current generation Falcon will last 50 years." And Henry Ford II stood up, his face purple with rage, pounded his fist on the table and yelled, "You fool! This is completely unacceptable! Don't you realize that if we build cars that last 50 years that no one will buy new ones? Now get back to the drawing board!!!"

And out of that meeting was born the Ford Pinto.  :P



I don't know about other parts of the country, but I still see them out there in the Midwest.

I don't know about other parts of the country, but I still see them out there in the Midwest.


I can vouch for parts of California, but that's because we're pretty much a rust-free zone.  If it doesn't snow, and it rarely even gets down to freezing, there's no need to salt the roads, and the metal can last almost forever.  The sun does a number on the interiors, but that's a lot easier to deal with than rust.

Autoblogger Murilee Martin has a column called Down on the Street (and its somewhat more depressing cousin, Down on the Junkyard) wherein he documents interesting automotive finds.

The rules for DOTS are in the name: the car must be found and photographed as parked on a public street - with rare exceptions made for parking lots.  Garage queens need not apply.

http://images.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/03/Falcon_Airport_Pickup-1280px-531x350.jpg

And yes, there are still Falcons in Denver.

Here's one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJfwTdgCnYI&feature=related

In Argentina it retained the same body well into the 80s and was discontinued in 1990. ;)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Ford_Falcon_Gh%C3%ADa.jpg