A long story...

OK, here goes: A while back my mother's cousin had to move into a nursing home leaving behind four old (junk) cars needing someone to take care of them. Not knowing if they were worth anything or not, my Dad and I went down to Atlanta and had them towed back to Dalton before the bank foreclosed on the house where they were parked. There was a '42 Ford pickup that's in pieces. All that's left is the cab, doors, hood, frame and the old flat-head v8 engine (which is rusted up and needs to be rebuilt). There was also a '78 Mercury Zephyr that's in descent condition, although not a particularly collectible car.

Then there were two Ford Falcon's, a '62 and a '67. The '62 is rusted out around the bottom and the engine is in pieces, so it's not much good except as a parts car. The '67 on the other head was technically capable of being restored. Sure it was a straight 6 with some rust issues (OK, the floor pans are gone), terrible paint and a trashed interior, but nothing that can't be fixed, right? Anyway, I liked the lines of the car so while I was looking for buyers for the other three, I was studying up on what it would take to get the '67 running. Here she is:

Actually, she did have front tires, but we had to put them on the '62 to move it as one of the '62's front tires was dry-rotted and flat and the other wasn't much better. I'm not sure that anyone else could see what I did in this car, but there it is. Oh, and it took some time to even figure out that it was a '67. One distinctive feature of the '67 Falcon compared to the '66 and '68 and later Falcon's which share the same body style is that the front fenders have little vent-like indentations which this car is missing. I think the fenders got replaced at some point but from other clues (front grill, etc.) and finally from some numbers we found stamped on the radiator support, we determined that it was in fact a '67.

So I'm going back-and-forth on whether or not to sell it or restore it and during a "sell it" phase, I started checking for other '67 Falcon's for sale on-line to try to figure out what it was worth. I found one about 50 miles to the south that looked interesting. Unlike my first '67, this one wasn't a base model, but a Falcon Futura that had originally come with a 289 V8, plus nicer interior, more trim, a vinyl top, etc. Oh, and it was running, relatively rust free and with a good interior.

I went to see it a couple of days later and bought it:

My wife thought I was crazy and started calling the car "Ugly Betty." It's starting to grow on her though, so it's just "Betty" now. Betty came with a 289, although at some point that got taken out and a 302 installed. The main thing is that it has the beefier drive-shaft, rear-axle, etc. that you need with a v8. On the first '67 Falcon, to upgrade to a v8 you'd have to upgrade a whole lot of stuff beside just the engine. It would have easily cost me more to get the first Falcon up to this level than it cost just to buy this car, plus I have the first car for spare parts as needed.

So now it's home and the real work begins. The first step will be to make sure it's safe to drive (check brakes in particular). Once I get it running more reliably and make sure it's safe I'll take it to a couple of shows or cruise-ins and then when the weather cools off, I'll start stripping paint, removing the vinyl from the top, getting rid of the rust, etc.

It appears to have originally had midnight blue metalic paint (which shows through where the baby blue paint is flaking off) and probably a dark blue or black top. That sounds pretty good unless I think of something better between now and then.