Johnny & Amy Hopewell, Louisville, KY   

1964 Futura

I was seventeen when I saw the white Falcon sitting across the street from my parents' house. It was sitting in a vacant lot. The owner was a friend of my dad's. I had been driving my grandparents' car for a year and I was ready to buy an old car to fix up.  I had been working with a few good friends on had been working on Camaros for a couple of years. I had a good idea how to work on cars, but not Fords. Since I was ready to start a project, my dad asked his friend how much he wanted for the Falcon. He said he would take $300 for the broken down bird. It was in rough shape but I knew I wanted to see it fixed up. I now had my first car. In September of 1987, I had the car pulled over to a friend's house where I could start working on it. I started by taking the car apart piece by piece until it was just a shell of a car sitting there. I started putting the car back together in the spring of 1988. By the end of '88, I had the engine, transmission, and suspension straightened out. By the spring of 1989, I was ready to hit the road. I drove the car in primer until 1992, when I got it painted in March.

The motor in the car is a 1968 Mexican block 302, bored .030 over. It has TRW pistons. The block and Windsor Jr. heads have been milled and decked to create 10.5:1 compression. The cam is from Competition Cams. I have Victor Jr. intake and a 650 double pumper Holley carb. I have installed Sanderson Street Rod shorty headers which the exhaust flows through 2.5 inch pipes out the back with Flowmaster mufflers. I have a Mallory Comp 9000 distributor and a HyFire IV box. The transmission is a C-4 with an ATI Treemaster converter. I have installed an aluminum drive shaft. The rear-end is an 8-inch with 3.55:1 gears and an Auburn Gear posi unit.

The suspension of the car is donated from a 1966 Mustang. I purchased and installed the stainless steel 4-wheel disc brake setup and put a pair of underider traction bars.

The interior of the car is customized too.  The seats are out of a 1966 Mustang. The console is out of a 1963 Falcon. The carpet and door panels I made myself.

Over the years I have grown to like Falcons very much.  Probably the best thing I like about Falcons besides the look of them is how rare they are. You don't see very many of them. It's something different.