R model Fairlane

[tom406]

Not so much a factory race car, such as a Thunderbolt, Z11 Impala, or '68 Hemi Dart/Barracuda, but an homologation special, just like the ZL1 Camaros. Build 50+ to get them OK'd for Stock/Super Stock, but still street legal and able to be driven on the street by those so inclined. ZL1 Camaros had heaters and while they didn't have open rears, they did have those restrictive 396 exhaust manifolds and exhaust systems.

As for Ford's delivering them with open rears- Equa Lock rearends are somewhat rare in the early/late '60's. I don't know if there was a reliability problem or what, but Ford Engineering and Carroll Shelby seemed to favor Detroit Lockers at this point for racing efforts, but their noisy action created a lot of unwarranted complaints at the dealership level. My guess is they wanted the car to be quiet and functional as-delivered, then subsequent Detroit Locker or spool installation would be on the owner. That's just my guess.

I don't think Ford was afraid of low (high numeric) rearends necessarily. T-Bolts had 4.57's I believe. But again, if some of these cars were going to end up on the street, 4.88's are just a pain and a warranty issue waiting to happen.

Its hard to sell a lot of purpose-built race cars. Even Shelby had to turn a good number of the 427 Cobra racing cars into S/C street cars just to make them go away.

TOM