Junkyard Find: 1970 Ford Falcon Futura Sedan
We often forget that Ford made the Falcon until 1970. That’s in North America; you could buy a new Falcon— based on the original 1960 version— in Argentina until 1991, and Australians can still buy Falcons today. The shortened-Fairlane-based 1966-70 Falcon tends to get overlooked, unless you live in East Oakland, so it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at when I spotted this one in my local self-serve wrecking yard.
For a moment, I thought it was some sort of AMC product, but the Mustang-esque long hood/short trunk gave it away as a Ford. This is actually a very rare car; Ford made the Falcon name a trim level for the ’70 Fairlane and designated it a 1970-1/2 model year car (no doubt to avoid marketing confusion while FoMoCo pitched the new-ish Maverick). Some 1969 Falcons were sold as 1970 models, and that’s what we’re looking at here.
Does that rarity make it valuable? Well, no. The surprise is that a four-door, six-cylinder ’69/’70 Falcon evaded The Crusher as long as this one did. Still, I estimate that there are 10,000 1970 Mustangs for every 1970 Falcon still extant, so it would be nice if more of them could survive.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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My driving school instructor had one of these , I believe a 1975 Maverick ? I took my lessons in 1980 - what I remember is that it was a boring car compared to my dads car at the time ( a 68 Newport) . The maverick had standard steering ( only car I drive without power steering ! )
I own a 1969 falcon futura 4 door hardtop, original inline 6 and c4 transmission and it still runs to this day.