The 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint

One of the few pictures I can find of the Falcon.

The 4th car I owned was a 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint. It was the summer of 1994.

I got this car in a trade for my 1987 Nissan Sentra. When I got the Falcon, it had spun a bearing in the engine so my dad and I did a few day thrash session to get a new motor built and get the car running again. We reused the 289 block but first we bored the cylinders .30 over which pump the engine up to 298 cubic inches. New pistons went in, and we added a “healthy” camshaft. My dad cleaned up the ports on the heads and gasket matched everything before we put it back together. The car already had a Holley 650 Double Pumper carburetor for fuel. The C4 transmission had a high stall converter already installed as well as a B&M ratchet shifter. 4.11 gears in the 9” rear-end made the car launch hard but was terrible on the freeway.

Installing a new engine in the Falcon

At the time, I was living in Reno and the Falcon was my only source of transportation for getting to college and work daily. Thank goodness for cheap gas because that car had to get less than 10 MPG with that carb, 4.11 gears and my heavy foot. A few times I was forced to drive the car in the snow which was not exactly “easy”.

We had a lot of fun in the Falcon over the next couple of years. Street racing was popular down on Edison Way in Sparks. The Falcon was fast in the quarter mile compared to a lot of the other “street cars” that would show up. I could easily eat up the fox body Mustangs and other small block cars.

We enjoyed cruising in the car in downtown Reno during Hot August Nights. I met a lot of people because of this car and I'm still friends with several of them to this day.

This car was probably the catalyst for my love of fast cars. For many years, every car I saw or drove, I compered to the Falcon.

After a few years, I came to realize that I needed something better as a daily commuter but couldn’t afford to keep the Falcon and get something else. (I was a college student after all)

I sold the Falcon during Hot August Nights in 1996 and purchased a 1993 Ford Thunderbird.

To this day, I look at Falcons in the classified ads and think about building another. Would I love it as much now as I did back in 1994? Maybe someday I will buy one and find out.