1979 Ford Fairmont Futura review from North America

I pulled this car out of the bush at my parents place, after it had been parked there by a neighbor five, or six years earlier. We originally were going to just bag the car throughout the field trying to jump it and so on, but when I popped the hood, to my surprise the engine was perfectly clean, and looked fairly well maintained. Wrong. The Ignition was improperly wired with a homemade push button starter, that wouldn't start the car, the carburetor needed rebuilding (that a friend of mine over-torqued the accelerator pump on giving the car a dead spot in the throttle.) The shocks, and struts were fried, the disks brakes were worn out, and the rear drums needed major work. The emergency brake had been improperly, and sloppily installed only linking to one wheel. The solenoid was also fried, the windshield looked more like a road map. Also the headlights were burnt out, and didn't work properly,

the brights would only work for few minutes then all the lights would go out.

At about 200000km the regulator, and alternator died.

After sorting out all of the problems with the car, I installed over-sized front disks, stiffer Monroe shocks, A real pushbutton starter, skid plate, custom exhaust, custom rims, and slicks (don't ask why).I then added a 700 watt sound system, that killed the stock 25 year old, charging system.

After all that work I had a surprisinglyfun car, in the summer with the slicks it would handle corners like it was on rails, when I put good snow tires on it, it was near impossible to get stuck.

It's just too bad it was so ugly.