FORD FAIRMONT: The long-strand comb-over.
Some years ago, as we were reminiscing about our family’s long gone but not forgotten, 1978 Ford Fairmont, my brother said to me – “That car was inspired by the Audi Fox, and the Volvo 240,”.
I can see that… if I squint hard enough.
Ahh… the Fairmont’s comforting velour…
For those too young to have been around in the ‘70s and ‘80s - I am so sorry for you - it might seem incredible that the Ford Fairmont even existed because even though they were best-selling cars during their time, they have completely disappeared from the earth. I have not seen one out in the wild in more than two decades.
Where are they? Used and abused, unloved, and then discarded, they’ve disappeared and left to roam the blurred memories of melancholic romantics such as myself.
I cannot forget, regardless of how blurry the images become, how it felt to travel in its burgundy velour cocoon, with its off-gassing scent of plastic-fantastic providing a familiar reassurance. Or later, after I spilled a Carvel ice cream on the rear carpet - to my brother’s fury - the remarkably persistent, and pungent, yet elegant smell of spoiled milk mixed with Lagerfeld cologne. It was like a warm embrace. Oh, such bliss.
Its large greenhouse too is etched in my memory, as it was a boon for a kid since through it you could see the entire sky. Sometimes, if you looked hard enough through those large windows, you could even see the future.
My brother, being older, would sometimes collect me at school and spare me the South Florida sauna that was riding in a non-air-conditioned bus. I’d sit in the front seat, seatbelt on, yet striding my Muppets metal lunchbox. We’d take the long way home listening to Supertramp’s “Take The Long Way Home” and I’d be terribly impressed as the Ford would wheeze itself up to its speedometer-marked top speed of 85mph, basically warp 8.5 for all I knew.
We took many a family trip in that car. My grandfather (from my mother’s side) sitting up front, regally - a tall man, so he got the front seat - with my brother driving, while we followed my father in his Datsun 280ZX Turbo to Marco Island, Florida. Thunderstorms threatening in the distance, torrential rains engulfing us. Yet, I always felt safe in the Fairmont’s velour embrace, kept comfortable from the oppressing humidity and heat with the arctic blast that Ford’s truly amazing AC provided.
Mind you, stepping out of the Datsun and into the Fairmont felt akin to leaving Epcot Center and arriving at the Magic Kingdom’s “Small World” ride, a step backward, but I knew the Fairmont was the logical choice for the family and for me to ride in.
Our Fairmont, mom, grandpa, and our father’s 280ZX.
Its exterior silver paint always felt a little primitive. Was it paint or just body panels that had been left unpainted? I don’t know, yet it was not necessarily uncool given the DeLorean made much ado about its stainless-steel paint-less body. I liked imagining it was the same story here.
The poor Fairmont was crashed, not totaled, fortunately - or unfortunately, given the hack repair job done - by our father’s “secretary”.
I do not mean secretary as in the stereotypical woman of old that would type and take calls, but an older man, who was akin to a sidekick, which my father for reasons unknown always had in his orbit, like a satellite. Picture the man as an old, Cuban, Barney Rubble, who was paid. Guillermo is his name. Was, I should say, of course, for if he is still around, he’d be close to 200 years old. Yet, he is Cuban, and like Yoda… live a long time, Cubans do.
I don’t know the exact story, but I recall my brother being livid - not an unusual state of affairs - because the car would not, for the life of it, drive straight anymore after Guillermo’s “kiss” with a wall. Still, it stayed with us for some time until one day I was told it was to be traded in as my brother would be getting a new car.
That night, I sneaked into the garage before my father and brother left for the dealership and lay in the back seat of our soon-to-be exiled friend. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was not in agreement with this decision but that as a little kid, I had no say in the matter. I didn’t even have a say in what I wore and ate, a desperate plea for reverse compassion. I expressed my confidence that another good and less crazy family would take him in, which I knew was a lie as I had seen the “good and less crazy” families of South Florida, and they were, for the most part, insane.
What else could I say?
What can one say to a nurturing, wheezing, allergy-prone, wallflower of a friend, one whom you cared for, but that you know would sadly not amount to much more in life after leaving.
My brother with his Mustang, and our father’s white 280ZX. Turbo this time.
Leave he did. Yes, he, the Fairmont was a man. A middle-aged man, named Bill, sporting a long-strand comb-over. A man with a sweet demeanor, but with sweat stains always visible on his Burdines dress shirt. It was Florida, what else would you expect.
That same night, past midnight, my brother awakened me and we snuck into the garage to meet the new family member. It was a black 1982 Ford Mustang GT 5.0. It was an impressive sight, aggressive yet not intimidating (at least not to me). It meant business.
We lowered the rear seat’s back forward, thus extending the trunk into the cabin, tuned the Ford factory radio to Y100, and as The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” played softly, we lay strewn in the car’s black carpet, smelling the wonderful scent of new car dreams and possibilities, the possibilities of how many poor souls this black beast would leave staring at its louvered rear window.
But this is a story about the Fairmonts of our family, not the Mustang. Yes, I use the plural, because there was to be a second coming for us with the Fairmont, in the shape of a 1982 Ford Fairmont Futura (four-door as well), which my father purchased for my grandfather (from my father’s side). This was the “rational” choice after my father had purchased, and then had to return, a BMW 5 series, which my grandfather refused as unpractical and too much of a car for his mere three months a year of wintering in South Florida.
The futuhhhrahh is here…
This was the Fairmont to have. The Futura. Why, even the name was already better. It was… from the future... Even though it had very un-futuristic white wall tires. It was cream white, with a tan-colored velour interior, including faux wood paneling all over, even on the center of the steering wheel. Not a particularly nice faux wood, but a very appropriate early ‘80s kind. And it had power controls for everything!
If you can say our silver Fairmont was abused - between Guillermo’s cigar-fueled incompetence and my brother channeling Michael Delaney any time he could – then you could say the Futura in turn… was not. The latter car was driven as softly and as slowly as possible without going backward in time.
My grandfather would, as mentioned before, only drive it a few months a year. So, even though it was not abused in the way it was driven, it was a sad car. Parked most of the year, it was left alone to the harsh reality of Miami Beach’s weather. It was partially covered to survive the elements, but with Miami Beach’s deluge-like rains and scorching sun, to say this is as absurd as saying someone “partially survived” death. It was brutal. But this was its living arrangement.
After my grandfather passed away in 1987, the car stayed in the same place, to be used when any of us were in Miami Beach. Then in 1991, there finally came a chance to see for myself what the Fairmont was like to drive, by way of my grandfather’s Futura.
I slid into its comfortable, high-positioned chair. Placed the key in the ignition. The familiar metallic, dentist drill-like sound blared, which was a very period Ford way of indicating “the door is open, and the key is in the ignition, jackass”. I cranked the engine and it started up fast, its 85 horses awakened from a deep slumber, more annoyed than excited. At first, they began to kick their legs and the car shook here and there. After a few minutes, the horses calmed down and I depressed the brake pedal, moved the steering wheel-mounted shifter into reverse, and as I removed my foot, the car sped away as if it was finally escaping its unacceptable living condition.
Driving the Futura was quite a perplexing experience. It felt less like driving and more like sitting on a Lazy Boy chair as someone moved you from one side to another while you looked at a large front widow-sized monitor playing a video POV of a drive.
Drunk sailors for illustration purposes.
When any spirited acceleration or braking took place, the Futura floated and sloshed around like a drunken sailor trying to restrain himself in front of a superior officer. Its steering, which required only pinky-fingered control, was soft like room temperature butter, unprecise like a first sexual encounter, and as disconnected and entertaining as listening to an aunt’s religious experience.
A torpedoed ship listing for illustration purposes.
The truly entertaining – or scary – part came when guiding the steering wheel into a turn. If done at or slightly above the speed limit, the Futura listed like a frigate that had been torpedoed, its tires yelped like a chihuahua that had been stepped on during a loud party. The “loud party” was the sound the engine made when driven close to its up-shifting speed, a sound reminiscent of a bag of screws being dropped into a running garbage disposal machine, with the water running, of course.
But I guess all of that is precisely what made it interesting. Like a loud, snorting, unsophisticated, talkative, and improper acquaintance, it provided some eye-rolling entertainment, yet entertainment nonetheless, thanks to and because of its idiosyncratic ways.
After hurricane Andrew in 1992, which the Futura survived, but now because of it, sported a wind-induced facial peel, it was repainted. Cheaply. It was at this time too that its roof liner began to sag, which added to the excitement since its AC had stopped cooling too, making the drive feel like a Bedouin immersive experience.
When I returned to Miami Beach the next year the Futura was gone. My father said he had given it away. Who knows. Maybe it’s true, maybe not. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe Guillermo crashed it, again.
For my part, I like to dream it found our old Fairmont, and ran away with it. Together, the FOX-bodied survivors would reminisce about their time with my family, and then complain, rightly so, of how unworthy we were of them, and of their sad condition in life.
But as with the other Fairmonts and Futuras that roamed America, it is gone. Which comes as a warning. Nothing lasts forever, and even the blurred melancholic memories of a romantic will one day too be gone.