Greetings from PRNDL in 1963! Back when I was still good looking. 🙂
This is my dad’s 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 hardtop. He owned this from about ’62 or ’63 up until ’65 when he got rear-ended and the trunk smashed like a tin can. I have a 1964 Ohio plate that I dug out of the family garage a couple of years ago that may have been on this very car. (Alas, no photos to support that theory.)
The second pic is me and my Mom. The colors were Coral Sand and Colonial White. Try as I might, I just can’t find those colors on in very many web pics.
If Junqueboi has one of those Ford hubcaps, I’d like to buy it from him… It’d look cool next to that ’64 plate.
Thanks for the coolest car site going!
PRNDL
(the CC Kids queue is getting low, so send in your kids/teen pics to curbsideclassic (at) gmail.com or via the Contact form.
What a great looking car,so often overlooked in favour of the 57 Chevy & Mopars.
Glad you like it, Gem!
Dad’s favorite nickname for this one was the “Ford-Orange” car.
I eventually did find pics of a Ford like this one, except that it had fender skirts. In spite of that imperfection, I made it the wallpaper for my PC screen. Our own family pics are just little Kodacolor prints.
I recall a blue & white 4 door from the USAF base was a regular sight when visiting my Grandparents as a child around the time of your photo.Ford outsold Chevy in 57 but got to show today and you wouldn’t know it,57 Fords are seen a lot less today than 57 Chevys.
My father’s first wife had a ’57 Ford. He was street racing some other bonehead in it, ran a yellow (RED) light & wrecked it for her! This was long before he met my mother.
Hey PRNDL, I’ll check and report back. It might take a few days though.
As an aside, the collection continues to grow! I scored a Packard wheelcover and another weird one (Desoto maybe?) this morning!! Both were underneath a pile of scrap metal that had been stuffed into a very unfortunate ’69 Toronado… I’m glad I went through that one… hopefully it will still be there in a few days when I return for the 455.
Thanks, JB!
I’ll keep my fingers crossed!
Well, I rooted around in the stacks and didn’t find one, sorry. I’m pretty sure I did have one at some point though. I’ll look some more this weekend..but it’s not looking promising. Bummer.
Thanks for looking, JB! 🙂
Hey PRNDL! Are you a Buckeye, then? From where?
I was brought home from the hospital in a 1957 Fairlane 500 with Thunderbird 312 V8 (in 1962). It was a blue and white 4 door hardtop, the paint scheme was similar to your father’s car. My father loved that car, he talked about it until the day he passed away (in 1978). No other car he owned came close, even the 1953 Cadillac he had before or any of the Mercurys he had later.
Sadly, I have no kid pix of me in any of our cars. When my mother turned 80, we (us kids) put her up in an apartment complex for seniors. What we did not know was that Alzheimer’s was rapidly taking over. One of her formerly good habits, keeping a spotless house, turned into an unfortunate one.
In one of her “cleaning spells”, she threw out a number of family photo albums for the sake of “tidying up”; some of the albums had photos of long lost relatives that dated back to the 19th century. Along with that were many of our (sibling’s) photos, very few survive. Mostly the ones that exist are ones we had liberated when we moved her into the apartment.
Nonetheless, I remain a fan of the 1957 Fairlane. In my MM Garage, there’s a spot for a blue over white 4 door hardtop Fairlane 500…
Yes GZ, I are a Buckeye. 🙂
Originally from SE Ohio, but have lived in Columbus for over 30 years.
That’s a bummer about your Mom & the family archives. These Fords were great lookers, and a white over blue one like yours would be a close second for me after the colors on my Dad’s.
I guess I forgot to mention that I’m originally from NE Ohio, more specifically the Youngstown area. I’ve lived several places since I left home and now live near Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Go Bucks! 😉
Dad’s car was a V8 and Fordomatic, but I don’t know if it was a 292 or a 312.
I don’t remember any of it but we took this car on vacation to Virginia Beach in ’64 and the engine grenaded. I think the Y block upper oiling deficiency roached the valve train.
Dad had another engine installed so we could finish the trip, and for some reason had the old one shipped back home. It sat in our barn for years, and I’d play mechanic with it every so often.
Ahh, the Y Block, not one of Ford’s better ideas and not good timing, either, since the Chevy Small Block became the default engine to hotrod. Before this time, of course, the flathead Ford V-8 was the bees-knees to hop-up. However, even early on the Y Block had a reputation for top end trouble, so off to Chevy many buyers went. Too bad because it was in fact a very advanced design for its day. The real problem was it was built to tolerances that were too high, which included too small oil galleries for top end, which would sludge over. This would have been fine with by the book oil changes, but we all know how that goes.
I love the 57 Fairlane. My favorite color was solid black with that gold anodized side trim.
Somewhere is a similar-aged picture of me in my Dad’s 59 2 door, though it didn’t have a PRNDL.
It’s 3 on the tree led to me once getting behind the wheel and slipping it int neutral.
On a slight downhill out front of Dad’s shop I got us silently rolling down towards a busy road, with my brother sleeping in the back seat. Luckily Dad happened to come out to peek on us and I guess I surprised him. I was sitting there sawing at the wheel enjoying my first drive. Dad managed to run after us and stick his arm in the window and shove it into a gear.
When I was younger, I used to see a lot of tri-fives around but not a lot of Fords of the era. When I asked my dad why there were so few around, he told me they were terrible rusters. Mind you, every car in Quebec or eastern Ontario in those days was an undrinkable rust-bucket after five years. Still, the GM stuff seemed to hold on longer than the Fords of the day. Pretty hard to beat a SBC and Powerglide for reliability.
There was a 57 2door wagon in my home town that was used as a hearse in retirement it was repainted blue/white, I last saw it in 1980 with only some 5k racked up on the speedo it was still a new car.
Back in 1960 (OMG, so long ago) I became a member of the Miami County, Ohio Sheriff’s Department. Our oldest car was a ’57 Ford with standard tranny (last one ever there) and the 312/245. There was nothing wrong with how it ran!!