After the Dodge camper van, here’s another piece of classic Americana I found in the parking lot of the Autotron exhibition location, early November. This one had te koop for sale written all over it.
A seemingly original 1978 Ford Fairmont wagon with a 200 c.i. inline-6 under its hood.
A recent import, as it was first registered in the Netherlands only this year. The car is older than 40 years, thus road tax free. The Ford’s APK (Algemene Periodieke Keuring, our legally required technical~safety inspection) is valid till May 2021.
The APK is biyearly, as the car is older than 30 years. There’s a yearly inspection for cars from 8 to 30 years old, this applies to gasoline and electric engines. No inspection at all for cars with a first registration prior to January 1, 1960.
Any car dealership or independent garage can be a testing station, as long as they have an official permit for doing these inspections. The costs? Roughly € 20 to € 65. I’ve been paying the lower amount for my sets of wheels over the past years.
Back to the Ford. It’s about the same size as a modern E-segment wagon, think Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Volvo V90 and such. That’s somewhere around an overall length of 495 cm (195”).
A tan interior (nice!) in a good and clean condition. The asking price for this low profile, classic FoMoCo wagon is € 4,950. Sounds fair enough.
Related articles:
Classic Curbside Classic: 1978 Ford Fairmont – That Very Rare Honest Car by Paul Niedermeyer
Curbside Classic: 1978 Ford Fairmont – The Ur-Fox by Jim Grey
Curbside Classic: 1981 Ford Fairmont Futura Wagon – Dystopian Family Hauler by Perry Shoar
The base fairmont 2 door sedan was my dads family hauler when we were kids. No ac no RADIO red vynal interior 4 cylinder 4 speed maual….thats what him and my mom took on family trips wirh the 3 kids….today i transport my 3 kids in a honda odyssey. The difference is like a model t to a 1980 fairmont. Its good to see progress over a lifetime.
This is the first time I’ve noticed your user name of 3800 fan. I’m currently pulling my hair out dealing with a 3800 myself. You know a decent bit about them? I’m working on a series II in a 1996 Oldsmobile 88.
Haha its a reference to my 94 regal which i had till 2011 and i never changed my handle. I love the 3800. Powerful fuel efficient and reliable…its an awesome motor..but i knew several people who had oldsmobiles wirh the 3800 and they were way more problematic than their buick bretherin. I donno why, youd think a regal amd intrigue with the same drivetrain would be equally reliable but it wasnt the case.
I think my problem is with the ICM. Runs great but doesn’t like to idle. I had an Intrigue with the other V6, I think it was a 3.5. I ended up practically giving it away when every warning light came on and it had no telling how many issues. Car ran good for a long time, still ran good even with a bunch of codes set. But would have been to expensive to fix in order to pass emissions inspection.
Similar here. Blue vinyl, but we had an Audiovox AM/FM/cassette stereo and roll down AC in back due to 4 doors (but only about 2/3 down)
So I had it better. We knew enough to not wear shorts unless we had a towel to sit on on very hot sunny days
It served my family, and later me, pretty well
Another great find Johannes.
Some people describe the Fairmont/Zephyr as being good sleepers. Low key styling, with a tuned V8. I can see why they’d call them sleepers, as they sorely lack presence. 🙂 The very conservative styling, and undersized proportions compared to cars today, hasn’t aged well IMO. They sold so well because they were so very practical in a era of impractical domestic cars. They now seem rather dull, especially given there was no genuine performance versions sold until much later, with the LTD LX. Check the web for the tuned versions, and the straight line performance of many of them is impressive, but the package often looks silly. Aggressive alloy wheels and fat tires, blackout trim, headers, body kits. It all looks out of place, and silly on these.
As the Fairmont always had a reputation as a somewhat dowdy bread and butter family car, it’s stuck with that image unfortunately! Probably most closely eclipsed in this role domestically by the K-cars. Even the black paint on this one, looks out of place on this ever-friendly family car. I can’t recall ever seeing black paint on a Fairmont. lol Maybe an upper trim level Zephyr with fake wire wheels, and bright red velour interior. Aiming to reflect faux luxury. Even the simple roof rack helped add some character to the wagons. The Futura version seemed popular with older men and ladies at the time.
So many 70s domestic cars are popular today because of their overdone styling or masculine looks. Besides being icons of an era gone forever. The Fairmont doesn’t have the bravado to make it a pop cultural icon of the 70s the same way Dusters, Cordobas, Grand Ams, Monte Carlos, and Malibus do. And $7,000 Canadian is too much for one with the inline six, and limited options it appears.
That’s alot of coin for a Fairmont with no air conditioning or even a radio.
Great parts availability since it shares many of its parts with Fox Mustangs though.
So $5500 USD is a good price over there? Here, I’d pay less for that then the Corolla earlier.
Comparing US prices to the price here is comparing apples to oranges. Or can you ship a car across the ocean for free? Not to mention other costs like (on-land) transport, insurance and getting it through the authorities (inspection and registration).
Just converting € into $ isn’t enough.
I know as I see it all the time on my C Body forum. Nonetheless, I was simply asking if that was considered a good price for a meh car in Europe. It seems to be counter to all the big pieces of American steel I have seen over there.
It is a nice car I would enjoy here in the American west, but it asks way too much cash.
Of course you are correct; one can not compare prices from Europe to those in North America. But there is leverage in the differences of which a smart person can take advantage.
European Polos, Golfs, Twingos and I think even XJ6s seem to be screaming deals. Canada may have better prices on old iron than the USA. Yet our old quality Mercedes and even older ’50s American boats are a bargain for Europeans. It is a free market and the influence of local supply and demand makes it fun.
Around here most of those were that light blue color. It camouflaged the oil smoke rolling out the exhaust. I actually saw and rode in a blue wagon that had a factory manual trans. Interesting find on your side of the ocean and like others have said, most certainly hot rodable.
Like this light blue 2-door. I’ve seen this car around my neighborhood a few times this year. Before I took this picture, I’d seen it on the highway driving at about 75 mph… moving faster than most Fairmonts did when they were new.
But this one isn’t in nearly as good condition as our Dutch example here.
I can’t say there were very many light blue ones around here, Band-Aid beige and dark brown were what I remember seeing the most of.
The 65 Plymouth Belvedere wheelcovers look better on the car than most of the options offered by Ford on these. There must be a few hundred thousand of these wheelcovers out there somewhere because none of them exist on a 65 Belvedere anymore – all of those cars have either poverty caps or modern performance wheels.
This would be a car I could live with, though I was never a fan of that yellowish-tan interior that Ford really liked for a few years in the late 70s.
I owned a new 79 Mercury Zephyr wagon briefly back in the day. I did not keep it very long, maybe two years before selling it to a business colleague who had smashed up his Plymouth Duster in a head on at a traffic light with a left turner. I happened to be in the passenger seat at the time on our way to a business dinner with NYC bigwigs. (Yes we did get to the dinner, neither of us had injuries.). So, I actually hated the Zephyr due to its under powered 6 cyl engine. Mine was hunter green with Dealer included after market cruise control that lasted about a year, another gripe. But the worst thing (right after the anemic performance) was that the car could not track a straight line down the highway! Constant small corrections were the order of the day. So the next day after the accident I said “so Frank, how would you like to buy my Zephyr wagon.” And Frank bought it. I had already bought a replacement in the form of an 81 Dodge Omni which was another onerous choice but at least much more comfortable than the Zephyr. My Zephyr was hunter green with that famous tan interior, not a bad looking car.
Our pool cars were 4 cylinder, 4 speed manual Fairmonts. Color was beige color vinyl seats with beige interior. Only redeeming value was a strong A/C which was much appreciated in the Deep South.
In 1979-80, the airport rental lots at Houston Intercontinental were full of Fairmonts. Decent but thoroughly unremarkable cars.
Very interesting car, Johannes…I have a question. If the car was recently imported, those license plates are real or are used just for old cars? They do not look like typical EU plates.
Small size Dutch 2019 plates, that type of smaller plates is often used on classic American cars. The Dodge camper van (link in first sentence) has the usual NL/EU plates.
My first thought was this wagon is an ex hearse. A rather smallish one compared to the ‘standard’ Caprice wagons used here in Netherlands but still… 😉
Somehow, the Ford looks too kindhearted (from all sides) to be a hearse…
The tailgates migrated to Australia in 79 for instalation on Ford AUs new XD model Falcon wagon, also available in poverty pak 200 cube but with a cross flo cylinder head, I prefer the Aussie versions the awkward design of the US models grates and no four banger down here they tried a few prototypes but they used more fuel than the six.
It’s odd that a 70s US car is only a midsize car nowadays. It still seems an odd choice to import. If you’re going to the trouble of finding and importing an old American car it seems like a V8 would be worth it. Come to think of it a MKII Granada is a similar size and shape with a more attractive front end and the Cologne V6.
Fun fact about size: the D-segment Opel Insignia Sports Tourer (that’s the standard, low-riding wagon), with an overall length of 4,986 mm (196.3”), is actually longer than all E-segment wagons on the market, offered by Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Jaguar.
Makes you wonder if there are bigger wagons than the Opel on the market right now…
My parents had a Mercury version of the Fairmont, the Zephyr. Their’s was a dark green 4 door sedan with a cloth interior that was a sort of orangey color. It had the 302 V8 with automatic transmission and nearly every other option except a vinyl roof.
People say they were underwhelming but as a nice daily driver they are decent. The biggest problem with the Fairmont and Zephyr is their lackluster assembly quality. I had a 76 Pinto that was almost a Rolls-Royce for assembly quality compared to my parents Zephyr. They even look like they were styled to be “casually” assembled.
I’d have a hard time giving 200 bucks for it sorry. This coming from about 2 years driving a hand me down 1979 blue Fairmont sedan with the dog 200 six. The wagon would only make power worse, the vinyl bench seats were less comfortable than sitting on a wooden park bench, virtually no amenities, that annoying vibrating dash that wasn’t corrected until 1981 and horrible amounts of wind and road noise. The paint on my car must have been the thinnest coat imaginable as it soon worse off to rust spots after but 4-5 Winters and we always joked that the window glass was about as thick as a dime. Now if this were an GM A/G body wagon I would be all over it for this price!