I’m always looking for the rare and unique. So when I saw this 1956 Ford Mainline for sale on eBay (listing now deleted) I felt compelled to preserve the photos while I still had the chance. But is this bottom-of-the-line Ford sedan rare? After all, Ford built 164,000 Mainlines during the 1956 model year, but only 15,600 Thunderbirds. Ebay, Craigslist, car shows, etc. are filled with 2-seater Thunderbirds, but you’ll look long and hard to find a Mainline like this. Such is the paradox of the antique auto hobby.
According to the eBay listing, this little honey is one family owned, passed down from father to son. It has never been driven outside the city of Riverside, California. 272 V-8 with automatic transmission. 54,000 original miles. No rust anywhere. “The gas tank is new, the fuel lines are new, the battery is new, and it’s ready to go!”
I like the way the Mainline only gave you a truncated sweep-spear–you had to trade up to a Customline to get the full front-to-back trim molding.
At slight extra cost you could get an additional paint divider strip in two-toned models. “Graceful Thunderbird-inspired lines give these new Mainline Fords an air of action even when standing still…Ford Mainlines offer you a car that is unusual in distinctive, low-cost transportation.”
The steering wheel and dash seem so austere–almost like a car from the pre-war era. In a few short years, things will be jazzed-up considerably!
I love discovering little details like this: the standard Ford steering wheel hub with no horn ring. Have you ever seen one before?
Speedometer closeup.
Call me crazy, but I’d rather have this V-8/automatic Mainline than a T-Bird. I’m tired of all the Thunderbird hype. For example, a mechanic friend of mine recently showed me a 2-seater Thunderbird and was explaining how hard it is to get in and out of one. The steering wheel almost presses against your chest–you’re really scrunched in there. I’m 5’10” and 145 pounds and even I had trouble getting out of this thing! Give me a full-size Ford where I actually have some room!
For contrast, here’s my 1958 Ford Custom 300–also a bottom-of-the-line model. But with optional two-tone paint and “Style Tone” gold trim, it doesn’t look as nearly as plain as the ’56 Mainline.
In Ford ad-speak we’re looking at “Safety-Twin” headlights, “Honeycomb” grille, “Gunsight” fender ornaments (optional), and a “Power-Flow” hood.
“Safety-Twin” taillights set off the rear. Not as classical as Ford’s round taillights, but they give the car more Jet Age flair. As Tom McCahill said, “You get used to them.”
Compare this elaborate ’58 cockpit to the “no-frills” ’56.
And now for something completely different–offered for sale on Facebook Marketplace and located in Denton, Texas:
If you want to talk once plentiful but now almost impossible to find, how about this 1960 Ford Fairlane sedan? “Fairlane”, the top-of-the-line model just a few years before, is now the bottom-of-the-line stripper. And it looks like a stripper too. Whereas the ’56 Mainline gave you a piece of a sweep-spear, and the ’58 Custom 300 gave you gold and lots of flourishes; this ’60 Fairlane has virtually no bright side trim at all!
What a shock this low, sleek car must have been to traditional Ford buyers in 1960! While previous Fords were rather compact and efficient looking, this aircraft carrier I think set a record for being the biggest, cheapest car in automotive history! At 213″ long, it was only 2″ shorter than a 1956 Cadillac; and at 81.5″ wide, it was the widest car on the road, except for Chrysler’s Imperial!
This front end–something about it seems “off”, but I don’t know what you would do to improve it.
I do like the view toward the rear. I guess Ford’s thinking was, “If Chevy is the sales leader, we’ll make a “batwing” car like the Chevy, but bigger–give ’em more car for their money!” Actually, the ’60 Ford had excellent ride and handling, as well as the best visibility and the most room any Ford owner ever had!
The seller states that this car has 68,000 original miles and everything works. Unfortunately the horn ring is broken. The dash design is even more “Jetsons” in style, done in a nice period shade of green instead of gray.
But some buyers were not too happy with their big new 1960 Fords. In Popular Mechanics’ survey, 9.1% of owners called their cars “POOR”, which was a record high for Ford. By contrast, 82.7% of 1960 Falcon owners rated their cars “EXCELLENT”, and only 0.8% rated them “POOR”, a record low. How two cars from the same manufacturer could produce such varying responses is another great paradox.
Photo from flickr by 60Fire
Shoddy workmanship on the big ’60 Fords was a major complaint, which is probably part of the reason so few of these cars have survived.
Source: Buyer’s Digest of New Car Facts for ’60
A Ford buyer would receive such starkly different cars by trading every two years, as was the norm at that time. Think 56-58-60-62 or 55-57-59-61. Note that almost no one kept a new car past 7 or 8 years. Planned obsolescence at its finest!
Old Ford and new Ford–what a difference!
Of course, if the 1960 whale of a Ford was too big for you, and the stubby Falcon too small and dull, you could sashay over to your nearest Lincoln-Mercury dealer and pick up a new 1960 Comet. The “compact” Comet, incidentally, had a 1″ shorter wheelbase than the ’56 Ford, and was only 3.5″ shorter in overall length and 6″ narrower. Remarkably, very close to the familiar Ford dimensions of the early- to mid-50s. Oh, and the Comet weighed about 600 pounds less!
Comet has a pretty snazzy dashboard for such a low priced car! In this example, the original tube radio still plays!
Based on my ownership experiences, I have a saying “The Ford is your friend.” Meaning, the Fords of the ’50s to early ’60s are strongly built, competent cars that do everything adequately well, but with no really bad or irritating features. Competing cars may have bolder looks, fancy push-button transmissions and torsion bars, “Jet-Smooth” rides, quieter engines, and doors that easily close with a solid “click”, but these Fords still drive very nicely, with a minimum of fuss and mechanical complication. Even up to 1960, there was still a little trace of Old Henry in all of them.
I don’t know what the average was, but, in my childhood, which fits neatly by decades into the post war boom (born in 1950), the goal was to trade your car in every two years. Major restyles were anticipated on that schedule, and they suggested mechanical upgrades– even if the “upgrades” were insignificant. In our family, Dad got a new company car at 60K miles– every year and a half. IMHO, design reached a peak of form/function in 1955, and gradually slipped into a carnival of baubles over the next half-decade, a child’s dream of the future. Back then, I couldn’t get enough. but, you grow up. That ”58’s side treatment has a slight air of desperation about it: “How do we make the same body different?” You put minimal decoration on that ’56 Mainline, and it carries itself nicely just on its shape.
The front bumper looks like it shifted to the passenger side. Maybe bumper brackets had slots instead of holes?
My grandmother had a 58 like yours. Stripper model since that’s how my grandfather bought them. She learned how to drive in that tank that only had an automatic. She was 5’6″ and around 125#. Drove that car until 67 when she bought a new Falcon. Stripper model as well. As a kid back then, I remember thinking how massive that 58 was, sitting in her one car garage (just barely).
One of the signature cars in our family was my maiden Aunt Evelyn’s white ’60 Falcon Tudor. She drove it for several decades, and, though I was never inside, it was a reliable old sock that always gave comfort when we visited her.
Grammy Koch’s home, built in the 1880’s by our steel worker, great-great grandfather, occupied one of the seven hills of Bethlehem, PA, and Aunt Evelyn’s Falcon was always to be found on the severe downslope of Ontario St., not far from the site of Walker Evans’ famous depression era photos.
She had no trouble at all parking it there. If I had to do that right now, I would surely stall it repeatedly or bump the rear of the car below. Those big steering wheels required a lot of yawing, and the clutch had to be modulated just so, but the relatively small size of the Falcon was a gift she took full advantage of.
Excellent article, Stephen. I too prefer the lower end models to the more celebrated high end in most years’ range. In the same way that I usually prefer 4-door models to the 2-door cars that seem to get all of the collectors’ attention.
I am not sure that I’ve ever seen a 1960 Fairlane. Well, I probably did in 1961 or 1962, but don’t recall. 😉 I like it!
I was brought home in 1965 in a 1958 Custom 300, all black, six cylinder, power steering and automatic. My Dad had got that car in 1963, leaving his beloved 52 V8 Mainline with overdrive. He kept the 58 until 71, when he got a 68 Nova. In Uruguay any American car less than 10 years old was seen as a luxury, (well, any car of anywhere and anytime was a luxury), but truth be told, all of these cars were strippers and Dad would have been better off buying a new BMW 2002 or Alfa Giulietta or Ford Escort (Yes, prices were relatively similar, the market was really strange)
I think the ’60 Ford’s above-the-legal-limit size really supercharged Falcon sales, mostly at the expense of base models like the Fairlane; not only was the Falcon the “modern Model A” the Ford faithful had been clamoring for for years, but the big Ford went full parade-float that year.
Dearborn’s consolation prizes for the huge bite the Falcon took out of full-size sales were the compact sales crown and the fact that they still had a solid lead over Chevy in high-margin convertibles and station wagons.
Also a fan of the ’55 to ’59 Ford’s sensible size and design. We had ’57 and ’59 Ford wagons that were just good dependable family cars if not tops in any particular category. Ride, power, handling, finish, and reliability were all decently competent if middle-of-the-road. Neither of them gave any particular trouble, nor did their ’63 and ’68 Ford wagon successors. Never a fan of the ’60 Ford look,it was just too much of a departure from what came before, but the cleaned up and toned down ’61 to ’64s were much better design-wise imo.
Nowadays it’s just inconceivable that the average car then was traded in every 2 years and 9 months. Oils weren’t as good and rust treatment was marginal but with good conscientious maintenance a full-size US ’50s car could certainly have lasted far longer than they were typically kept. I saw plenty of cars on the Baltimore roads that were 10 years old or older back then, so not all owners were so profligate or status conscious.
My dad was a tightwad and I remember his first new car was a 57 2dr Ranch Wagon. It’s entire list of options included…….a heater. Nothing else. At all.
It had an overheating problem in the summer, so he would drive around with the front-hinged hood open to the first latch to help the airflow.
I was so excited when transistor radios came out!!!
I cannot stress enough how different families were during this age. I grew up with 82 school age kids that I knew – on my own block of houses. Only one house had one kid in it. Far more common were 4-8 kids in each house. These were 1000 sq ft houses built between 1964-1974. There were two other houses on my block identical to mine. We all slept in bunk beds and often downstairs in a basement where it was cooler during summer. Punch clock blue collar factory working fathers with their housewives. So – what kind of cars were driven?
Cars like these. Family cars that could carry the entire family to church and events. A second car for daily dad-trips to work.
The family cars were inexpensive and were replaced after 2-3 years. It wasn’t just fashion that caused this. Couples were making babies and families were expanding. You outgrew the old Mainline when after three years, you had two more kids. The average age of a homeowner on my block was 30. It was a diverse demographic. We had a Mexican family across the street with 8 kids + grandparents, next door to a German family with 4 kids, next door to a Black family with 5 kids, next door to a Dutch couple with 5 kids.
So they drove new Fords, Pontiacs, Ramblers, Oldsmobiles, Chevrolets as family cars. Dad’s work cars were Beetles, Volvos, Ramblers, DAFs, Mercedes, and a SAAB or two. Every dad fixed his own car.
So I cannot stress enough how family size, blue collar income, and sheer need impacts auto purchases. Fifty years later, my wife and I went through this as well. We went from subcompact cars to minivans within a decade. We didn’t want to buy a new car – problem was, we had too many kids for the cars we had. Now that they are teens, I have five cars, which one of them is still a family-sized SUV for church and vacations.
Absolutely true. Non-US folks who made or make fun of the big and simple US cars of that time seem to have no understanding of the reason for their overwhelming appeal: big families, big distances, and in places, rough conditions. They evolved over 50 years to meet the needs of those who bought them. A Fiat or Simca would have lasted 10 minutes in 1950s Wyoming. Most families on our street had from 3 to 5 kids and most were 1 car families until the early ’60s, and many suburban Dads took the car to work only 1 day a week so Mom could get the groceries. Full-sized US cars were the only vehicles that could do it all and still go on vacation They were the ones most appropriate for their milieu, just as small efficient cars were the most appropriate in Europe or the UK where they were made and sold.
We had all of them, British, European, Japanese and US made cars in Israel back then and there’s no question most people would have bought an American car if they could afford one. The common wisdom was that American cars “only use gas and oil” and thrive on neglect. Fiats and Simcas survived but then Israel is the size of New Jersey, not Wyoming, so you did not die if you broke down in the middle of nowhere…
I could never warm up to the ’60 Ford, and I guess I wasn’t the only one. And they were distinctly uncommon in Iowa City in the years I was there (1960-1965). They just don’t work well. Meanwhile, there were gobs of ’55-’56 Fords still around.
1960 was the first year of the slow decline of stripped-out full size cars. Until 1960, if you wanted a cheap Ford (Or Chevy or Plymouth) you bought a large car devoid of options.
With the introduction of compacts and later, intermediates, the low-bucks buyer had choices, as indicated in the bit about buying a Comet, perhaps. By 1966 or so, the lowest trims of full-size cars were almost off the map. Sure, you might see a Ford Custom or Chevy Biscayne in the brochure, but chances of finding one on a dealer lot were pretty minimal. They were order-only or fleet-only cars.
You tell me… would you rather have a ’66 Falcon with lots of options, or a Fairlane with a few options, or a Ford Custom with zero options?
Where I grew up in rural Indiana the lower end models of Ford, Chevy, and Plymouth sold well and most were six-cylinder cars with 3-speed stick with radio/heater as the only options. This Mainline would have been considered pretty well optioned. I recall that the fellow who ran the local Gulf station had one in two-tone blue and white with whitewalls and a V8 – pretty spiffy!
The 1960 Fords were very rare in my area, too. Not a popular car, unlike the 59-60 Chevies that sold very well, from Biscayne through Impala. As Paul says, the styling just did not work. And the workmanship was terrible compared to Chevy. I recall that the 1961 Ford sold well – my aunt got one and it was much better built than the 60. I also recall that the 58 Ford did not sell well compared to the 57 and the 59. The Falcon was a big sales triumph in its early years – my Dad bought two new 61s – and took sales from the big Fords. Comets were pretty rare in my area.
Thanks for a fun look back at what a lot of people were buying in that time.
The thing with the 60 Ford is for all the bold excess it manages to look dumpy and anonymous, the Starliner and its swoopy roof is only a little better, but in plain jane Fairlane form its easy to see why the Falcon blew it out of the water at Ford dealers; for as conservative and thrifty as the Falcon was it’s an easier car to look at, no less live with.
I really like the exterior and interior design of the ’60 Fords. So clean and a precursor of the fabulous ’61 T-Bird. And that light green really works on the one featured.
So I’m in a minority of one…..
My Dad was a union autoworker starting in the mid 1950’s. It was a good job and he made enough to take care of the family and buy a house. He traded cars pretty frequently in the 50’s and early ’60’s. He had a ’55 Chevy, then a ’59, then a ’64 Pontiac wagon, all new. He had a bad experience with an older flathead Ford on a trip to Mexico in 1953. He didn’t know much about engines then, and his car suffered a blown engine crossing the desert. This resulted in a multi day forced layover to have the car repaired. My Mom had to deal with a sick infant, my older brother, I wasn’t born yet, This experience might have been a contributor to my Dad buying new cars during this period.
My Dad also went through several years that he was working two jobs, and I suppose that the worry about missing work outweighed the cost of keeping a new car.
By the time the ’60’s rolled around, there were three kids, so we could always fit in the rear seat of a station wagon. My Dad didn’t like strippers, he insisted on a V8, automatic, and a radio.
By the late ’60’s my Dad was comfortable working on cars, and he stopped buying new ones. He always kept two cars around, so he always had a spare. My Dad told me that a working man can only save money on his car. You have to eat, you need a place to live, but you don’t need a new car. His last new vehicle was a ’75 Chevy Stepside, not a stripper. V8, auto, power steering and brakes, AM/FM radio, and even A/C. He kept that truck for over thirty years, along with a string of used cars.
Most strippers and low trim cars get parted out over the years to keep their more glamorous siblings on the road.
My parent’s used 57 Ford was probably a Custom Line but was replaced before i was born by a new 64 Valiant.Since that was well equipped but AFAIK base trim I’m guessing the Ford was mid trim rather than stripper but unlikely to have been Galaxy. We had a whole run of lower tier prestige brands after the Valiant. Coincidentally the Valiant was Dad’s last American car and Mom’s second to last.
The basic cars of the Sixties deserve more love.They are what people actually drove.
I remember the ’55 & ’56 Fords very well .
they were plodders that didn’t handle well at speed but otherwise were sturdy little cars that lasted a long time .
No matter how odd looking it might be there’s always someone who’ll love it .
My example is : I still love the full size 1962 Fords, when was the last time anyone saw one ? .
-Nate
My parents looked at a ’54 Mainline and a ’54 Chevy 210 when they bought a fairly new car in ’56. The Chevy was clearly more worn, but they picked the 210 because status was crucial to a young upcoming professor.
Here’s the instructions Ford gave to its salesmen for moving Mainlines. Always start with the Customline (midway); when you qualify the prospect as a cheapskate, you can reluctantly slide down to the Mainline.
I said it elsewhere but I beg to differ on the 1960 Ford – to me (although I like them) the full size Fords which followed were retrograde, styling wise. Simple and smooth, it foreshadowed the 1961 Lincoln Continental. But I look at it from across the Atlantic; I can see why this sort of thing did not work in the US and had to be replaced by the 61 on its contrived headlamp pods. Of course, bad build quality did not help. FoMoCo got it right again with the 1964 Mercury Marauder but I realize that was not particularly loved either…
On the other hand, I prefer the 1958 Ford to the classic 1957 model. I must be weird.
I always liked the `60 Ford Fairlanes. A neighbor had one in Brooklyn, NY in the early `60s. Gray . a total stripper it didn`t even have a heater. In the later `60s, maybe in `68 he went full circle and sprung for a used `65 Grand Prix. All black with the rare split bench front seat but with just about every power option and air.BTW-isn`t the `60 Fairlane the Mayberry sheriff`s car on the early Andy Griffith shows?
I am late getting here, but love these! It seemed like a Ford stripper was always extra-grim inside when compared to strippers of the competition. And wasn’t there a lower “plain” Custom model below the Custom 300 in 1958?
I have always wanted to like the 60 Ford, and can kind of almost get there on the station wagon and convertible models, but the sedans are just – ugh. And the interiors – the dash and steering wheel were designs that I have always found unattractive. The steering wheel went away after 1 year, but that basic dash stayed through 1962 – it always looked cheap to me, even in higher trim models.
I have said for a long time that Ford was the Studebaker of the Big 3 in these years – they were not fancy, but competent and durable, and very conservative in their mechanical designs. It seems that the easiest old cars to find with a 3 speed/OD are Studes and Fords.
Don’t worry about being late. I read everything! 🙂