Whenever I see a black 1962 Fairlane just like we used to have , like this ad for a Police Ranger (or is it “Defender?) it inevitably makes me think of my departed father. Since today would have been his birthday, I allowed myself a brief flight of imagination of what he would have been like if he had been a police officer.
Brief, because I shut down that line of thinking very quickly.
As many of you by now know, he chose a very different career path as a neurologist, Becoming the most prominent in the field of electroencephalography (EEG). Here he is at the console of a vintage Grass 16 channel EEG, with the paper readout of 16 squiggly lines rolling off the machine on the far end. Nobody could interpret those squiggly lines better than him.
Of course to us he was first of all our father, a role which he embraced somewhat reluctantly, as it seemed to be more of a distraction from his work and other passions. He was complex and complicated, and unless you knew him well, most of all outside of his professional sphere, his eccentricities and blind spots became all-too obvious.
He initially had history in mind as a career, but somehow that went by the wayside, or maybe it was his father’s influence, who was also an MD, along with with two other doctorates. The point being is that he had what is commonly called an encyclopedic memory, and I’ve never met anyone to whom that expression applied better. And he had an excellent grasp of most sciences, at least in general terms. And he was very precise. And had infinite certitude.
Back to my line of imagination:
Do you know why I pulled you over?
Um, no. I never saw your car.
I was sitting way over there in the far corner of that parking lot and I timed you on my Swiss stop watch from the time you passed that power pole on the corner of Clinton Street to the one on on the corner of Dubuque Street. That’s a distance of exactly 191.25 feet. It took you exactly 4.735 seconds. This is a 25 mph zone. You see the problem?
Um. I’m not so sure I really do….
That means you were going exactly 27.352 miles per hour. Did you have trouble with arithmetic in school?
Or maybe it was him at the site of a crash, looking at the tire marks of a hit and run car:
It was obviously a 7.35×14 Wards PowerKraft tire, black wall, and based on the deceleration rate, tread deformation, track distance to the faint other tire mark and other details, I will say it was a…1961 Chevrolet, a blue Bel Air sedan.
Responding to a distraught burglary victim:
Please stop externalizing every fleeting thought and tell me why you don’t have triple deadbolts on your door.
Ok; enough already. Let’s just say it was good that he found his calling in EEG, and left police work to others. The thought of him riding around in a black Fairlane Police Defender just isn’t working for me. But then the thought of any police riding around in one is hard for me to visualize, as I never saw a ’62 Fairlane cop car. That’s probably a good thing.
Father, son, cop. I’ve been all 3. Father-son relationships are always complicated – from both sides. But at least there is love.
For a ’62 Fairlane prowl car, things aren’t so complicated. But you can take away the love. I’d take a ’62 Plymouth, Chev or even an Ambassador over one of these.
Proficiency in science is required for doctors. A magazine cover that links science, cops and a ’62 Fairlane just seems a great fit to accompany your article.
How about a Ford Maverick cop car? Such a beast did exist. Here is a picture of one: 1977 model year.
If Ford really wanted to push these, “The Andy Griffith Show” with “Automobiles furnished by Ford Motor Co” would have given maximum exposure. Seems like the perfect car for Barney Fife.
Sgt. Dennis Becker of The Rockford Files drove, in at least one episode, an unmarked brown four-door Maverick. Had the little red light on top like Starsky’s Gran Torino, but Dennis seemed destined to be a Detective Of Rubbish Cars.
–
Harry Callahan got to drive better cars into storefront windows.
–
He deserved at least a Blues Brothers-type Mopar to get out of the station in after a day of running tags for Jim and getting disapproving looks from Lieutenants Deal and Chapman.
–
I now recall Stephanie Powers in one episode, also tangling with Lt. Deal.
Stephanie Powers, circa 1974-ish.
–
…and now whatever else I was going to say seems unimportant.
The choice of a 2-door sedan seems odd. I guess the paddy wagon gets called for perpetrator transport.
Interesting that 2-door police cars were a thing back then.
I’d like to know the thinking behind that. In Canada the RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police had two door patrol cars sometimes used in rural areas. But never in an urban setting. I suppose the last two door patrol cars were the Mustangs and Camaros used by the RCMP highway patrol in Alberta and British Columbia. Those cars are highly collectable now, if you can find one that hasn’t been beaten to death at the dragstrip.
I drive a 1983 Ford Ranger. 4×4. With a 250hp (or more) 302 Fairlane V8 in it.And it moves rather nicely, even with both fuel tanks topped off. Only regret? Low range in the Borg-Warner transfer case could be a wee bit lower. But it still can climb my steep driveway, C4 trans in first,T-case in low, and 302 at idle speed with me walking along side of it. Window down so I can reach in and steer it
That Ranger sounds like a COAL begging to be told! 🙂
I would like to read that COAL as well.
With double it’s stock h.p. that thing had to scoot!
Ooooh, fathers as police officers instead of whatever else they did for a living – this is a fascinating line of inquiry. Mine would have been particularly adept at interrogations and detecting the nuggets of truth that are always lurking just below the surface.
Fascinating indeed. But man, my brain is kind of sort of twisting itself all over trying to imagine my dad as a police officer. Or my mom. Although it was her side of the family that had the law enforcement gene (my Grandpa was a “Railroad Detective” – Bull – through the Depression up until he died in the early 60s. He looked – and from what I have heard, acted – the part.).
I think cop Niedermeyer would have driven a 390 powered Galaxie with a four speed, the 4 door version of his daily driver.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/curbside-classic-1961-ford-starliner/
+1… Probably one of the funniest things ever posted to this site.
That and Paul’s exchange with Jason about ’71 LTD(s)…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1971-ford-ltd-convertible-the-name-on-the-title-starts-with-the-letter-n/
😂
It’s a very special scientist indeed who can tell a car’s color from its tire print! He really may have missed his calling.
Oh, and Hard Boiled, Sheriff Taylor’s car was a Galaxie. I guess Ford didn’t want to push the Fairlane hard enough.
“Please stop externalizing every fleeting thought and tell me why you don’t have triple deadbolts on your door.” – wow – you have captured the Teutonic way of thinking perfectly!
Absolutely hilarious! I enjoy reading about your father because he reminds me of so many of my German friends.
It is interesting to think back about our fathers. Mine was obsessed with how much fuel his cars used. In 1984, he had a paid for, custom order 1979 Chevrolet Impala with only 80,000 km on it. Fuel prices had hit a dastardly C$0.50 a litre at that time and the paid up Chevy had to go to taxi duty. Heck, he wrote all his fuel off against the company anyway!
In order to save gas money, dad replaced his $9000 Impala with a $13,000 1984 VW Jetta Turbodiesel. Two years later he traded that one for a 1986 Jetta GL Turbodiesel.
He did, however, save some money on fuel.
The poster reminded me that the “Ranger Police Package” for the Torino in the mid-seventies included the 302 V8.
Every powertrain used a different title which I can no longer remember. I’m thinking the 1975 or 76 model year.
All parts of this post were in order. You may proceed.
For whatever reason, I’m imagining your father’s lines in the voice of Werner Herzog.
Hehe! We did have Fairlane cop cars just like this here, though 4-door, and not in my time.
If my dad had been a copper, no-one would get caught because I don’t believe he’s ever breached a speed limit in his life. Come to think of it, I don’t think he’s ever REACHED speed limit in his life.
If it was mum, her driving was speedier, but otherwise left a fair bit to be desired, and the officer is meant to turn up at a crash, not cause it. There would have been quick confessions down the station, though, what with her and that washing stick…
Ah, parents. I have realized that we only inch away from them, several generations ultimately thus only progressed a few feet upwards towards betterment. And we over-do the things they didn’t, says a son whose licence should have been lost on many, many occasions in his youth.
One of the harder parts of getting older is accepting the things one could not, it seems, change, and admitting it.
To quote part of the acid-comic poem by Phillip Larkin:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
(from This Be the verse)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
When I lived in Guatemala City, C.A. in 1976 they had Maverick police cars, 6 cylinder strippers that obviously had nothing police/taxi in them, the springs were shot in a matter of months from hauling four cops ’round over potholed roads .
-Nate
Never saw a Maverick in our fleet the 2 years I was driving for Hertz; albeit one of those years was 1978 and the Fairmont had replaced the Maverick by then.
My Grandfather had a baby blue ’63 Fairlane. He was a salesman, drove quite a bit, but always claimed the Fairlane was “too light” to ride smoothly. His last car was a ’72 Biscayne, guess that dealt with the “too light”. After his passing, I remember driving it with my Father in the front seat, and my Grandmother in the back along with my 4’9 Mother…you could barely see them back there, small as kids…on a nice spring day driving to look for one of my Grandmother’s brothers…we never did find him, but had a nice meal in the now defunct Effort diner…Grandmother died soon afterward, so it was a nice memory (we lived 1700 miles away so we only got to see her on vacation, luckily the last was a week before her actual passing…she never learned to drive (nor did my other Grandmother) so the Biscayne was given to my youngest Uncle.