Before the long sleep - '53 Starlight coupe

[t walgamuth]

Its a lovely car!

[junior]

Gotta love a coupe that stays in the family! Dig the floor shift. cheers, junior

[62champ]

Pretty neat '53, with '56? Hawk door panels with ashtrays, a Parking Brake Warning light and a '54 Decklid and handle.

I think I remember my dad saying that when he bought the car the original interior was pretty toasty so he and my Uncle found a Hawk in a wrecking yard and took it all - door and quarter panels and front/rear seat. Front seat is a split bench with a head rest on the passenger side - maybe a '59 or '60?

[StudeRich]

Pretty neat '53, with '56? Hawk door panels with ashtrays, a Parking Brake Warning light and a '54 Decklid and handle.

Haven't seen a Ford Fairmont Futura Coupe or the Merc. version for awhile!
Ford's answer to the '47 to '52 Stude. Starlight Coupe, just a little LATE!

[tsenecal]

Very cool car. Glad you were able to keep it in the family. You can remember your father every time you go for a ride.

[62champ]

Still working on divesting myself from Photobucket and loading things over to imgur to be able to share.

Found some photos of my father's 1953 coupe in about 1988, the last year he used it as a daily driver. It had only been a few years since its last repaint when the photo was taken.

He bought the car when he was a high school junior in 1961 from behind a Chevrolet dealership in Cameron, Texas. Paid $23.?? for it and when it was parked twenty seven years later, it had traveled a total of 271K miles and never saw the inside of a building until it retired. There were a couple repaints and even had a NOS 232 built for it after purchasing it in the factory crate at the 1975 Dallas International Meet. Dad made a few changes to keep it up (deck lid is not '53) but it was essentially original - even managed to get it to the drag strip a time or two as well.

Hopefully it will not be too long before it is piercing the wind down a highway somewhere.







Trophy won on July 10, 1966, at Little-River Drag strip near Little River, Texas.