- Here’s a big green V-8 Ford for St. Patrick’s Day burnouts.
- Already rare for its W-code 427-cubic-inch V-8, this Fairlane is also claimed to be the only example ordered in 1967 with the even rarer drag pack.
- With 410 horsepower, you’ll finally be able to catch those darned kids before they abscond with your Lucky Charms.
There is no better day for the driving of the green than St. Patrick’s Day, and no ordinary green car will do. Obviously, you can’t have a Viper or a Cobra—Pat had some strong views on driving snakes, but not like that—and it’d be handy to have a big back seat for all those leprechauns. Well mo chara, have we got the ride for you.
Pick o’ the day at the Bring a Trailer auction site (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos) is a bit of a unicorn: a 1967 Ford Fairlane 500 with a W-code 427-cubic-inch V-8, a four-speed manual transmission, and the ultra-rare drag pack. Anointed by Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, this is just the machine for cruising in the Boston parade and then throwing on a set of those Highway Max tires that produce green smoke and doing a burnout they can see all the way over in Dublin.
A factory-order W-code Fairlane was rarer than a four-leaf clover in 1967, with just 11 of them built. With a four-barrel single carburetor, this car’s power was rated at 410 horsepower, slightly less than the R-code engines. Imagine rolling up next to a Mustang at a stoplight back in the day in this plain-Jane two-door and then handing out a beatdown like you had the whole Notre Dame starting line under the hood.
In-period, that’s exactly what this car did, albeit at the no-penance-required legal drag strip. The only one of those W-code Fairlane 500s ordered with the drag pack, it was delivered to Dave Van Luke of Michigan. It had originally been ordered as an R-code car specifically for drag racing; the drag pack deleted the radio and sound-deadening material as a lightweighting measure. Van Luke drove it around on the street for 400 miles while waiting for the racing parts to show up—no doubt adhering devoutly to the speed limit.
He then took it to the track, where it eventually won back-to-back NHRA Super Stock/B championships in 1970 and 1971. Photos show the car in race-prepped form, liveried up and wearing fat drag radials wider than the River Shannon. It went down the strip in a respectable 10.9 seconds at 128 mph.
A restoration in the 1990s returned this Ford to factory trim, removing the tubbed rear and returning the car to its relatively saintly skinny-tire form—although that bowling-ball-in-a-dryer idle and the 427 side badges are pretty obvious giveaways.
Still, speaking softly and carrying a big shillelagh seems exactly like the sort of thing St. Patrick would approve of. Since this car is so rare, you may need a pot of gold to cast the winning bid, so keep your eyes peeled this Sunday for any of the wee folk hiding in the bracken. (Too much? Sorry.)
The auction ends on March 20.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.