Back To The 50’s 2017—A ’64 Falcon With Sixties Personality Wins Best Ford In A Ford

A 1964 Ford Falcon took home the Best Ford in a Ford award at the Back to the 50’s 2017 car show, an unusual win for a car built as economical transportation rather than a performance machine. Ford’s optional Sprint package added the Fairlane’s 260-cubic-inch V8 and a stiffer suspension, giving select Falcons real personality behind the wheel. The Falcon’s unibody platform also directly influenced the Mustang launched later that same model year. This deep dive covers why the humble Falcon earned its trophy.

A car nicknamed for its economy-minded roots is not supposed to walk away with a Best in Show trophy, and yet that is exactly what happened at one of the Midwest’s largest classic car gatherings. Ford built this compact for buyers who wanted practical transportation, not a trophy contender, which makes its win all the more unlikely. Under humble sheet metal, though, sat a factory option package that quietly transformed the car’s character into something with real teeth. What was it about this particular Falcon that convinced judges to hand it the top Ford honor over a field of far more famous nameplates?

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The Car Ford Never Meant to Be a Muscle Car

The Falcon entered production as Ford’s answer to compact, economical transportation, powered in base form by a modest inline-six making around 85 horsepower, a car built for commuting, not competition. It is easy to forget that this humble platform quietly laid the engineering groundwork Ford would later borrow for its most famous pony car.

The Sprint Package Changed Everything

For 1964, Ford introduced the Sprint option, dropping in the Fairlane’s 260-cubic-inch V8, a stiffer suspension, and a louder exhaust note that gave the Falcon a genuinely different personality behind the wheel. That 260 in the name is cubic inches, not horsepower — the Sprint V8 was actually rated at 164 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque, and in a compact this light, that was still enough of a jump over the base six to make the Sprint feel like a genuinely different animal on the street.

A Direct Ancestor of the Mustang

Ford leaned heavily on the Falcon’s unibody platform when developing the Mustang, which launched later in the same 1964 model year. That shared DNA means a well-sorted Falcon carries more historical weight than casual observers give it credit for. It is not just a Mustang’s forgotten cousin, but a direct mechanical ancestor.

Why Best Ford in a Ford Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

Winning a Best in Show or top marque award at a major regional gathering like Back to the 50s means beating out Mustangs, Thunderbirds, and full-size Galaxies with far bigger factory performance reputations. For a Falcon to take that honor signals a level of build quality, originality, or presentation that judges rarely reward outside of the car’s own narrow niche.

The Growing Appreciation for Compact Classics

Collector interest in first- and second-generation Falcons has grown steadily as buyers priced out of Mustang and Camaro markets look for alternatives with genuine period-correct performance options. A documented Sprint-package Falcon, in particular, occupies a sweet spot: rare enough to stand out, but still attainable compared to its more famous pony car relative.

A Compact Built to Compete With the Corvair

Ford rushed the Falcon to market in 1960 as a direct answer to Chevrolet’s rear-engine Corvair, betting that American buyers wanted a conventional front-engine economy car rather than GM’s more radical layout. That bet paid off in sales terms almost immediately, and the Falcon’s straightforward unibody construction and orthodox mechanical layout made it an easy platform to dress up with performance parts once Ford’s engineers started looking for ways to give it teeth. The Sprint package that later transformed cars like this one only made sense because the basic Falcon architecture was simple enough to accept a V8 without a redesign.

Total Performance Was Already Taking Shape

1964 sat right at the start of Ford’s “Total Performance” era, the marketing push that would eventually put the company’s name on everything from Le Mans-winning GT40s to NASCAR ovals. The Falcon Sprint and the Mustang launching that same spring were early, affordable expressions of that same philosophy: take an everyday car, add real driveline hardware, and let buyers feel like they were driving something with racing pedigree even if they never left the street. A Sprint-package Falcon from this window is a small, often-overlooked piece of that larger corporate story.

Shared Bones With the Mustang’s Small-Block Family

The Sprint’s 260-cubic-inch V8 belongs to the same small-block Windsor family Ford would keep building and enlarging for decades, eventually growing it into the 289 and 302 that powered generations of Mustangs. That shared engineering lineage means parts knowledge and driveline expertise built up around early Mustangs translates directly to a Falcon Sprint, which has made ownership more practical than the car’s obscurity might suggest.

What Judges Actually Look For at a Show Like This

A Best in Show or top-marque win at a major regional gathering like Back to the 50s isn’t decided by horsepower bragging rights; judges are scoring paint consistency, panel gaps, engine-bay correctness, and how faithfully the car matches its factory build sheet. A Falcon competing against better-known nameplates has to be essentially flawless in those categories to win, since it has no performance reputation to lean on the way a Mustang or GTO would.

Rust, Parts, and the Realities of Owning One Today

Early unibody Falcons are known among restorers for trouble spots around the floor pans, trunk, and lower fenders, the same rust-prone areas that plague most thin-gauge unibody cars from this era. Because the platform underpins the first Mustang, though, owners chasing correct trim and mechanical parts have an easier time than fans of most other orphaned compacts, which has helped keep well-preserved Sprint examples like this one on the road instead of in a scrapyard.

A Falcon That Rewrites the 1964 Story

Most retrospectives on 1964 spend all their attention on the Mustang launch and the GTO’s debut, leaving compact cars like the Falcon Sprint as a footnote at best. A trophy like this one is a reminder that Ford’s engineers were quietly building performance hardware across more of the lineup than that single, famous year usually gets credit for.

The Falcon’s Own Racing Footnote

Ford didn’t limit the Falcon’s competition ambitions to drag strips and car shows; lightly modified Falcons ran in early-1960s rallies and economy runs where the car’s simple mechanicals and light weight actually worked in its favor against heavier domestic rivals. That early competition pedigree, largely forgotten today, adds one more layer to why a well-sorted Sprint like this one carries more history than its modest reputation suggests.

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