We poisoned him, actually. "I went Fairlane nuts after that," says Chris, referring to a feature he saw in Car Craft in 1983. "I still have the article somewhere. It was a blown, red '67 Fairlane XL." After reading that story, he knew what he had to build.
Chris bought his first Fairlane when he was 14. "I literally used paper route money. My grandparents matched 50 cents for every dollar I saved, and I bought it for $500." He still owns that car a little over 20 years later. He's been buying up Fairlanes ever since. His latest is this '66 wagon. In search of something even more different from a hot-rodded Fairlane, Chris bought it in October 2004 with the intention of building an ultrasleeper, ultraquick, streetable drag race car. He lets the car prove itself as it leaves the line with 4 feet of air under the front tires. Its best time so far-and he's still shaking down the car-is a 7.10 at 95 mph in the eighth-mile, which works out to a predicted 11.00 at 121 in the quarter.
Did we mention that Chris uses no power adders? Or that it's an all-steel car with a full interior? The only weight-saver on this 3,500-pound barge is the fiberglass hood. Everything else is just the way Granny ordered it in 1966. The car was originally a 289, three-on-the-tree grocery-getter. That drivetrain was long gone by the time Chris got his hands on the car, but it was just as well: Chris is a dyed-in-the-wool FE guy, and nothing short of 390 inches under the hood would have made the cut. He promptly dropped in a 0.040-over 390-inch Police Interceptor engine. Still topped with iron '66 GT heads, this engine sings a 500hp tune on the dyno. That's 170 more than the gross horsepower ratings Ford would have advertised back in the day.
Having built and raced Fairlanes for the better part of the last two decades, you could say that Chris is something of a specialist. He knows this chassis intimately, and he knows how to build it to handle the power required to make mid-10-second quarter-mile passes. The wagon got the same treatment as his race car. After seam-welding the entire unibody, Chris welded in a set of custom-made subframe connectors and beefed the rear suspension with monoleaf springs and traction bars.
As cool as this wagon is now, Chris isn't done with it yet. Once he feels the car is thoroughly sorted out, he's got a 427 side-oiler to park under the hood. We look forward to seeing the big white wagon dragging the bumper on its way to a mid-10-second pass after that.