We don’t often feature American cars as our Prime Finds here at ViaRETRO, principally because we generally know less about them (certainly true in my case), and of course there are relatively fewer for sale in Europe.
On top of this, they tend to be less suitable for British and European roads, largely – though not exclusively – by dint of their size, so even when we have written about American cars in this weekly slot, they’ve tended to be the smaller, sportier variety – such as the Pontiac Fiero and Chevrolet Corvair we featured a few months back, and more recently, the Avanti.
If I’m honest, while I enjoy seeing many of the extravagant land yachts of the ‘50s and ‘60s, bedecked with massive fins and enough chrome to blind you from 100 metres, I would never want one. Instead, I prefer the more subtle (a relative term in this case) and restrained (again, relative) styling of US cars from roughly 1964 through to 1970, after which it all went wrong again, for me at least.
Too much? For me, anyway.
The kind of cars I’m talking about are first generation Chevrolet Camaro’s from 1967 to 1969, second generation Dodge Chargers from 1968 to 1970, first generation Buick Riviera’s from 1963 to 1965 , or a fourth generation Pontiac Bonneville from the ’65 to ’67 – not only are these cars free of extravagant excrescences, they’re actually graceful and elegantly styled, yet still possess the presence of brutal power. Your mileage may of course vary, but I’m writing this, not you, dear Reader.
Much more to my (very subjective) taste.
This week’s Prime Find is another such car cut from the same sheet metal, and to cap it all, it’s in a shade of my favourite colour…
Ford introduced the Galaxie range (intended to piggy-back on the contemporary obsession with the space race) as a full-sized level up on the Fairlane in 1959, and the first Galaxie’s did of course carry big fins and lots of chrome as was de rigeur at the time. It came as a 2-and-4-door saloon, convertible and estate (or station wagon if you prefer), and engines ranged from “economical” 3.7-litre sixes to 5.7-litre V8’s, which in later iterations were expanded to 7-litres, and there were the usual bewildering number of trim and engine combinations, far too many and too confusing for me to try to go through here.
The Galaxie was built until 1974 – a 15-year run – sharing the same platform with Ford subsidiary Mercury for its Meteor, Monterey and S-55 models. In total over 7 million full-sized Fords and Mercury’s were built, making it Ford’s second most successful single-platform range after the Model-T. While intended to compete with Chevrolet’s Impala, it never really reached the GM car’s sales figures.
Impala or Galaxie – which would you choose?
This first generation was produced for just two years before being replaced by a more restrained design in 1960, which – as was the way with US cars back then – was facelifted and changed every year for the next four years, with the fins getting smaller, and the bodyline smoother, partly in an attempt to improve the car’s aerodynamics for NASCAR racing.
It’s worth mentioning here that besides competing in their home races, Galaxies (as well as Camaro’s, Mustangs and others) were also campaigned in Europe – seeing such big cars racing alongside Jaguar MkII’s, Lotus Cortina’s and Mini’s provided a thrilling spectacle back in the day, one that we’re lucky enough to see re-created in events such as the Goodwood Revival and Silverstone Classic.
In 1965, the third generation Galaxie was introduced and was a very different looking car to its predecessors. Featuring the then-fashionable – and very cool, in my opinion – stacked headlights look. The estate was dropped, with just 2-door saloon and coupé versions and a 4-door saloon available.
It’s from this generation that our Prime Find comes in the shape of a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 in Springtime Yellow, and it looks super cool.
To digress very slightly, the Galaxie 500 is so cool that where many cars have had songs written about them, the Galaxie 500 had a band named after it – the eponymous alternative rock outfit, who named themselves after a friend’s car, hailed from Boston USA and enjoyed moderate success between 1987 and 1991 – here’s the official video of their best known song, Tugboat. Don’t let anyone tell you ViaRETRO doesn’t broaden cultural horizons…
Back to our Prime Find, it’s a 4-door saloon, so while not quite as cool as the 2-door (in my view), it still looks good – I like the unfussy, clean profile and stacked headlights a lot – not dissimilar to a similar-period Pontiac Bonneville – and the interior looks reasonably tidy.
When new, the 5.7-litre V8 pushed out an easy 254bhp that would once have taken the car up to a maximum speed north of 185km/h and taken care of the sprint from standstill to 100km/h in 10 seconds.
The history of this particular car before it was imported into the UK from California in 1997 does not seem to be known, though the file since then seems reasonably comprehensive. The current owner has had the car since 2010 and states that it drives “very well”. The recorded mileage of 87,000 is not warranted.
As usual, we’ve borrowed some photographs from the auctioneer’s website and based on these, the car looks to be in pretty decent shape, though as always, an inspection is recommended if you’re interested. The auctioneer’s estimate is between £10-12,000, so the cliché of a lot of car for the money would certainly apply here. At 5.334m (17ft 6 ins) long and 2.007m (6ft 7ins) wide it has a big footprint, and it is also of course left-hand drive – manouvering it around UK towns will be challenging. Having your own fuel supply would also be an advantage, as it would with many such cars – they were never meant to be economical!
This cool piece of 1960’s Americana comes up for auction this weekend with Anglia Car Auctions; we’ll be keeping an eye on to see how it does. You can see the full lot listing here – 1966 Ford Galaxie 500
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk