OLD CARS: Popular Galaxie was built for 16 years

Article content

OLD CARS: Popular Galaxie was built for 16 years Back to video

That’s easy – it’s the Ford F series of trucks.

And it’s just as easy to guess the most popular Ford car. It’s the Model T; roughly 15 million were built, the last one rolling off the line in May 1927.

It becomes more difficult to identify the second- and third-most popular Ford nameplates.

But at over 10 million cars, Mustang is probably the second-most popular.

Third place might belong to Galaxie. From 1959 until when the name was retired in 1974, Ford built 6,543,375 cars with that nameplate. So popular was Galaxie during the 1960s that the name was as ubiquitous as Chevrolet’s Impala. In fact, the two family-sized cars competed head-to-head for years.

Galaxie became a special edition of Ford’s full-size Fairlane for 1959. For that year only it was a two-door Fairlane with a squared-off roof that mimicked the popular Thunderbird. It was the most expensive Fairlane and yet struck a chord with the public. A total of 464,336 Galaxie cars were sold for 1959.

Galaxie came into its own in 1960 with a model set apart from Fairlane. It offered a futuristic look with half-moon tail lights, just below a set of dainty gullwing fins. New was the car’s A-pillar, which swept forward rather than backward. The front grill treatment was attractive, flanked by double headlights.

Inside, Ford offered an attractive yet subdued instrument panel, a harbinger of things to come. Although Galaxie’s shape and form would change over the next 15 years, the 1960 model set the pace for Ford and would serve as a useful template. The public’s response was tepid at 289,268 units, but better years would be ahead.