Front Cover of Sales Brochure

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 1970 1/2 FORD FALCON

The last of the 1970 Falcons were sold before the end of the product year, which put Ford into a dilemma. They did not want to produce any more of that model because it would be phased out and replaced with a new "compact" to be named Maverick for the next product year. The tooling "dies" for the body panels were already partially dismantled to ready for shipping to Australia, where this body style was to motor on into the '80s with some very interesting power options, but that is another story. The problem was that the Maverick was just not ready in time. The answer was to put some Falcon "badges" onto specially selected Fairlane/Torino bodies and call them 70 1/2 Falcons. There were not many, but some that were built were interesting. One odd quirk of this solution was that Falcon was available with the same power-train options as the Fairlane/Torino, including the 429 c.i.d. Cobra-Jet engine.