Randy Nonnenberg’s 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint 4-Speed for Sale

A 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint 4-Speed is for sale, having been modified in-period by Alan Mann Racing in Britain.

Fast Facts: Randy’s 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint 4-Speed

The Ford Falcon Sprint was famously used as the platform on which the Ford Mustang was built, but it’s proven to be a highly capable car in its own right in both circuit racing and international rally - having come a very close second to the Mini Cooper S at the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally.

History Speedrun: The Ford Falcon Sprint

The Falcon was Robert McNamara’s car in the same way that the Mustang would later be Lee Iacocca’s. Ford approved the program in early 1958 for launch as a 1960 model, giving the engineers about 18 months to get the design nailed down and ready for production. This was a remarkably short timeline.

Known as a compact in the USA (but considered rather large elsewhere in the world), the Falcon was styled under the codename XK-Thunderbird and got its production name in April of 1958. McNamara’s original brief called for a 2,100 lb car with a four-cylinder engine and seats for five. Henry Ford II insisted on six-passenger seating, chief engineer Jack Hooven argued successfully for a six-cylinder engine, and the target weight climbed to 2,300 lbs.

What emerged from this rapid development program was a car that would become the foundation of an icon. It had unit construction (rather than the more traditional body-on-frame), a 109.5 inch wheelbase, coil springs at the front and leaf springs at the rear, drum brakes at all four corners, and a new 144 cubic inch six making 90 bhp.

The creases in the steel down the body sides were structural - stiffening the panels so the steel could be thinner for a lower weight with no loss of strength. The base price was $1,912, that more than $250 below the cheapest full-size Ford.

The Ford Falcon Sprint - A Surprise Rally Car

The Ford Falcon Sprint took the 260 Challenger V8 from the mid-size Fairlane, rated at 164 bhp with a two-barrel carburetor, and made it standard equipment in a Falcon - hardtop or convertible. The body and suspension were stiffened to cope, 10 inch drums were bolted up to all four wheels, and five-lug hubs replaced the four-lug wheels used on six-cylinder Falcons.

Ford’s own advertising copy sold it on noise as much as speed, promising a “unique performance sound'” from a special throaty muffler and a 390 Police “power hum” air cleaner. Every 1963 Sprint got bucket seats, a dash-mounted tachometer, chrome engine dress-up and wire wheel covers. Ford built 10,479 Sprint hardtops for the shortened first season, and around 4,600 drop tops.

The 1964 Falcon Sprint Arrives

The Falcon was re-bodied for 1964 on the same 109.5 inch wheelbase, the new car grew slightly in length, width, and weight. The softer shape of 1960 gave way to chiseled body sides, a convex feature line and a forward-slanted grille. Underneath came a wider rear track, longer and wider rear springs, and revised front suspension.

The model range now included four engines and four transmissions. The 144 six was down to 85 bhp by then, the 170 Special Six made 101 bhp, and the 200 Special Six, new to the Falcon line, made 116 bhp. That 200 was available across the line except in the Sprint, which kept the 260 as its only engine.

A 1964 Sprint hardtop measured 181.6 inches long with a curb weight of 2,935 lbs. The convertible got a little more porky, and the weight climbed to 3,130 lbs. Ford offered three transmissions for the Sprint - the synchronized 3-speed as standard, a 4-speed manual, or a Fordomatic automatic box.

Ford built 13,830 Sprint hardtops and 4,278 Sprint convertibles for 1964, a total of 18,108 out of roughly ~300,000 Falcons that rolled out of the factory that year.

Then Came Monte Carlo

Ford entered a fully funded three-car Falcon team in the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally under competition manager George Merwin and team manager Jeffery Uren, with Holman & Moody in Charlotte preparing the cars. Bo Ljungfeldt and Gunnar Haggbom took car 223, Peter Jopp and Trant Jarman car 221, and Anne Hall and Margaret MacKenzie car 207 in the Coupe des Dames.

A jam of stranded cars on a snow-choked hill road near Lodève put Hall and MacKenzie out of the rally for missing the one-hour reporting limit, and cost Jopp 13 penalty minutes. Ljungfeldt lost only a minute there. A tire let go at speed the next day, and then the clutch failed because a mechanic had left out a cotter key. He reached Chambéry 31 minutes down and finished 43rd of 296 starters - despite this he still set the best time among all finishers in every one of the six special test sections.

Having seen what the Falcon Sprint could do in Monte Carlo, the effort grew to eight cars in 1964, all lightened with fiberglass panels and aluminum bumpers. Holman & Moody replaced the 260s with 289 V8s and fitted Borg-Warner 4-speeds. Alan Mann Racing ran the cars in Europe.

Ljungfeldt (now partnered with Fergus Sager in car 49) set the fastest time on every special stage of the rally. But he still lost. The Monte Carlo handicap formula of the period rewarded smaller cars by requiring bigger ones to go proportionally faster, and after the Col de Turini stage that the British press called the “Night of the Long Knives,” Paddy Hopkirk’s Mini Cooper S was 17 seconds behind the Falcon on the road and ahead of it on points.

Ljungfeldt won the closing three-lap test on the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, the last year that test was run, with Hopkirk half a minute back. The rally was scored on penalty points, the fewest points wins, and the final classification gave Hopkirk 2,536.2 to Ljungfeldt’s 2,566.7. It was an extremely close finish, but the Mini won out.

The car for sale is reportedly one of the eight modified by Alan Mann Racing for the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally.