This rare, all-original Fairlane factory racer still wears its original sheet metal and paint.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the Big Three started shoveling a lot of support into motorsports like stock car and drag racing. This gave rise to the birth of many a factory race cars, from the HEMI Chryslers to the Cammer Fords. And if you knew the right people, you could order a factory race car right from your local dealership.

An Alabama Ford dealer ordered this 1966 Ford Fairlane to be a knock-down, drag-out race car designed to terrorize the quarter-mile. Almost 50 years later it has wound up on eBay, mostly original and extremely rare as far as factory race cars go.

This car was actually an experimental test car, coming from the factory with a six-cylinder engine before being taken to the famed tuning shop Holman and Moody. There it received a tunnel port injection 427 big-block V8 with 14:1 compression and special Pikes Peak pistons. Backing it was a 4-speed manual transmission and a 9-inch rear end with a Detroit Locker and 4:56 gears.

The compression has been lowered to 11:1 as to run on today’s pump gas, but this 3,500 mile survivor is otherwise a mostly original car, wearing the same factory sheet metal and paint that it did when it was new. Always garage kept and rust free, this rare Ford still failed to meet its eBay reserve price, despite a top bid of over $40,000.