Exterior Color: Yellow
Interior Color: Yellow
Transmission: 3-spd
Vehicle to be offered for Auction sale August 15th-17th at Russo and Steele's 13th Annual Monterey, California Auction. Please contact us for more information.
From its earliest days, when Henry Ford rose from the ashes of the failed Detroit Automobile Company and defeated Alexander Winton on October 10, 1901, “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was a cornerstone principle of the Ford Motor Company. More than half a century later, in the face of huge competitive pressure from Chrysler and GM, particularly archrival Chevrolet, Ford Motor Company decided to demonstrate the endurance and performance of the new-for-1957 Ford models with a bold and massive speed-record attempt at Bonneville.
By setting its sights on smashing the 35,000-mile over 15-day record set by Dodge in 1955 and attacking over 400 World Speed, International (5,000 – 8,000 cc) and National (305 – 488 cu. in.) Class “B” records, Ford Motor Company hoped to reclaim its competition and sales success. Two semi-hand-built, pre-production 1957 Fairlanes were plucked from Dearborn and prepared by DePaolo Engineering, Ford Motor Company’s Long Beach, California racing shop run by former Indy “500” champion Pete DePaolo, which would soon become Holman-Moody. Danny Eames, who was instrumental in Chrysler’s Carrera Panamericana, Bonneville, and NASCAR successes, joined DePaolo and served as the Project Engineer and Crew Chief of Ford’s Bonneville assault.
Powered by balanced and blueprinted 270-horsepower “dual-quad” 312 V-8 engines, both Fairlanes were specially equipped with three-speed manual transmissions, 130-mph speedometers, five gauges in place of the normal in-dash heater and radio, and other careful tweaks for sustained high-speed, long-distance runs. Once certified as production vehicles by the FIA and USAC, they were shipped with a 27-man crew and supplies to Bonneville, Utah. Both sanctioning bodies monitored the record runs, Mobil supplied fuel and lubricants, and Firestone supplied the heavy-duty Super Sports tires.
Eames carefully planned and hand-charted the specific courses to be used by the drivers at Bonneville, with four 10-mile circuits and a straight-line course plotted at their southwest edge. During the epic endurance test later dubbed “The Longest Left Turn in History,” the two Fairlanes ran 120 to 140 miles before coming in for precisely choreographed pit stops, with merely 17 seconds allowed for each stop. The first 24 hours were run at steady speeds over 120 mph, but the cars were eventually throttled back to conserve them for the duration. Drivers, who coped with the bone-jarring monotony of their high-speed stints on the increasingly potholed Bonneville surface by snacking on grapes or sometimes even writing jokes for the pit crew, rotated every six hours. Car number 2, the Fairlane on offer, set out on the Bonneville salt at 3:04:20 PM on September 9, 1956, with Jerry Unser, Jr. driving. The choice of Unser, who would go on to win the 1957 USAC Stock Car championship, was a natural one. Harold Mauck, Danny Oakes, Danny O’Brien, and Danny Eames rounded out the driver roster of car number 2.
When the 20-day effort was completed on September 28, 1956, the Ford Fairlanes set an amazing 458 records in all! Among them, car number 2 set the World Unlimited Speed Record, the International “Class B” Speed Record (106.55 mph over 14 days and 35,800.30 miles), the National “Class B” Speed Record (107.09 mph over 20 days and 51,403.99 miles), and six American “Class B” Closed Car Division standing-start speed records over various specified distances. It also travelled the farther of the two Fairlanes over the 20 days of the Bonneville run, racking up the aforementioned 51,403.99 miles. Incredibly, during the entire 5,000-lap run, the Fairlanes travelled a distance equal to two complete trips around the world!
Life Magazine provided full coverage of the record runs, and Ford Motor Company sponsored a special commemorative issue. Predictably, Ford Motor Company gained an immense marketing impact from the stunningly successful record runs, plus volumes of technical intelligence that profoundly influenced Ford’s subsequent NASCAR efforts and the design and engineering of its showroom models for years. The impeccably organized September 1956 Bonneville effort also provided the blueprint for FoMoCo’s September 1963 100,000-mile Durability runs at Daytona with the Mercury Comet.
After Bonneville, one of the crewmembers acquired Car 2, which eventually passed to Bill Hotton, a friend of Henry Ford II and the owner of Ford subcontractor Dearborn Steel Tubing, the eventual builder of the famed Thunderbolt lightweight Super Stock drag cars of 1964. As confirmed by a 2003 conversation between the current owner and one of Mr. Hotton’s sons, the Hotton boys drag-raced the Fairlane at Detroit Dragway and on the infamous Woodward Boulevard until it was donated to Bill Harrah’s famed automotive collection in 1967. There, it remained unrestored until the famous September 1984 dispersal sale of the Harrah Collection. In 1991, the current owner acquired car number 2 and eventually, he performed an authentic, body-off-frame restoration to its 1956 record-setting glory.
As offered at Monterey, Bonneville Fairlane number 2 is accompanied by masses of fabulous original documentation including numerous letters between John Holman and Ford’s Engineering Department. A copy of the Life Magazine commemorative edition issued by Ford Motor Company and autographed for the current owner by Danny Eames, plus many wonderful images supplied by Mobil Oil, a Certificate of Authenticity from the September 1984 Harrah’s sale, and numerous “as found” and restoration images further cement this Fairlane’s full and outstanding provenance. In addition, Fairlane 2 is believed to be the earliest known of all 1957 Fords remaining in existence, with its VIN ending in “00009” and the frame stamped to match in two locations. Steeped in rich history and a highly fascinating part of Ford’s highly successful corporate racing program, this record-crushing 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Club Sedan is also the only one of the two famous September 1956 Bonneville record cars known to exist today. As such, it is simply irreplaceable as an artefact of those heady days and the legendary men who went on to redefine motor racing during Ford’s all-conquering “Total Performance” era of the 1960s.