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Final Parking Space: 1980 Ford Fairmont Wagon
The Ford Fox family included coupes, sedans, hatchbacks, pickups, convertibles, and, of course, station wagons. We’ve seen a Fox Zephyr Z-7 Turbo and a Fox Mustang GT convertible so far in this series, and now we’ll induce a heavy flow of Sajeev’s Bitter Tears with this Fox Fairmont wagon in a northeastern Colorado car graveyard.
Don’t get too excited about the prospect of grabbing a bunch of rare Fox wagon parts off this car, because I shot these photos in December of 2022; sometimes I write about junkyard cars right away, and sometimes they have to wait quite a while for their turn. The crusher’s cold steel jaws consumed this car years ago, I’m sorry to say.
I run across plenty of non-Mustang Foxes during my junkyard travels around the country, including Lincoln Mark VIIs, Mercury Capris, Ford Granadas, Ford Thunderbirds, Mercury Marquises, Mercury Cougars, Mercury Zephyrs, Lincoln Continentals, Ford LTDs, and Ford Fairmonts. Discarded wagons are harder to find than sedans and coupes nowadays, but I have documented a ’79 Fairmont wagon and an ’85 LTD wagon during the past few years.
Every time I write about a Fox wagon in its final parking space, readers wail that it should have been made into a drag race machine. I agree. When you find one, make it happen!
This wagon was built with the optional 200-cubic-inch (3.3-liter) pushrod straight-six engine, a powerplant that started being bolted into Fords back in 1963. This one was rated at 91 horsepower and 160 pound-feet.
The base engine in the 1980 Fairmont was the “Pinto” 2.3-liter SOHC straight-four with its 88 horses/119 pound-feet. A turbocharged 2.3 with 120 hp/145 lb-ft and a 255-cube (4.2-liter) Windsor V-8 with 119 hp/194 lb-ft were available as well.
A four-speed manual transmission was base equipment. This car has the $340 three-speed automatic to go with the $206 six-cylinder engine ($1394 and $845 in 2025 dollars).
The big optional expense was the air conditioning, which cost $571 ($2,338 after inflation).
The MSRP before all the options was $5144, or about $21,097 in today’s money. I’ve never seen a Fox wagon with 2.3 engine and four-on-the-floor manual, though, and I doubt I ever will.
Ford offered four sizes of U.S.-market wagons for 1980, if you are willing to accept E-Series passenger vans as genuine wagons. By my calculations, 1964 and 1977 are tied for Peak Wagon in the United States, with 47 distinct (non-van) wagon models available here in both of those years.
The final model year for a true Ford station wagon in the United States was 2019 (if you accept the Flex as a station wagon) or 2007 (if you define the Flex as a crossover SUV).
MADD was founded in 1980, and this may well be a sticker from that year.
The final year for the Fairmont was 1983, but Fox LTD and Fox Marquis wagons continued to be built through 1986. After that, if you wanted a new medium-size Dearborn longroof, you had to go with front-wheel drive and get a Taurus/Sable.
The Ford in your future!
Ford’s better ideas keep coming.
Not the best vehicles in their day. I say stuff a 302 in this thing and be a sleeper.
At an inflation-adjusted 22K sticker price, compare it to what you can get today for 22K and it’s probably not so bad
I recently bought a new Mazda3 for not much more than that and I’d say it’s a lot better, imho
I am more of a Fox LTD wagon dude, but seeing this not being saved is clearly making me shed some salty tears.
I miss the 1980 baby blue Fairmont Squire wagon my grandparents had given to my parents when me and my sis were born.
My family’s ’78 Fairmont wagon was the car I learned to drive on. Six-cylinder with a 3-speed floor shifter that year. Royal Blue metallic with blue vinyl bench seats, AM radio, roof rack and not much else. No power steering or brakes, either. Not much to go wrong, so it was quite reliable, but painfully slow
Had a 1980 mercury zephyr wagon in the mid-’80’s. 4cylinder, 4 speed. No power anything, but the only options it had was a radio, deluxe bucket seat nterior, deluxe exterior trim, and cruise control! Loved the car until a mini van total it whie parked. Wish i still had it.
I was at Thunderhill here in NorCal road racing my shifter kart. We karters were part of the local Shelby race weekend. Saw some really cool cars. That being said, there was a Fairmont wagon with all the Fox body racy bits absolutely whipping around the track. That was the standout car to me that weekend. Although, the person racing a mid 70s Ranchero was a very close second in that regard…
Wagons were some of the most practical vehicles Detroit ever built. Hatchbacks have easy access for stashing stuff and moving from here to there, but don’t have the interior volume. SUVs have the interior volume, but the large frontal area kills the fuel economy. Wagons were really a great combination of low frontal area, relatively decent fuel economy (if you didn’t get the biggest engine available), and good interior volume. It was sad to see them disappear. (Kinda miss my mom’s parade of Vista Cruisers.)
Our families Auto/Tire shop’s Service Manager’s Mom had the Fairmont Squire in Red Glow like the brochure above, with the V-8. And, the Service Manager being a mechanic that liked to tinker, that wagon was a sleeper.
After his Mom got a new car, it became our shop/parts/shuttle/pick-up vehicle.
Even though we had nicer choices, we always chose the Fairmont wagon because it was a blast to drive!
I’m with Sajeev here, that one should be/could be saved.
I bought a 1978 Fairmont wagon Brand New in San Jose California. In 1980 I drove my family up to Seattle in it. It has been probably the most reliable car I’ve ever owned. I have to add to that that it is the most painfully slow car I’ve ever owned.
The car I bought had the four-cylinder in it with the four speed. On the open road if there was a headwind, it took everything the poor car had to reach 60 miles an hour.
But the damn thing always ran and only stranded me once. The throttle cable broke while I was crossing a bridge and left me sitting in the middle of the bridge with the engine idling. I jammed a pencil in the throttle linkage and struggled it home. The replacement cable was $17 which I didn’t have at the time so I stripped a brake cable off of my 10 speed bicycle and fixed the linkage. When I lost track of that car, it still had the brake cable being used for the throttle linkage.
If I were doing a drag car I’d go with a Fairmont Futura like Glidden campaigned. This wagon swap, in a 300/ 4.9 L straight six and use it to haul as intended. There has to be quite a few clean ex- U.P.S. truck engines out there ready for a simple rebuild.
We had the 4 speed manual. It had vinyl seats and no options beyond the radio. It was an absolutely horrible car. I learned to drive a manual with that car and even dated in that beast.
Back when I was in the Navy in the late ’70’s while on leave I rented a brand spanking new ’78 Ford Fairmont coupe from a friendly Ford dealership. It had the four cylinder engine, P/S, AM radio and an automatic transmission and not much else. I installed a FM radio converter and added a pair of homemade speakers that I threw in the back seat. And yes it was slow but considering that I rented it in the dead of a Michigan winter, it’s heater kicked out oodles of welcome heat in a what seemed like a matter of seconds. And although cars from this era get knocked for shoddy and indifferent build quality, it seemed to be contructed to a much higher standard than the cars that Detroit had built just a few years previously.
Not wagons, but Foxes nonetheless: 1978 Fairmont police package. Before I got there, we had two. Nobody liked them-small (the other squads were LTD IIs), skittish handling. Buuut…they had the 302 and they were (for the time) fast. Alas, they were short-lived: nicknamed “Firemonts”, they self-immolated long before they would have been retired.
Personally, I wish I’d had the chance to drive them. By the time I got there we were driving Diplomats. They were durable but slow, and the handling could best be described as “plodding”.
I sold Fords in 78/79. The Fairmont was absolutely the “DULLEST” car ever designed by Ford. It looked like a cheap plastic toy with little or no thought put into its design. Add a four cylinder lawnmower engine and a beige paint job and you were staring at a customer who you were trying to talk out of the deal.
The Futuras with a 302, charcoal grey paint and aluminum wheels were a tad bit easier to sell.
It was a bad era for Fords.