1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Cory Behrens – CC Cohort
If you’re more familiar with cars of the 1960s and 1970s, seeing both “Fairlane” and “Galaxie” badges on the same car might be puzzling, but prior to 1961, the Fairlane was a trim series of the full-size Ford, with the Galaxie introduced during 1959 as a new top-of-the-line sub-series — a stylish flagship for one of Ford’s best postwar years. Let’s take a look at this yellow example Cory Behrens shot in Idaho Springs, Colorado, in December 2024.
1955 Ford Fairlane Skyliner / Darin Schnabel – RM Sotheby’s
Ford first introduced the Fairlane series for 1955. The name was derived from Fair Lane, the Dearborn estate of Henry and Clara Ford, which took its name in turn from the road in County Cork, Ireland, where Henry’s father had had his family estate. The Fairlane was initially the senior Ford trim level, replacing the previous Crestline, but for 1957, there was a still-glitzier Fairlane 500, priced $47 above the “standard” Fairlane.
This proved very successful, so Ford repeated the trick for 1959, adding the new Galaxie as the senior series. (In retrospect, this rapid debasement of successful names seems wasteful — as with many other resources, the supply of catchy, trademarkable model names has proven to be more limited than was generally assumed in the 1950s.)
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Cory Behrens – CC Cohort
Part of the reason Ford was so successful at moving buyers upmarket with these additional trim series was that each step represented a relatively small escalation in price. In 1959, a four-door Galaxie Town Sedan was just $52 more than a comparable Fairlane 500, which was $119 more than a regular Fairlane, which was $138 more than the low-end Custom 300 series. Going all the way from a six-cylinder Custom 300 two-door sedan ($2,219) to a V-8 Galaxie Town Victoria four-door hardtop ($2,772) might cause some sticker shock, but the multiple tiers let buyers make the journey upmarket in more palatable stages.
Optional equipment installation rates as a percentage of production for 1959 Chevrolet and 1959 Ford (excluding Thunderbird)
I was surprised to learn that Ford customers in 1959 tended to be more lavish than Chevrolet buyers with optional equipment. V-8 engines had been a Ford signature since 1932, of course, but Automotive Industries manufacturer survey data shows that a full-size 1959 Ford was also significantly more likely than a ’59 Chevrolet to have automatic transmission and other extra-cost options, like radio and power steering. Ford had little luck in this period trying to build up its middle-class brands — Edsel never worked, and the attempt to move Mercury upmarket while (temporarily) separating it from Lincoln was a disaster — but Ford customers seemed quite amenable to mid-priced models with Ford badges. It was a trend that would accelerate in the ’60s with the popularity of the LTD and the Country Squire station wagon, which found widespread acceptance even in some rather upscale neighborhoods.
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Cory Behrens – CC Cohort
I don’t know what powertrain this yellow 1959 Galaxie Town Sedan might have. Statistically, it probably has a V-8 and automatic — perhaps the 200-horsepower 292 cu. in. (4,778 cc) Y-block, the base V-8 for 1959, with the new two-speed Fordomatic, although the newer 332 cu. in. (5,436 cc) and 352 cu. in. (5,766 cc) engines were optional, along with the three-speed Cruise-O-Matic. You could also have overdrive with any engine except the 332; 5 percent of 1959 buyers ordered overdrive, at an extra cost of about $108.
Dashboard of a 1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Skyliner with automatic transmission and air conditioning / Volo Auto Sales
What really distinguished the Galaxie from the Fairlane 500 was not the powertrain, but the roofline, which was adapted from the roofline of the four-seat Ford Thunderbird hardtop. Ford marketing trumpeted the Galaxie as “Thunderbird in looks … Thunderbird in luxury!”
1959 Ford Thunderbird hardtop / Bring a Trailer
Ford probably had Robert McNamara to thank for this feature, which McNamara (then the general manager of Ford Division) had loved when designers Joe Oros and Bill Boyer first proposed it in 1955 for a future four-seat Thunderbird. (The roof design was previewed on the 1957 Ford Skyliner retractable hardtop, which was conceived around the same time as the four-seat ‘Bird.)
Full-size model with the roofline eventually adopted for the 1958 Ford Thunderbird, photographed September 1, 1955 / Ford Motor Company
In a 1984 interview with David Crippen of The Henry Ford, designer Gene Bordinat called the production 1958 Thunderbird “quite boraxy,” explaining:
It had a lot [of design] — schlocky — but it had a very formal roof on it. Well, this is typical of the way the uninitiated view a car. McNamara would say, “Well, that looks pretty formal.” Formal, your ass, it looked just — I mean — it looked commercial, but it had a big spear on the side and a hook coming down onto the spear and double headlights on it and a great big bumper grille … I mean, you know, it was really an adventure — but with a formal roof. And, it’s interesting, it had more to look at.
Whatever Bordinat thought of it, McNamara’s judgment in this regard was right on target. The 1958–1960 Thunderbird quickly established itself as a true prestige car in image as well as price (it cost about as much as a Buick Invicta). Applying its distinctive roofline to the standard car for 1959 was a huge hit: Ford sold 464,336 Galaxies for 1959, compared to just 79,011 Fairlane 500s and 97,789 Fairlanes. The 1959 shape is still very fondly remembered; in the Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946–1975, editor John Smith called it “one of the best looking cars ever to come out of Dearborn.”
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Cory Behrens – CC Cohort
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Club Sedan / Bring a Trailer
I think part of what made the Galaxie formal roof successful was that it looked equally good in both pillared and pillarless Victoria forms. With some cars of this era, the pillared sedans were definitely the poor relation when it came to styling, but the bright window frames of the four-door Town Sedan seem to fit right in with the overall theme, giving up little to the hardtops in glamour. The Town Sedan was the bestseller of the Galaxie series, accounting for 39.4 percent of production, followed by the two-door Club Victoria hardtop, which accounted for 26.2 percent.
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Club Victoria (with ’64 Galaxie wheel covers) / Mecum Auctions
Of course, the true glamour leader of the Galaxie line was the 1959 Skyliner retractable hardtop. The Skyliner remains a show-stopper even today, but the “retrac” was expensive ($646 more than a V-8 Town Sedan), and Ford sold only 12,915 of them this year.
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Skyliner retractable hardtop / Mecum Auctions
In previous years, the Fairlane and Fairlane 500 had been larger than the entry-level Custom 300, stretching 5 inches longer overall on a 2-inch-longer wheelbase. For 1959, Ford consolidated on the longer wheelbase, so all 1959 Ford cars except the Thunderbird were 208 inches long on a 118-inch wheelbase. These were big cars, and buyers seemed to like them that way. Likewise, while these Fords look rather jukebox-y to modern eyes (few American cars of 1959 didn’t), they were more down to earth than a ’59 Chevrolet or ’59 Plymouth, and contemporary buyers liked that too.
Ironically, the 1959 Galaxie proved far more successful than Ford had anticipated. During its development, Ford designers had gotten a surreptitious early glimpse of the 1959 Chevrolet, which caused a wave of panic internally. James O. Wright, who had succeeded McNamara as head of Ford Division in 1957, feared the 1959 Ford would be dead in the water against the swoopy bat-winged Chevrolet, and ordered a hasty and expensive full redesign for 1960, based on an advanced design project called Quicksilver.
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Cory Behrens – CC Cohort
It was the wrong call: The 1959 Ford was an outstanding seller, coming very close to unseating Chevrolet for the coveted No. 1 spot in sales — 1,462,140 to 1,481,080 for the model year — with a domestic market share of 26.3 percent. Ford actually beat Chevrolet in 1959 calendar year production. The redesigned 1960 line didn’t go over nearly as well: While total 1960 Ford passenger car sales nearly equaled 1959, thanks to the introduction of the Falcon, Ford lost 2.3 percentage points of market share.
For 1960, the Galaxie became a completely separate series from the Fairlane 500 / Ford Motor Company
(Incidentally, unlike more recent decades, which have seen Ford become almost exclusively a truck company, passenger cars were still Ford’s bread and butter in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this era, the AMA didn’t track truck and bus sales by model year as they did for cars, but Ford built 331,348 trucks and buses in calendar 1959 and 339,239 in 1960.)
1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Town Sedan / Ford Motor Company
Given their popularity at the time, surviving ’59 Fords have become fairly thin on the ground, and with the exception of the highly collectible Skyliner, if you spot one, it may not be in very presentable shape. (The yellow Town Sedan Cory spotted in Colorado would need a lot of rust repair to be ready for car show duty.) This is a common paradox of mass-market goods: When there are so many of something, they may not seem worth saving, or worth noticing at all — until one day you turn around and realize you haven’t seen one in an awfully long time, and all that’s left are old photos and memories.
Related Reading
Curbside Musings: 1959 Ford Galaxie – On Becoming Stanley Roper (Joseph Dennis)
Storage Lot Classic: 1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie Skyliner – And Now For My Next Trick… (Tatra87)
CC Jukebox: 1959 Ford Galaxie – On The Street Where You Live (Joseph Dennis)
Curbside Classic: 1958 Ford Thunderbird – The Most Revolutionary American Car Of The Fifties (Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevrolet Impala – Holy Batwing Die Cast Dreams (Laurence Jones)
Our family had both ’57 and ’59 Ford wagons, both very handsome cars and not coincidentally the 2 best sales years for Ford in the ’50s, in ’57 even beating Chevrolet. Good design sells! Neither had a V8 as good or efficient as Chevy, but again, it’s all about looks. And to a great extent, it still is. The challenge now is how to make a truck look great and stand out from all the others, not an easy task.
Part of the reason the 1960 Ford is a one year only model, has to do with its width. In keeping with the “longer, lower, wider” design trend of the era, it (and its companion in sheet metal and window glass, the 1960 Edsel) was made to be all three.
This created a problem with state laws. The cars are 81.5 inches wide while some state laws defined anything over 80 inches a truck. Trucks required clearance lights on their roofs which these cars did not have. Some states passed hasty legislation to exempt these 1960 FoMoCo products from truck laws and keep them registered as cars. Some countries in Europe, reportedly, did not allow them in at all, quashing some import sales. The longer, lower, wider design also gave these vehicles the turning radius of an Olympic swimming pool. Making a U turn in a typical two lane road could be quite a challenge. As a result, owners hated them. For that reason, the 1960 Ford is a one-off year with the 1961 and later models getting a width trim.
Fascinating stuff on state vehicle width regs. Does this make the 1960 Ford the widest regular production car ever made?
How many ’59 Fords did you see with the tail lights half filled with water? And they would still work!! Kind of a mobile lava lamp.
I still think the ’60 Galaxie is one of the ugliest cars ever, especially from the rear.
Agreed re: the ’60. To me it also applies to the ’59, which I think actually looks more bizarre.
Actually, given the time frame, they both look quite “contemporary”. As with so many cars then, they were constantly redesigned to look “dated”. ((quickly dated))
I grew up in suburban Toronto and our neighbours across the street had one of these in white. The houses were slightly offset, so when you looked out our living room window what you saw was the Ford. The distinctive lights are burned into my memory.
I’m really not a fan of any late-50s Fords, but ’59 would be my pick if I had to choose one. It’s dorky but in a charming way. The ’57 was just weird. Almost insect-like. The ’58 was a total hack job. I’m not much a fan of the ’60 either, but it was a big leap forward compared to anything from 1957-1959.
Just a few years later and my favorite car line of all time would arrive: 1961-64 Ford Galaxies.
Those 4 classic years were the best ever for Ford, the ones that came after were increasingly too fashioned for soft ride and corpulent styling didn’t help. The leaner ’61-64s handled very predictably and looked good.
Even if there was a lot of carryover under the skin, it always amazed me that Detroit could afford those every-year styling changes for a while. Nice to see this ’59, which I never see in local car shows, but were once everywhere in my childhood suburbia.
I’ll still never get all the names/lines straight with Custom/Fairlane/Galaxie/500/Victoria, etc., etc.; perhaps this model year was as complex as it ever got.
Ford really promoted the elegant-styling idea (the newspapers tell me there were displays in the high-end department stores like Magnin’s), and there was that award at the Brussels World’s Fair in the fall of 1958: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgj-bId38RQ
My first car was a $100 1959 Ford, got in around 1970. Worse car I ever owned. I upgraded to a 1963 Chevy for $400 a year later and it was a good car.
Remarkable how the Galaxie sold so well since it was a mid-year introduction. Had it been available from the get-go, Ford would have likely clobbered Chevy.
As to the Galaxie’s success and the high take rate of V8s and other options, it’s very clear that it was competing against Edsel and Mercury as much as the competition at GM and Chrysler. With that Thunderbird roof, it simply looked more upscale in a formal way that resonated with buyers than Edsel or Mercury, who were deprived of this new look roof style.
I have mixed feelings about the styling of these, other than the roof, which clearly helps to modernize it. It’s a smaller box sitting on top of a larger (and wider box), resulting in large “shoulders” or ledges at the belt line, very unlike the more fuselage approach at Chrysler and GM. And the rockets strapped on don’t help, as well as other details. But in certain fundamental aspects it is more of a preview of where big cars were going in the ’60s than the wild finned wonders at Chrysler and GM. It previews the 1960 Comet, the ’62 Fairlane and to some extent, even the boxy all-new ’65 big Fords.
If this car has the 292 V8 and the new 2-speed Fordomatic, it is a slug, as far as V8 cars go. Having perused many vintage reviews, I’m struck at how Fords of this era (and well into the ’60s) were consistently slower than the competition, especially so if they had this 2-speed Fordomatic and/or the 292. Although this automatic was new in ’59, it very clearly did not perform as well as the Chevy Powerglide, regardless of what engine it was teamed with. No wonder it had such a short life. And the 292, even with a manual, was always significantly slower than the base V8s from Chevy or Plymouth/Dodge.
I too like the formal roof .
This old survivor needs some help soon as rust never sleeps .
These were beaters well into the 1990’s out West .
-Nate
We got these Fords in NZ local assembly only fordor and they were popular, 57 & 59 were hard years selling Chevys here,my dad worked at a Chevrolet dealership they sold lots of Vauxhalls with vertical fins and very few 59 Chevs with horizontal fins, I prefer the 59 Ford.
I’ve never understood how anyone could think the 59 Ford was an attractive car. It is hideous from every angle. I much more prefer the 57 and 58.
Ford had a winner with the ‘59 model. Just a pleasant, attractive car. Went toe to toe in sales with the batwing Chevy. Plymouth was a non-starter, in the middle of a slump that would last until ‘65, when the new Elwood Engel models stopped the slide. Curious that Ford would make such a departure with the awkward 1960’s.
The ’59 Plymouth was the victim of one of those “needed to be different for the sake of being different” facelifts in order to distinguish it from the handsomely styled ’57 and ’58 models which were now getting old in the eyes of the public. The 1960 Plymouth facelift was even worse and uglier.
And of course Plymouth had developed a reputation for being unreliable and for rusting starting with the ’57 models that would take some time to overcome.
Yes. I suspect Bill Schmidt had a lot to do with those designs, since he stepped in after Exner had his heart attack in the fall of ’57, and those 59 designs have echoes of work he was doing at Packard. And yeah, the ’60 was somehow worse, and cheap-looking. And let’s not even talk about 1961…
But I also suspect there was pressure from some dealers to make the original ’57 designs less ‘plain’. They always want more glitz. Since my Dad was selling Chryslers and Plymouths back then, I’ll ask him if he remembers this being an issue.
Does anyone have any photos, renderings, sketches, etc. of the proposed 1960 Ford that was replaced by the one that went into production? It would be interesting to see what it would have been. My guess is an update of the 1959 featured in this post.
I’ve never been a fan of the 59 Ford.
Always liked the 57 or 58 models. But clearly, adults in the market for a full-size car thought differently at the time. I did not know sales came close to what Chevrolet produced. The formal roof definitely a factor to drawing in buyers.
That era of Ford products were the ugliest ever. Whoever the designer was should have been fired. Most models were just one notch less ugly than the Edsel.
“The Fairlane was initially the senior Ford trim level, displacing the previous Customline to the No. 2 slot….”
The Customline wasn’t displaced by the Fairlane series, the Crestline was. The Customline was the No. 2 series in ’54 and remained the No. 2 series in ’55-’56 after the Fairlane debuted in ’55.
Oops, quite right. I’ve amended the text.
Beautiful vehicle. Best looking Ford in class from the 50’s. There was a body shop next to my house growing up. In the office there were pictures of notable jobs they had done, and there were about a dozen pictures of a turquoise/cream 59 that was horribly T-boned that they had repaired like new. I’ve admired those 59’s ever since. Love that old car smell!
In Australia, we only got the Custom 300 Fairlane 500 4 door sedans and Ranch Wagon, though I’ve never seen a wagon.
As a kid, these cars always reminded me of those large colorful tin toys of the 60s.
I’m sure they were strong solid cars but to me they just had a cheap tin toy look to them.
To me, the biggest mystery of the massive restyle that was the 59 Ford is how much of it come from the 58 Mercury. It would not be a surprise if Robert McNamara, looking at the poorly amortized body of the 57-58 Mercury told Ford designers to use that car as a starting point for the new 59 Ford. As the company’s flagship product, it certainly had a big budget, but they surely saved a bundle if this was what happened. I suspect that a lot of 58 Mercury tooling got re-used for this car.
I had also never really noticed how deeply the taillights dip into the bumper. I guess all the other eye candy on the rear distracts compared with plainer designs in 1962, 67-68 and 1970.
I had never realized how much the Galaxie dwarfed the lower models in sales. But it makes sense given how this was the flavor I saw so much more when these were still occasionally seen out and about or on tv/movies.
There were always certain shared aspects of the 1957-up Ford, Edsel and Mercury bodies. They all rode on essentially the same chassis, with different wheelbase lengths. The main difference, as I pointed out in my Edsel posts, is that the Mercury body was externally wider from the cowl back. The ’58 Edsel front end was the same for both the Ford based junior series and the Mercury senior series, the only difference being that the front end for the senior series has an extrusion added to the front fender to mate up to the wider Mercury-based body.
In 1959, the Ford (and Edsel) essentially adopted the basic wider exterior body cross-section that the Mercury (and senior 58 Edsel) had used. This is most evident in the broader “shoulders” where the lower body meets the upper body.
As to the ’59 Ford, yes, a close look at both in profile (below) shows the similarities, but there’s also some key differences. The front end, although similar in some respects, is longer on the Mercury, due to its longer wheelbase, hence no sharing of actual tooling there. The front doors look to have essentially the same shape and size, but not how the Mercury doors don’t meet at the bottom, while the Ford doors do. The Mercury rear doors are apparently a bit longer too. And the whole rear end of the Mercury body is of course longer. Their windshields are different too.
But undoubtedly some inner body parts were the same, like the expensive cowl, most of all. All these Ford Co. big cars of this era were in the same basic family, just some stretching and bulging in certain places and such. And yes, the ’59 Ford certainly shows that, now that the Ford, Edsel and Mercury all shared the wider body.
I no longer believe that the 59 Ford essentially used a carried-over body from the prior year’s Mercury, but a look at the low-tier 58 Mercury and the 59 Ford in its original iteration makes me think that things like the hood/headlights area, the beltline area and the basic roof structure may have been made from modified 58 Mercury stamping dies. After all, the 59 Ford is a lot closer to the 58 Mercury than the 59 Mercury was.
What is amazing is how quickly Ford’s large car program went from the high number of permutations in 1958 (and even 59 with the new Mercury) to a single body based on the 60-61 Ford by 1961.
What surprised me about the 1959 production figures is that there was a nearly even split between basic Custom 300 sedans and Galaxies.
The ’59 Ford is a car I could never really love. The styling is too busy and frumpy – especially on the tail. I think the ’60 Fords were much more attractive than ’59s. I guess there’s no accounting for taste – I see the 59 to 60 transition for Ford about the same as the 60 to 61 Lincolns: from big and flashy (too much) to smooth and restrained. That said, the early 60s Lincolns were iconic where the 60 Ford was more a step in the right direction. I like all the 60-64 Fords, but the ’63 is the standout – one of the best-looking full-size cars ever (far better than contemporary Impalas, to my eye). I see a similar trend for the Thunderbird. 58-60 is overdone, even if it worked at the time. The baby bird is my first choice, but that aside, I’d take a 61-66 over 58-60 – even though they just got more and more bloated.
The naming issue is something else I’ve marveled at (in an unfavorable way). It’s remarkable how the Fairlane cycled from the top to the bottom in five years. Apparently Ford forgot about the idea of staying power. It could have stabilized with Falcon-Fairlane-Galaxie simply being compact-mid-large, but then Ford threw the LTD wrench in, then Torino, then Maverick. It feels like the marketing department took the reigns, where cooler heads would have cemented the nomenclature. It may have driven a few sales, but how does the guy who bought into the “top of the line” Fairlane 500 feel when his five-year-old car is a mid-range just when he gets it paid off? I’m a huge old-school Ford guy, but this seems like a big failing that goes all the way to the top at Ford. Jerry Seinfeld may have summed it up better than anyone: “Ford LTD – what does that stand for? ‘Limited!’ Limited to what? The number we can sell?”
I used to think this as well, but looking at the production figures, it’s easier to see what happened. Once the Galaxie arrived in 1959, sales of the regular Fairlane just tanked; the very large majority of Ford buyers either took the cheap Custom 300 or wanted a Galaxie. At that point, Ford could probably have just dropped the Fairlane series entirely and almost no one would have noticed. Instead, they cut the price of the base Fairlane by about $100 in what looks like an attempt to boost its volume by taking over a lot of the former Custom 300 range (leaving the Custom 300 as a low-production fleet special), and then of course switched the name to the new intermediate for 1962.
That was the whole point, though, and remains a very common merchandising strategy: Keep adding newer fancier top-of-the-line models so that there’s always some new latest-and-greatest version. Chevrolet did the same thing with the Bel Air, Impala, and Caprice, although they didn’t repeat Ford’s short-lived 1962 error of demoting the Galaxie to base series. (I’m guessing that Ford expected the Fairlane to absorb more of the “full-size six-cylinder cheapskate” market than it actually did, and they apparently thought better of it very quickly.)
It stood for “We are limited in our ability to call it Limited because Limited is still a Buick trademark.”
Like Paul and others above, I too have always had mixed feelings about the design of the ’59 Galaxie / Ford line. Personally, I think the ’59 Chevrolet, bat-wings and all is a better design, yet both were predictive in a way – the more formal roofline of the Galaxie, the headlights set in line with the grille of the Chevy.
As to Ford’s appeal to wealthier buyers, that was definitely something long cultivated by the company starting with the Model A, which featured very upscale color ads set at golf clubs, marinas, and country houses. Plus Henry Ford’s right-wing, racist, and antisemitic beliefs weren’t really out of line with a lot rich people in the country, especially the old-money rich. And so having a Ford station wagon for the country place, and Fords for the kids and servants was pretty common.
It’s why Chevy needed the Corvette to have real sporting pretensions, but Ford could just make the Thunderbird look swell and go fast. And why a lot of professionals and/or their wives drove T-Birds back in the day.