I ran across one of these on our local Craig's List. Never seen one before...Based on the Ford Fairmont. Except for a handful of them they were 6 cylinders.

Even though they a pretty rare, it looks like low collector value / interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Durango


https://www.foxnews.com/auto/the-ford-durango-was-the-futura-of-pickups


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Interesting car.
I never knew it existed.
I wouldn't mind one.

 

they were a fairmont with the back cut off.
made from 79 to 82 someplace in California. only engine/transmission offered was the 200 six cylinder and C4 auto transmission.
nice little car, but they had a few unintended drawbacks, and a few safety issues.
#1: the interior of the rear section was fiberglass, and thin. so it was very easy to crack it and loose whatever you were carrying.
#2: the rear lights were in the fold down tailgate. so if you tried to drive with the gate down, you had no rear lights.

 

# 1 could become a pucker factor with a fiberglass header board and a emergency stop hauling the same thing...…….

 

Not made by FoMoCo, these were an aftermarket conversion based off the Fairmont Futura (lower pic).

Z7 shown at left in lower pic was the "rebadged" Mercury Zephyr version of the Futura. AFAIK, none were converted.

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Yep. The links I posted stated that. Still, a Ford offered product that I hadn't seen...and is rare. For a reason...LOL!

 

It's not a Ford offered product, they had nothing to do with it. Whoever made these bought Futura's from dealers, then converted them.

Due to FoMoCo's franchise agreement with their dealers, FoMoCo couldn't vehicles directly to consumers.

Even Hertz vehicles (owned by FoMoCo back then), were sold by dealers. The dealers did the paperwork, then the cars were shipped directly to Hertz.

 

Like the Centurion Bronco I have, right? #ad

 

Yes.

Geez, that thing is huge, parks easily within a city block.

 

I didn't know you have one of those monsters...

Cool.

 

that ain't long, there was one running around central jersey a few years ago with 4 doors on each side..........that was one long son of a gun!!!

 

An interesting post from the designer's son...From earlier this year. (Found on a blog from a Hemming's story)


Bill Stephenson says:

May 4, 2018 5:10 pm

I thought I’d chime in here since I helped design and build these with my father, Jim Stephenson. He was a “car builder” who built custom cars in Los Angeles beginning around the mid-late 1960s. He worked at Barris Kustom, and managed George’s shop on and off, and sub-contracted building cars for George for around 20 years.

The original “Durango” was built in our own shop in Sylmar, Ca with the intention to offer it as a replacement for Ford’s “Ranchero” after that was dropped from their line. Among those who helped were my older brother, Jim, George and Katie Gowdy of G&K Fiberglass (they also did the funny car bodies for many of the famous names at that time), and George Price, a very talented “body man”, did most of the finish work on the original plugs used to make the bed molds. He was one of the best “Bondo” men in the business.

I did a lot of the metal work on the bed and I helped design and build the tailgate and the hinges. The metal work I did was used to make the the plugs for the fiberglass molds for the production parts.

The tailgate turned out to be one of the toughest design issues we ran up against. There was no good way to move the taillights to the rear quarter panels because they were too narrow and it was too expensive to create an all knew taillight, so we used the factory taillights in a fiberglass tailgate and had to make it swing out and away from the bed so it was level with the bed floor when opened.

When we were finished with the prototype we brought the car to “National Coach” to see if they were interested in producing it and my father cut a deal with them to buy the molds and rights to produce it and pay a royalty fee for each one sold.

The first thing National Coach did was buy a fleet of new Fairmonts from Ford, but they forgot that we’d told them that the conversion was designed to work on cars without a sunroof. The dealer they bought the cars from offered them a sweet deal on a number of cars that all had sunroofs and they purchased them without consulting with us. That was a problem for them because they pretty much blew the bulk of their budget on that deal. And since my father’s income depended on the number sold, it was a problem for him too. I was not involved in the mods made to the original bed molds to accommodate that but it almost stopped any from being produced at all. My father and brother Jim worked with National Coach to get the car into production. I was not involved much at all in that. I’d moved on to other projects by then, but I did go there to help redesign the tailgate hinges because there were some production issues that came up with what was used originally.

The Durango was the last custom car I build with my father. It’s really nice to see there are those out there who appreciate our efforts and have worked to keep the few remaining in good shape.



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https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2008/01/03/fords-last-chero-the-durango/

 

Didn’t the Durangos made by National Coach Corp in Gardena get offered for sale at Ford Dealers in California only? The VIN in mine does come up as a Futura.

 

Did not the Durangos made by National Coach Corp in Gardena get offered for sale at Ford Dealers in California only? Or, how were they offered for sale? The VIN in mine does come up as a Futura.