Family Falcon tradition

You could say that Falcons are a tradition in the Kaufman family.

“My dad, Ray Kaufman, was a rural mail carrier and he always drove Falcons,” said Owen Kaufman. So, although he was tempted by the still relatively new Mustang, when he and his bride-to-be, Sandy, went in to the Bachman Motors dealership in Moundridge in January of 1966, they walked out with a brand new 1966 Falcon Sports Coupe on order.

More than 48 years later, they still own the Silver Blue Metallic Falcon and have passed down their passion for Ford’s original compact car to their son, Alex, who now owns a Tucson Yellow 1963 Falcon Futura convertible.

Owen remembers the day their car arrived on a transporter at the dealership.

“I climbed all over that truck. The driver was worried he’d run over me. I was in a hurry. He finally asked me if I wanted to back it off the truck, and I did,” Kaufman said.

The Sports Coupe was quickly fitted with a Stewart Warner tachometer, some accessory gauges and a set of chrome Cragar SS 5-spoke mag wheels. Needless to say, as a young man buying his first new car in the mid-’60s, Kaufman had checked off the 4-speed transmission option, which added $182.69 to the window sticker.

“I thought it would go better with that. Why would I order anything else?” he said.

His Falcon also came equipped with the 289 Ford V-8, although it was a two-barrel carb version. After some fine tuning by a friend, it could keep up with any four-barrel V-8, Kaufman recalled.

The newlywed Kaufmans drove away from their wedding May 28, 1966 in the car. A year and a half later, the Falcon was carefully put up on blocks, as Owen left for a tour of duty in the Army.

The car was cleaned up and put back into service as a family car in 1969, before again being put into long term storage in 1979. The only time Owen Kaufman considered getting rid of it, he was offered a measly $300 as a trade-in on a new car and decided it made more sense to just hold onto it. The car was stored in a garage across town.

“I had always heard about this Falcon, but I hadn’t seen it until I was 18,” said Alex Kaufman, who finally gave in to his curiosity and jimmied the lock on the garage door to take a peek. “It was pretty rough by then.” But things looked up when he opened the driver’s side door.

“It was amazingly in really good shape, very little damage. It was like a time capsule inside,” Alex remembered. Still, the car sat.

Then, in 2005, the elder Kaufmans were preparing to renew their wedding vows. Alex suggested his parents really should get the Falcon out and use it in the ceremonies.

“The car might not be out today if Alex hadn’t pushed that,” said Sandy Kaufman.

They had hoped to have a fresh paint job on it in time for their second set of vows, but that didn’t work out. They drove their prized Falcon that day anyway.

Father and son eventually teamed up and worked on restoring the car. The engine was rebuilt, a new set of larger 15-inch Cragar SS wheels, with BF Goodrich T/A radials, was added, and finally, the new paint job went on, courtesy of Jerry Voth of Milo’s Paint and Body Service in Moundridge. In fact, it reportedly was the last paint job done by that well-known shop.

The car was back on the road by September, 2011, and the Kaufmans joined both the Wheat State Falcon Car Club and the national Falcon club, taking their reborn Falcon to several conventions.

It was while at one of those conventions about two years ago that the Falcon bug really bit Alex.

“I wasn’t necessarily looking for something. I thought eventually it would be cool to get into the Falcon world,” he said. That’s when Cliff McKay, a Wichita Falcon guru, steered him toward photos of a little Falcon convertible for sale.

“I talked to the owner. The car wasn’t running, but he had put a new set of Michelins on it and it was in the price range I could consider,” Alex said.

For the next three weeks, all he could do was think about the Falcon convertible. Finally, he and his parents were able to schedule a trip to Paola to see the car in person.

Although the car looked a bit rougher than it had in the pictures, when the younger Kaufman crawled underneath it and found virtually no rust on the undercarriage, he knew he had found his Falcon. A deal was struck and the car loaded on their trailer.

“The owner gave each and every one of us a hug. It was his dad’s car and he wanted it to go to someone who would care for it,” Alex said.

“The paint was pretty oxidized, but I had worked as a car detailer for several years, so I shined it up and it looks pretty decent,” he said.

Mechanically, he fixed the brakes and had the radiator boiled out. He replaced the stock points-style ignition with a Pertronix electronic ignition and a Flamethrower coil.

Under the hood, the engine bay looked pretty bad, so Alex used his detailing skills to bring the 170 cubic inch 6-cylinder power plant back up to like-new shape, painting everything factory colors and even adding all the correct decals. The original 3-speed manual transmission was retained, along with its column shifter.

He chose to keep the factory 13-inch wheels and wire-spoke hubcaps on the car. The muffler fell apart and was replaced with a Thrush aftermarket unit and a new gas tank was fitted.

“I did some engineering on the seat tracks … extended the tracks about 1 3/4 inches, which makes it a lot more comfortable for me,” said Kaufman, who stands a little over 6-foot-3. Fresh carpeting was installed and the seats were patched, for now.

Still on the to-do list is a new convertible top, but Kaufman and his wife, Mandy, are already enjoying their “new car,” taking their young son Raymond along on drives to Falcon events and car shows.

“It’s a fun little cruiser. It will run along at 60-65 miles an hour and make 23 miles per gallon,” he said. “I had pictures of it in my mind of what it looked like when it first came out. I wanted it to be as factory-correct as possible.”

Now the Kaufman clan can travel together in their resurrected Falcons.

“That’s the fun of having them,” said Owen Kaufman, “driving them and sharing them.’”

This story was originally published September 26, 2014 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Family Falcon tradition."