1957 Ford fairlane 500 skyliner

today i'm back here at john coo fleitner's it's located just outside of salem ohio link in the description to look at this very unique 1957 ford fairlane 500 skyliner the key word in everything that i just said was skyliner before we take the tour let's take a look back at what ford offered in 1957. ford offered a plethora of trim options in 1957. the junior series consisted of the custom and the custom 300 they rode on a 116 inch wheelbase and then the senior series which was the fairlane and the fairlane 500 which rode on the 118 inch wheelbase just wanted to mention in 1957 this was the first year for the ranchero it also rode on the junior series which was the 116 inch wheelbase ford offered two wheelbases for the wagon as well the 116 wheelbase and the 118 wheel base and they must have done something right because ford outsold chevy for the first time since 1935 selling 1.67 million cars in 1957 oh you mean a steel top exactly it seals up why don't you uh get in and raise this up yourself yeah uh i'll do it dear you just stand and watch i'm that mine in the family let me do it you don't have to be a man to do it anyone can do it lucy honey look you know how to take ice cubes out of a refrigerator but it's an automobile it's a complicated machinery women just don't understand it hey lucy put on the brakes the truck is open just be calm dear it's all right sir you see it's all automatic when you press the roof control the rear deck lid sweeps up the roof rises out of the truck swings up watch it now [Music] and finally set screws automatically lock the roof to the windshield there from an open convertible with room inside for a weekend's worth of luggage to a hard top all in a matter of seconds what did he say i don't know but i think the gleam in his eye means you're getting through to it isn't it wonderful honey hey i like to put the stuff down my eye of course all right all right some men are just like little boys when it comes to a new form yeah well i know but move over let me go [Music] you've just witnessed the happiest revolution and motoring pleasure that ever took place a revolution made possible by ford's advanced engineering again ford goes first with the world's most exciting automobile ford back in the day got celebrities like lucille ball from i love lucy to advertise their cars ford offered two convertibles in the fairlane lineup the sun liner which was a soft top and the all-new skyliner which was an all steel roof ford was the first american company to mass produce the hardtop convertible to be completely fair ford was the first one to mass produce the car in america but it wasn't the first one to offer that as an option in america chrysler in 1940 unveiled their concept car called the thunderbolt they ended up making four four copies of that car they had one bench seat had no grill but even that car wasn't the first car to be mass-produced with a steel roof that went into the trunk that goes to the 1938 pujo 402 eclipse i couldn't find any production numbers on this car but they did a total run of 75 000 units and that was for the whole 402 line so it has to be super rare the hardtop convertible idea isn't a new idea in any stretch of the imagination i also read that there was a patent on a hudson design back in 1926 but i couldn't find any information or pictures on that car okay getting back to the topic at hand the 1957 ford skyliner ford made the skyline from 1957 to 1959 it was titled the fair lane from 57 58 59 it was rebadged or renamed i should say to the galaxy 58 recession i think had a lot to do with killing this car plus a lot of other things that were a lot of other factors we're going to get into the original intent for the hardtop convertible was going to be for the continental mark ii but that would have raised the cost another 5 000 over the ten thousand dollar sticker price so that was scrapped that was a lot of money for a car back then ford sold twenty thousand seven hundred sixty six skyliners in 1957 with a base price of two thousand nine hundred forty five dollars which equates out to twenty nine thousand seven hundred thirty four dollars sixty five cents in twenty twenty two dollars it was four hundred dollars more than the sun liner with the uh cloth top the sunlighter sold outsold the skyliner four to one but despite that they still ended up selling 48 394 units over the course of three years okay let's talk about how the top actually worked the top used electric motors and not a hydraulic system seven reversible electric motors four lift jacks a series of relays ten limit switches it had ten solenoids four locking mechanisms for the roof and also two locking mechanisms for the trunk lid there was something like 610 feet of wiring in the whole system to say it was a complex system is an understatement skyliner was available in 12 single tone colors or 13 two-tone color schemes other options included 4-way power seats power disc brakes air conditioning power steering power windows tinted windows positive action windshield wipers which used a special fluid in a vacuum pump overall length of this beast is 210 inches long the height 56 inches tall 78 and a half inches wide okay let's talk engines there was five engine options available on the skyline just to simplify things it's actually called the fairlane 500 skyline but this i'm just simplifying it with just calling it the skyline it was the top of the trim so the six cylinder wasn't available but i've heard conflicting information i've seen different things some people said on different forms the 272 wasn't an option and other people have so i'm just going to list it here base engine 272 190 brake horsepower it used a b code in the code system like if you're looking at a vin tag and it says b a b code that's 272 292. these are all y block v8s too by the way 292 v8 212 brake horsepower then there's three configurations of the 312. there's 312 with 245 horsepower it has a four barrel carburetor set up a 312 with 270 horsepower dual quad setup 312 300 horsepower supercharged it's f code and those are super rare they only made 17 of them more conflicting information with the transmissions i've seen three different transmissions that you could get with this ford o-matic three-speed automatic three-speed manual it's a column shift unit as well as a two-speed automatic okay let's get inside this 57 ford just look at this interior it's two-tone black and white the gauge cluster is an arc design the fuel gauge is to the left the speed is in the center the oil and the generator gauges have been replaced with lights odometers right below the speedo right below the odometer is the gear select you can see the oil and generator lights there's also a temperature gauge right to the right of the speedo and the other arc okay we're going to back up just a little bit notice all the switches you have going from all the way to the left to the right ignition switch the light switch left air control right air control wipers and the lighter moving to the right of the instrument cluster is the climate control moving just to the right of that is the fan speed notice that there's only two speeds high and low and off is in the center moving right from that is the radio with five pre-selection buttons just below the radio is the ashtray going right you have this nice rectangular clock just to the right of the clock is this really nice sized glove box people don't understand how nice these are these are almost like bread box size glove boxes it puts everything that's made now to shame i could put all my camera stuff in there and lock it i do it in my truck all the time because my truck doors are a kind of a pain to lock but the glove box isn't nearly as bad to lock people don't even think that you could stuff a pair of gloves in there let alone you know two cameras and an ipad and all this other crazy stuff you can't get in the modern car in the glove box going back to the steering wheel hub check this out it says master guide power steering if you didn't get power steering on your ford fair lane what would it say in the steering wheel hub in the comment section below please all right i wanted to show you guys what it's like to actually sit inside the 57 ford some of these steering wheels are literally in your crotch so that's that's about what it looks like okay moving to the rear just check out how much leg room you have back here i still can't get over the fact that this is 65 years old and this interior is so nice it's probably been redone sometime in its life but just notice how when i pull the seat or push the seat forward it pivots to allow you into the back here okay let's take a quick gander underneath this hood this hood opens opposite way in which we're used to opening the hood it opens up like a clam shell that right there is the power steering reservoir as well as the power steering pump it's in the bottom of the reservoir this one has the thunderbird special y block v8 notice the master cylinder just to the right there it's a little bit off camera there's no power brake booster assist attached to it i would much rather have power brakes than power steering what do you guys think in the comment section below also just just notice how thin those belts are there's a couple more points i want to make about the fairlane 500 skyliner before we move on to the pros and cons even though the skyliner was the same style as the fairlane 500 there were 522 unique parts like the rear quarters were longer the deck lid was taller and the roof was flatter than its fairlane 500 counterpart also worth mentioning that the fuel tank is located directly behind the rear seat because the top takes up all the space in the back it's a 16 gallon tank okay moving on to the pros and cons technical fascination a crowd pleaser good appreciation potential less troublesome than most people think milestone car status now the cons mechanical electrical gremlins clumsy rear styling shares a great deal with ordinary fords also ones that they don't mention in the book that i've been getting all the pros and cons from there is literally almost no storage space whenever the top is in the trunk because the top covers a storage bin and that is all the storage space that you have once the top is in the trunk if the top is on top of the car then you have your whole trunk that you can use for storage but it only opens the opposite way like you can't open it the regular way and you have it's power operated so you have to push the button to open up the trunk lid every time that you want to put something back there all right thanks guys for watching i really appreciate it send me a comment down in the comment section uh what cars would you like to see on the channel next i'll do my best to track one down and do a review for you and as always give me a thumbs up subscribe if you dig the content until next time

Channel: What it’s like

Views: 38,053

Keywords: 1957, 1957 ford, Ford fair lane, Fairlane ford, 1957 skyline, 1957 skyliner, Hide away hard top, 1957 ford fairlane 500 skyliner, Fairlane 500 skyliner, Y block ford, Retractable hardtop, Chrysler thunderbolt, 1957 fairlane, 57 ford, 57 skyliner, 57 retractable hardtop, 57 hide away hard top, What’s it like

Id: MKzjhYCQ-DQ

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022