Topic: July 1964 Dearborn Factory Marking

[terrylyoung]

I recently found the marking "fair" located on the front of the radiator support. I have a 64 1/2 D code which has a build date of July 1964. This date is after the world fair date. Does anyone have a suggest of what this could be?

[J_Speegle]

First welcome to the site. Hope you find the information and help useful in your concours related endeavors

Guess this may be a Dearborn car. Just a guess since you didn't include where the car was built


Would guess that the "FAIR" is indicating that the unibody is a Mustang and that the car was ordered with AC

Read  "F    AIR"

Hope this helps

[terrylyoung]

Here is some more info

[suskeenwiske]

It seems odd to me that the Factory would mark the frame with an "F". Was this common practice? What would have been the reason to do so?

Since Ford replaced the original Mustangs with newer models for the second part of the World's Fair, is it possible that this may have been one of those cars?

Ray

[J_Speegle]

It seems odd to me that the Factory would mark the frame with an "F". Was this common practice? What would have been the reason to do so?

Not really IMHO if you look at other years and common practices at the plants. At least two of the plants (depending on year) marked Mustang unibodies (without all the sheet metal bolted on) with a "F" to tell those bodies (from the front view) from others being built on the same line. Moving in a quickly moving line the worker needed (for some items) to quickly identify the body coming at them and the front of the radiator support provided not a ton of quick clues. Easier to train the guys to look for a large letter or lack of letter from a distance.







I have no knowledge of a second batch of World's Fair cars near the end of the model year, so can't help with that end of the discussion

[midlife]

"F" was Ford's internal designation for Mustangs.  Perhaps, as Jeff says, it was used on the factory line to separate out the Mustang from Falcons.