YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST. “My friend Billy Travis bought it new,” recalled Jack Viera of Taunton, Massachusetts. “I did get to drive it a couple of times, although I rode in it many more times after. It was one of those cars that just stood out. It had that solid-lifter sound, the dual exhaust … it made you want to go to six grand on the tach.”
The car? A ’64 Ford Fairlane Sport Coupe, black with red gut… and Ford’s vaunted K-code 289-cu.in. V-8, installed at the factory, along with a four-speed stick and a set of 3.89 gears in Ford’s 9-inch housing. Subsequent rides in another friend’s ’65 K-code Fairlane (coincidentally also black with red interior) cemented the Hi-Po-powered Fairlane as Jack’s dream ride.
If you thought K-code engines were only for Mustangs, well, we’re sorry to disappoint. While the Mustang (and its Shelby-tweaked offshoot) was most famous for absorbing the bulk of the Hi-Po 289’s production output, the genre-defining pony car didn’t arrive until mid-1964. A full year before the Mustang launched, the 271-horse small-block turned up in the far more prosaic midsized Fairlane model line.
It’s hard to remember now, but through most of the first half of the ’60s, the Big Three
