1962 Ford Falcon Ranchero

From Michael Moore, in the East Bay: "Just saw this 1962 [?] Falcon Ranchero on East H Street; still working. Those dual pipes might indicate some mods, though what might fit into that engine bay I can’t imagine."

Robert Strange McNamara, later Defense Secretary in the Kennedy and LBJ Administrations, was boss at Ford when the Falcon "compact" was developed,  first in a whole genre of such cars produced by the Big Three.

The Falcon Ranchero is an early example of a wheelbarrow truck.  On the other hand, most pickups in them days were wheelbarrows, i.e., practical useful and not gigantic. 

From Phil Patton's story in the NY Times: ...Mr. McNamara famously drew up the specs for the Falcon on the back of a church program during Sunday worship. It was 1957, the year Ford introduced its midsize Edsel line into the teeth of a recession. The Edsel sat on lots while smaller cars like the Volkswagen Beetle and the American Motors Rambler sold well....

Here's another AL post on McNamara and the Falcon. We posted a '62 Falcon Ranchero on the block at BaT a while ago. We caught another '62 Falcon (Ford sold a lot of these cars) in Biddeford, Maine. And a 1963 Ford Falcon Futura convertible in Montreal.