When Andy Smith bought his Ford Galaxie 500XL in 1992, the big American immediately put a smile on his face.
“It was brilliant, just fantastic,” he says, “I loved it and every opportunity I got to drive it, I would be out driving it.”
The passage of 30 years has not dimmed his enthusiasm for the 1963 (and a half) coupe, which has served over the years as shopping car, drag racer, caravan puller, and European tourer.
“It’s my smile factor,” says Andy, “and it means as much to me now as it did when I first got it – it’s grown up with the family.”
The Galaxie, all 5.3 metres of it, was Ford’s answer to the Chevy Impala and Plymouth Belvedere, a ‘full-sized car’ and named in the late ‘50s to appeal to the excitement around the Space Race.
Ford’s marketing men said that the XL model, with sportier trim inside and out, stood for ‘Xtra Lively’, a response to the Impala’s ‘Super Sport’ tag.
Andy’s car is certainly more lively than it was when he bought it, its original 352cu in (5.8-litre) engine swapped for a 460 (7.5-litre) from a Lincoln Continental but also used in the later Galaxies.
“It’s not really big on horsepower, because I haven’t really built it for horsepower, I’ve built it for pure torque, for driveability,” he says. “I have cammed it for mid-range torque between 1,500rpm to 5,500rpm, and I’ve built it in a way that’s appropriate to its weight and size to make it a usable car.
“I’ve never had it checked, but it’s probably somewhere between 300-350bhp but well over 400lb ft of torque.”
All of which makes it not only more tractable on the road, but also comes in very handy on the drag strip, where it runs in the high 14 seconds for a quarter mile.
“It does 0-60ft in just under 2.1 seconds, which in the real world makes it quicker to 60ft than a standard Subaru Impreza or a Sierra Cosworth,” says Andy, who spent most of his career working in the motor trade in a variety of roles.
After leaving school on his 15th birthday, he worked for an auto electrical and diesel engineering firm, starting an apprenticeship at 16 and moving into the tyre trade on its completion, followed by stores work, van driving, sales repping, retail parts manager, and recovery work.
His first venture onto the road was on a Garelli moped at 15, a modified 50cc twist and go that could pull wheelies, before buying a mark I Cortina 1500GT when he could drive a car at 17.
“It didn’t last long before the big ends went, then I got a late 1970 1600GT Cortina with a 1300cc virtually half race engine,” he remembers.
READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH
A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.
“It had been owned by a director of Moonraker, Colin Chapman’s boat company, and it revved to about 7,500. It was a great car.”
At the time, Andy and his mates played a kind of automotive swingers party, with keys left in vehicles for anyone to take their turn.
“There was a green with a road around it, and lots of us with cars and bikes, all roughly the same age, would park on and around the green on a Sunday,” he explains. “We’d just leave the keys in and if you fancied having a ride on something or borrowing someone’s car you just took them out. It was great fun in those days.”
After a period without a car, Andy bought a mark I Capri with an Essex 3-litre engine, but that wasn’t big enough when his children came along, and a mark III Cortina Estate provided sufficient room before he swapped that for a Datsun 120Y coupe, and then another mark II Cortina 1600GT.
His wife, Ann, would use the Cortina for work, though it went through something of a transformation, from a 1600 to a 3-litre V6 auto and, when Andy “didn’t think that was quick enough”, to a Rover V8 with a four speed manual.
“I took it to Santa Pod a few times in ‘run what you’ve brung’ events – drive it down there, beat it up, and drive it home again,” he says, only once having to use a trailer for the return journey.
Then came the Galaxie in October 1992, “which was my mate Ray’s fault”, laughs Andy.
Ray had swapped the Galaxie for another vehicle and would use it to visit his father-in-law, who just happened to live round the corner from Andy.
“It’s a big car, and the only place he could park it when he used to go round there to visit was on my driveway,” he explains. “He kept bringing it round and, eventually, I said ‘I’m going to have to buy that aren’t I?’ ‘You can if you like’, he said.
“One day, he came and picked me up to take me to a club meeting. When we got there, I got him a beer, and he said ‘here’s the keys, you better go for a test drive’, then I got him a few more beers and we came to a price.”
81.5% of customers could get a cheaper quote over the phone
Protect your car with tailor-made classic car insurance, including agreed value cover and discounts for limited mileage and owners club discounts
At the time, the Ford was painted in a Vintage Burgundy with a white vinyl roof, and Andy stored it outside and drove it in all weathers for a couple of years.
“That was probably the biggest mistake I made,” he smiles, the vinyl roof edged with a silicone compound probably applied when it first came into the country from a dry state in America.
“I believe that silicone was put on to stop water leaking in, but unfortunately this wasn’t successful,” he says. “It got in under the vinyl so it was a bit lumpy, and the corners had rotted out a little bit.”
The body style of the Galaxie coupe was identical to the convertible, and Andy had hoped to be able to simply unbolt the roof and add a crossbeam for strength.
But the roof was leaded in place, and instead he decided to remove the vinyl, have the rusted corners repaired, and have it all resprayed in the original colour.
“I liked the colour, and I liked the idea of having it all one colour,” he says, “so I got a guy I totally trust, John Stearman, to paint it, using a colour match from the original paint. We did it old school, with a metallic flake in the lacquer, which shows up on sunny days.
“I stripped the interior, and he stripped the rest of it and put it all back together.”
The original interior was dyed a bright white – “it reflects everything; it’s like sitting in a lightbulb” – while the engine swap had already been completed.
The Galaxie wasn’t equipped with air conditioning, but did come with power steering and power-assisted drum brakes and, according to Andy, “you would not believe how good they are”.
“They’re probably only good for three laps of Snetterton and then they’d fade a little bit, but you only have to brake once on the drag strip, and they’ve never been an issue towing the caravan,” he says. “I take it for an MoT every year and on the brake meter the fronts are over 400 and a modern car is about 230. They are astoundingly good.”
With the caravan, Andy, Ann, and their three children would attend hot-rodding and American car shows around East Anglia.
“It used to be about 40ft with the caravan on the back,” he smiles, travelling to shows at Santa Pod and the Essex showground, plus a variety of campsites around Norfolk and Suffolk for holidays.
READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH
A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.
“I remember picking up some relatives in Luton and going down to Whipsnade Zoo. We had five children, the oldest would have been my then 12-year-old son, sitting in the boot having a picnic.
“The kids were all part of the car scene. Me and my wife came up with a system; if we went to Essex from Friday through till Monday, after breakfast until teatime I went to look at the cars – sometimes with the kids – and after that, pure family, nothing to do with cars. It worked really well.
“The first year we went to the Essex show, I won first prize in the raffle, which was tickets for the following year – brilliant, not bad, it was worth quite a bit of money. But every year after that, the first prize was a trip to the States, and I never won it again! Our club members won it eight or nine times, but I never won the holiday.”
The longest journey for the Galaxie was to Västerås in Sweden for the 2004 Power Tour, the 27th renewal of the event.
“My mate went with me in his Camaro – there were two of us in each car,” he says, the pair taking the now defunct Harwich to Esbjerg, Denmark ferry route, before driving north east to Västerås.
“We liked Sweden so much we stayed on a little bit longer and drove down to the bottom end of Sweden, back through Germany.
“We went quickly through Germany, because you’re allowed to, then dropped off our two passengers in Holland because they needed to get back to work, and carried on into Belgium.”
At about 10mpg, didn’t this all cost rather a lot? And is driving the Ford in these days of record fuel prices affordable?
“We put the fuel for both cars on one credit card – it was a fair bill after two weeks,” smiles Andy. “I do go to petrol stations and people will say ‘oh, what a gorgeous car’. It’s lovely, but then they ask ‘what does it do to the gallon?’ I tell them I don’t know – I just put in what it needs. It’s irrelevant to me – it’s my hobby at the end of the day.”
In fairness, the Galaxie is used much less regularly than it used to be and, even if petrol prices aren’t the reason, finding somewhere to park certainly plays its part.
“I used to go shopping in it, when the car park spaces were bigger, though I’d still take up two!” he says. “Now it’s almost impossible to park it anywhere.
“I’m pretty sure I took it into a multi-storey once – it was a bit tight, and I set off a lot of car alarms with the engine.
“I didn’t park, I just drove round and came back out again. It was quite funny. I was also driving up a hill once, and I throttled it slightly just to take it over the top, only going about 20mph, and I set the alarm off on this parked car.
“I came back round and set it off again. I thought ‘I’ll do that again’ – this time the bloke was walking away from it, and I set it off again – he was looking round thinking ‘what’s doing it?’ and I was just giggling.”
With a car so wide, there’s also the perennial problem of parking dings.
“When you park up, people these days don’t really care – they just open a car door without thinking,” says Andy. “On my Audi, OK, but if they hit that, to match that paint and get the job done is a lot of money.
“I do have an issue getting it in and out of my garage, but I’ve never done any damage.”
Cleaning the Ford is also getting harder for Andy, now 66, as he recalls preparing the car for his grandchildrens’ proms.
“I can’t wash and polish it as quickly as I used to, and afterwards I’m usually knackered,” he says. “I did my grandchildren’s prom with it, and to do that it was a day’s work.”
So are there any plans to sell the car?
“Of course – I’ve been trying to sell it for 10 years, but first you’ve got to advertise it haven’t you?” he laughs. “It’s probably time I got something else, but when I get in it I still smile.”
