Wayne Jeffers' SOHC 1964 Ford Fairlane Sports Coupe (from Volume 14, Issue 150) Look under the hood of this 1964 Ford Fairlane Sports Coupe owned by Wayne Jeffers and you’ll see a rare sight - a 427 SOHC “Cammer” motor. These legendary motors got their start after Ford’s promising 427 wedge led in NASCAR for just one season, then was beaten at Daytona by the Chrysler Hemi back in 1964. Stepping back up to the plate Ford secretly developed a Single Over Head Cam (SOHC) version of their already high performance FE block, which also included hemispherical combustion chambers. These new 427 SOHC engines were virtually built by hand, and were factory rated at 615hp with a single 4-barrel, and 657hp with dual 4-barrel carburetors. Though NASCAR wound up giving approval to the potent new power plant, their 427 Cammer was only allowed if cars paid the heavy penalty of one pound per cubic inch - which they weren’t willing to do. Rule changes meant there would be no duel with the Hemis at Daytona in 1965, but the 427 Cammer did make a big splash in NHRA drag racing where it powered may A/FX Factory Experimental Mustangs and a few supercharged Top Fuel dragsters. Heros like Connie Kalitta utilized the new Cammer in his “Bounty Hunter” Funny Car, letting the fans see what the Cammer was fully capable of. While the 427 SOHC was replaced as the factory weapon of choice in 1969 by the less expensive and less complex Boss 429, to this day the Cammer still has that “Wow!” factor, both visually and for the performance that can be coaxed out of them. Wayne Jeffers knows this very well, as his stable of cars includes about a half dozen of ultra-rare Cammer powered cars....plus spare engines and parts to keep a SOHC fan smiling for days. His street toy is this 1964 Ford Fairlane, which as we’ve established has a Cammer motor....but this one has a Shelby block, was bored and stroked to displace 496 cubic inches, utilizes 12:1 forged piston, then topped with Bosch electronic fuel injectors and 58mm throttle bodies atop an original Ford aluminum Weber-style intake nestled between those distinctive aluminum heads. When Wayne bought the car it had a 460 Ford crate motor, and the upgrade to the SOHC required removing the shock towers to shoehorn in the Cammer. The car now has a coilover style Rod & Custom Motorsports tubular A-arm setup and Mustang II rack and pinion steering, while out back now resides a narrowed 9-inch rear end with Moser 31-spline axles and 4.30:1 gears, kept in place by ladder bars and adjustable coilover shocks. The backside of the Cammer is now mated to a Jerico DR 4-speed transmission. While much attention was paid to the drivetrain aspect of the car upon purchase, the rest of the Fairlane was just as Wayne wanted it. That included the exterior, which has an all steel body, except for the fiberglass teardrop hood. The beautiful white paint applied by previous owner and builder Kerry Sitar, and is accented with Team 3 E/T rims - the rearward of which are wrapped in 31x16.5 Mickey Thompson ET Street tires. The red vinyl interior remains mostly stock looking, except for a trio of Auto Meter Phantom gauges integrated into the factory bezels. A dash mounted tachometer is also prominent, and a shift light is also visible through the hood’s rearward facing vents. There is no doubt that Wayne Jeffers loves Ford 427 SOHC engines, which was obvious by the cool Cammer powered cars in his garage, and the time he has spent sourcing and fabricating new parts for them. His ‘64 Ford Fairlane wraps all of that enthusiasm up in an extremely nice package, which can really fly down the road at the blip of the throttle! CN