“IT’S BEENAMIGHTY
LONGWAIT,AND THE
FURYISN’T FINISHED
QUITE YET.IDEALLY,
ED WOULD STILL LIKE
THAT440 ORAT LEAST
REBUILD THE 400, BUT
THE CAR IS NOWAT A
SHOWABLE STANDARD
AT LAST...”
Retrimmed original seats. Wood rimmed steering wheel. Ed’sowned the Fury for more
than 30 years.
W
hen we think of ongoing projects,atimespanofsix
months toafew years seems quite typical. Everyone
wants to work atapacethey’re happywith−after
all ,afull-ti me job and everyday life often results in that stash
of parts andastripped shell filling your garage for longer than
was intended and all too soon the summer sun has begun to
disappear.EdJ ackson wasinnoparticularrushtocomplete
his stunning ’71 Plymouth FurySport. In fact, when he first
bought it, he only really intended to keep itayear or so,
spending as little money on it as possible to keep it running.
We should point out this was back in 1988, so you could say
those initial plans disappeared some time ago, probably while
Jive Bunny was still in the charts.
Back in 1988, Ed was driving around in his second car,aJaguar XJ6 which had replacedaMkIIEscort. For those who
can’trecall thelateEighties, insurance was still relatively
cheap, even for younger drivers to insure large powerful cars,
so a20-something smoking around in an XJ6 certainly wasn’t
out of the ordinary.
“The XJ wasone of my favourite cars of all time andIhad
little interest in American cars, even though there were plenty
of them on the road in the UK at the time,” Ed recalls. “I
did have two friends who droveYanksthough, one had an
Oldsmobile Cutlass and the other owneda’74 Impala.”
Ed’sopinion of American cars would soon change, however,
when one day afteracar meet,Dave, whoowned the Impala,
suggested Ed drive it back, “It was such fun to drive and
seeing people’sreactionsasyou went past soon became very64 classic-american.com