When you’ve got that itch, sometimes you just have to scratch it, and that’s what Mark Rachele did with this 1964 Ford Falcon Futura. As an orchardist in the Shepparton area, Mark is a busy guy during the day, but with a passion for cars and all things mechanical, he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty at night.

First published in the July 2026 issue of Street Machine

“I was on the lookout for an American Ford with a bit of a difference,” Mark says. His research revealed the existence of the 1964-65 Ford Falcon, a model that was very different to those before or after it in the US, and completely unlike the Aussie Falcs of the time. Mark discussed the idea of getting one with some of his mates.

Not long after, a 1964 Falcon Futura appeared in the driveway of local car enthusiast and Street Machine regular Chris Retzos, which triggered Mark’s curiosity. “One of my mates is brother-in-law to Chris, and I said, ‘Did you mention [the Futura discussion] to Chris?’” he recalls. “And he says, ‘Oh, we were talking about it; I might have mentioned it to him.’” Evidently, Chris had liked the idea so much that he’d snapped one up for himself!

The blue Falcon sat there in Chris’s driveway for several months before Mark made him an offer on it. “I must have got him at a weak moment, because I think this is the only classic muscle car Chris has ever sold,” he laughs.

The mid-60s Falcon was in pretty good condition when Mark picked it up. It was very straight, with little to no rust, and had a nearly brand-new interior. Under the bonnet was a baby 260ci V8 with a dead-stock drivetrain. The car was perfect to cruise as it was, or use as a blank canvas for a cool build.

Mark drove the Falcon around on club rego for a couple of years to see if he could get accustomed to the steering wheel being on the wrong side. “A lot of people love left-hand drive,” he says, “but I just couldn’t get used to it.”

His decision to convert the Falcon to RHD ended up kicking off a four-year build that resulted in the car you see on these pages. In Mark’s defence, he reckons that the engine was making a bit of a knocking sound at the time and he’d thought the little V8 had finally cried ‘enough’. “Turns out it was only an engine mount,” he says, but by then the mill and transmission were already out, and the engine bay had so many holes it looked like someone had gone psycho with a shotgun.

After asking around, Mark sent the Falcon off to Bendigo for a right-hand-drive conversion, but eventually he would end up doing the job himself. “It just sat there for months and months, and I kept going up there to see him. He got halfway through it, and in the end he just sort of gave up,” he says.

After paying for the incomplete work, Mark brought the car back home and got stuck into it with his mate, Peter ‘Radish’ Raditsas from Eastend Performance. The firewall had been cut out, and Mark took one look at the work that had been done to piece it all back together and decided that the original sheet metal wasn’t going back in. There was no going back from there, so everything apart from the shock towers was cut out and replaced with clean, flat steel.

“There was a bit of mucking around; we’re not machinists, and we haven’t got a lot of equipment,” Mark says. “That makes it a bit harder, but we just took our time, and we got there in the end. We also threw a lot of pieces out as well!”

Now that the engine bay was looking smooth and the dash had the steering wheel on the right side, it was time to look at a new powerplant, and something fell into Mark’s lap through the local grapevine.

“When you’re in a small town and someone says, ‘Whatshisname has got a motor for sale’, you go have a look,” Mark says. “I was pretty busy at the time, but I didn’t want to miss out, so I took a gamble on it. It was 70 per cent finished, and it came with heaps of parts.”

The donk in question was a 347ci Windsor stroker with a decently lumpy hydraulic-roller cam and Edelbrock heads. The guys pulled it down and made sure the bits inside were as advertised, and with everything looking right, they fired it up.

“Everything was pretty good, so we got it running on a stand and it was no worries,” Mark recalls. The Windsor has never been on a dyno, but the boys reckon it’s probably good for around 430hp at the flywheel – plenty enough to give the lightweight Falcon a solid shove.

Inside, the Futura didn’t need much work at all. The seats are still trimmed the same as when Mark bought the car, but he’s replaced the door trims because they were, to use his words, “a bit knackered”. The 60s single-sweep speedo was ditched in favour of a Mustang-style Classic Instruments cluster, which looks right at home with the Shelby-spec steering wheel.

It’s on the outside where this Falcon shines, both literally and figuratively. The Futura had left the factory coated in Rangoon Red, but somewhere along the line, it had been painted blue. That’s how it was when Mark got the car, and he was keen to stick with that colour.

“A good mate, Hayden Frappell, who’s a talented local painter, got the job for the paint and panel work on the car,” Mark says. The pair decided that the Glasurit blue needed a bit of flake to spice things up. “We were worried that it might have been a bit too much, but when we painted it up, it just popped,” he says.

To make the Falc stand out even more, Mark got some help from his neighbour Greg Maskell from Maskell’s Customs & Classics, who wet-rubbed the car before polishing it to a mirror shine. The result is a classic street car that turns heads wherever it goes. The Glasurit blue paint, Intro billet wheels and shiny new bumpers all combine to highlight the sharp lines of the Falcon hardtop. It’s easily recognisable as a mid-60s Ford while being distinct from the Aussie Falcons.

“I just wanted something a little bit different; something for cruising so we can take it to Bright or places like that – we just want to be able to drive it there comfortably,” Mark says. “I try to get it out once a week if I can, or every couple of weeks. Shep’s got a pretty big car scene. There’s always something going on.”

MARK RACHELE
1964 FORD FALCON FUTURA COUPE

THANKS
Punch and Radish at Eastend Performance; Hayden Frappell; Burko Transmissions; Musty at Customized Auto Trimmers; Maskell’s Customs & Classics; Frank Vara; The Rod Shop; Rachele Films; my darlz Mel.