Design
At the beginning of production, the Fairmont was sold as a two-door and four-door sedan along with a five-door station wagon. During the 1978 model year, the model line was supplemented by a specialty coupe with a different roofline known as the Futura, a name which first appeared in the Ford Falcon line 17 years before. The Fairmont Futura featured an unusual two-piece vinyl roof with an upswept central roof band, borrowed from the larger Ford Thunderbird of the same time period, originally inspired by the 1955 Ford Crown Victoria. While retaining a conventional rear-wheel drive platform, the Fairmont was efficiently packaged and offered excellent passenger and cargo room for its size. Contemporary reviews uniformly praised the Fairmont and it was favorably compared with contemporary Volvo and BMW models. Rack-and-pinion steering gave the Fairmont much better handling and roadability than its Maverick predecessor and despite its roomier interior, lightweight components were used which gave the Fairmont better fuel economy than the Maverick.
The front fascia of the Fairmont differed from that of the Mercury Zephyr at the time of introduction. While the Zephyr always had four headlights, the Fairmont had only two, with the exception of the Futura coupe. As part of a minor facelift for the 1981 model year, the entire Fairmont lineup received the four headlight treatment as well.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)