Rare buckets with floor shift console in this one. By the way, ALL of the production Durangos had the 6 in them.
Judging by the dash, the Durango looks like a technical close relative to the contemporary Mustang. If so, that six can get easilly replaced by the Mustang's 8?:
Yes and no. To put the 5.0 V8 in a Ford Durango, the I-6 crossmember must be replaced with an I-4/V8 crossmember. So if you're gonna do that, you might as well swap the front end steering, suspension, brakes and 8.8 rear axle, all with 5-lug provision, from a later model Fox Mustang, preferably a Cobra that a tree fell on or something to that effect.
And for sure, interior-wise, the center hand parking brake would get installed to replace the foot parking brake.
It's only more work. One could keep the foot brake and still install the hand brake lever, to impress chicks, maybe.
The Fox platform started with the 78 Fairmonts and Zephyrs. Most suspension parts from Mustangs all the way up to 2004 will fit the Fairmonts and Zephyrs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fox_platform When I lived in CO, there was a shop that had about 4 of those Durangos. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the car/truck vehicles. This is my favorite Fairmont.
As mentioned it is a fox body so pretty much anything from a Mustang will swap. You can even put in a later model Mustang dash if you want. There is a guy on four eyed pride that put a V8 in an originally I6 Fairmont and he did not change the front K-member. All you need to do to swap the front end to five lug is swap in 94/95 Mustang front spindles. With those you can do all the brake upgrades you want. I like that two door Fairmont with the later model LTD nose on it too. I think the Durango would look much better with that nose on it.
You could put in a V8 if you made adapted mounts to fit the I-6's crossmember mounting holes, but why do a s#!tty half-@$$ed job of it? By swapping out the entire front cradle assembly with engine and trans still attached (as one of our wagon brethren did), you get everything that came out of that Mustang donor car.
You only need F-150 V8 engine mounts and you have to cut a flange off to clear the oil filter from what I recall. Nothing major. The Fairmont and Zephyr had some funky early year fox stuff going on, but for the most part all later Mustang stuff is plug and play.
