BA Falcon wins another top gong

FORD'S BA Falcon has been named Wheels magazine Car of the Year, breaking a 36-year drought in the prestigious award for Australia's longest-lived car nameplate.

It is the second major new car award in weeks for the $500 million Falcon makeover, the Futura model collecting the Best Family Car in the Best Cars Awards earlier this month and the XR6T Best Sports Car under $57,000.

That means Falcon has now defeated all vehicles launched in Australia over the past 12 months as judged by Wheels, and all-comers in specific categories according to the Best Cars Awards, which are judged by a a consortium of state motoring associations.

The awards are valuable ammunition for Ford in its fightback against the Holden Commodore, which has dominated the Falcon in the sales race for the past five years.

The BA Falcon was launched in September to replace the unsuccessful AU Falcon model line.

"It's almost impossible to fault the BA's performance in the role for which it was designed," said Wheels editor and member of the 2002 judging panel, Ged Bulmer.

In four of the five Wheels Car of the Year criteria the BA Falcon rated "superbly", Mr Bulmer said.

"Value is one of them. Nowhere else in the world can such a blend of size, safety, performance, handling, equipment, comfort and class be bought for equivalent money."This year the BA edged out the Honda Jazz small car and the Mazda6 mid-sizer.

Mr Bulmer's high rating of the Falcon was backed up by veteran WCOTY judge Peter Robinson.

"Having driven the BA Falcon and having been to Falcon launches since 1963 ... with the exception of the XR, this is the first time Ford has not adopted a cynical, cost-driven model development program," he said.

"They haven't started with a clean sheet of paper, but they may as well have. I'm really impressed."This is the fifth WCOTY title for Ford with Holden the manufacturer that holds the most titles with nine wins.

The facelifted VY Commodore was excluded from WCOTY this year because it was not judged to be a significant enough change from its VX predecessor.

WCOTY was decided over seven days of testing by seven judges who took about $5 million dollars worth of cars over more than 2000km before reaching their decision.

In conjunction with the WCOTY announcement and in honour of the 40th year of the award, Wheels also announced the Cars of the Decades.

Winners of these awards were: 1960s - Ford XR Falcon 1970s - Honda Accord 1980s - Mazda MX-5 1990s - Lexus LS400.

Why Falcon won WCOTY:

Function: "Hard to fault Falcon's performance for the role in which it was designed. Spacious and refined with excellent engines, handling, ride, steering and brakes, BA Sedans are dynamically superior to imported cars costing two or three times as much."
Technology: "Convincing safety hardware, excellent engine technology and a host of comfort and convenience features earned Falcon votes. Standouts include a vastly improved 4.0-litre six-cylinder engine, with electronic throttle control and variable cam phasing, and the superb new independent rear suspension."
Efficiency: "Falcon's modest increases in fuel consumption over the previous model are attributable to the car's extra weight, but in the judges' opinions this has been more than offset by the stronger performance, better handling, superior refinement and improved safety."
Safety: "Basic safety hardware is very impressive with standard dual-stage front airbags, front seat chest-head side bags standard in Fairmont and Fairmont Ghia, with reasonably priced options in all other models. Front seatbelts have both pretensioners and force limiters, the brakes are larger and stronger, with standard ABS, and the safety cell is much stronger, thanks to a new body that's 88 per cent more torsionally rigid than the previous model."
Value: "Nowhere else in the world can such a blend of size, safety, performance, handling, equipment and class be bought for equivalent money."