Falcon turns 40

THE Ford Falcon today celebrates its 40th birthday as the longest continuous model line in Australian motoring history. The occasion has been marked by a huge gathering at Ford's Broadmeadows, Melbourne, plant, where more than 2.7 million Falcons have been produced. Some of the 1500 employees who assembled for the celebration have been with Ford Australia since the first XK Falcon rolled off the production line on June 28, 1960. "In a lot of ways the Falcon has reflected Australian culture and fashion over the past four decades," said Ford Australia president Geoff Polites. "In the 1960s the Falcon was all chrome and white-wall tyres while in the 70s we had burnt orange soft-top Falcons to go with our flares and platform shoes. "I think the present AUII Falcon reflects Australia's growing sophistication as we head into a new millennium." Mr Polites noted that the Falcon has been around longer than colour television, decimal currency, the jumbo jet, the pill and the Sydney Opera House. After many years assembling cars from kits imported from the UK, it was decided in 1955 to follow rival General Motors by building a car from the ground up at the Homebush plant in Sydney, just across the road from the site of the 2000 Olympic Games. The original plan was to build the British Zephyr from the ground up but in 1958 managing director Charles Smith visited the US to view the redesigned Zephyr and was not impressed by what he saw. He decided a better option for Australia was the Falcon being designed for the North American market, which he had been shown in mock-up form. The Australian version of the Falcon was based on the Canadian model and within months of being released made its racing debut in the hands of Bob Jane and Lou Molina in the Armstrong 500 at Phillip Island - the forerunner to today's Bathurst 1000. The XM Falcon released in 1963 had much greater Australian design and engineering input as a result of local racing and outback driving experience. Two years later the XP Falcon was launched with a highly publicised endurance run aimed at covering 70,000 miles (112,630km) of the You Yangs Proving Ground at an average speed of 70 miles per hour. The group of racing drivers assembled for the run rolled four of the five cars but completed their goal after nine days at an average of 71.3mph. All-new Falcons came with the XR in 1966, the XA in 1972, the XD in 1979, the EA in 1988 and the AU in 1998 - showing how life cycles have lengthened over the years. The XD was the first Falcon to be designed entirely in Australia from a fresh sheet of paper and Mr Polites points out that the Falcon remains the only car wholly designed and manufactured in Australia. "The Ford design centre in Broadmeadows is the only place in Australia where you can look over the shoulder of a designer as he or she pens the very first strokes of a sketch that will eventually become a totally unique car," he said. "We are equally proud of the fact that the Falcon has the highest local content of any vehicle sold in Australia today." Falcon model history:
XK 1960
XL 1962
XM 1963
XP 1964
XR 1966
XT 1968
XW 1969
XY 1970
XA 1972
XB 1973
XC 1976
XD 1979
XE 1982
XF 1984
EA 1988
EB 1991
ED 1993
EF 1994
EL 1996
AU 1998
AUII 2000