From the late 1980s onward, a similar thing was happening in Australia: All Holden's planning was done in Broadmeadows, and all Ford's planning was done at Fishermans Bend. The model year 1988, which had brought white Australia its bicentennial, had coincidentally also brought us Holden's next-gen VN Commodore and Ford's next-gen EA Falcon, within six months of each other. In the process their design philosophies had merged, marking the start of the era where both manufacturers were trying to sell us the exact same car.
Engineering after Aesthetics – the EA Falcon
In truth, both Ford and Holden resembled punch-drunk prize fighters at this time – battered, bloodied and ready to fall, but neither with enough strength to land that knockout blow. Holden had spent the revenue from thirty years of supremacy on the first-gen Commodore, a compact sedan that had never really recouped. With their wide-body Falcon, Ford had been handed the Australian market virtually on a plate, but then spent huge financial and engineering resources on a plan to replace the Falcon with the smaller and more efficient Telstar – a car in the same size class as the Commodore, and front-wheel drive to boot.
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| The horror. |
When the oil crisis of 1979-'80 ended up being milder and briefer than the one back in '74, it caught everyone by surprise, voiding a decade's worth of product planning virtually overnight. Hence Holden went back to GM in Detroit to beg for a bail-out, asking for the funds to develop a second-gen Commodore to get back in the game. That reached the market in late 1988 as the new VN, which would hit the racetrack late in its lifespan and so we'll be covering it then.
Ford likewise had to go to their bosses in Detroit and make a case for a new unique-to-Australia model, kicking off the age where Broadmeadows had to go to Dearborn once a decade and, more or less, beg for the right to exist. All this explained the half-hearted facelift of the XF, a car that was never supposed to've happened at all, its only job to hold the line while Ford got the next-gen Falcon together, and it had done an amazing job all things considered. The XF's floorplan would in fact live on in the XG and XH utes, which would remain Ford's bread & butter commercial line well into the late 90's, but by 1988 there was no disguising the skeleton was straight out of a 1966 Fairlane. It was time to start again.
The replacement EA was developed in a $700 million project designated EA26 – E meaning a large-class car, A for Australia, and 26 being a sequential global project number. Its brief was to maximise what had been right with the XD-XF series while bringing the hardware into the modern era – the Falcon's ascendancy over the cramped Commodore hinted that a large car was still the way to go, as even though private buyers usually preferred the Commodore, they were a drop in the bucket compared to sales volumes to the Three T's (Taxis, Tradies and Telecom). The taxi companies especially held Ford Australia by the nose at this time, and above all they needed a car that could comfortably seat three people across the rear. The importance of towing also drove the design – in the leadup to the XD, veteran Ford designers had apparently sent troublesome juniors out to random car parks around Melbourne with instructions to count the tow bars. Ten years on it seemed the lesson had sunk in, explaining why the Falcon remained rear-wheel drive right up to the end: you needed RWD to tow, and weekends with boats, trailers and caravans were just part of the culture.
So overall it seemed Broadmeadows knew what they were doing, but with the clock ticking until the XF was completely obsolete, they were forced to bring the EA to market before it was really ready. That by itself explained how the same car could end up being so good and yet so bad.
The battle for first impressions was a victory, as the styling immediately won hearts. The studio had access to global Ford offerings for inspiration, so the resulting shape looked a little like an enlarged Ford Scorpio, complying with the trend toward European styling complete with a fashionable "letterbox" radiator grille. Also in line with the times, it was the first Falcon to spend any time at all in a windtunnel, which even in a country with a maximum 110km/h speed limit could only have helped matters – Ford would rather you didn't ask about the XF's coefficient of drag, or Cd, but independent measurements had revealed numbers as bad as 0.50. The EA hit the market at just 0.38, delivering fuel economy figures around 10 litres per 100km and theoretical top speeds north of 200km/h. Bingo.
Unfortunately, the looks were where the EA peaked, as it all went downhill once you actually climbed behind the wheel. It might not've been styled like a bargain-bin special but it definitely felt like one, with ill-fitting panels, a cheap plasticky interior, and heavy plastic bumpers that seemed prone to abandon ship at a moment's notice. There were constant computer glitches, poor paint quality, iffy handling and a general feeling of being thrown together at five to five on a Friday by a crew who'd already been handed their retrenchment papers. The difference between the best and worst of the EAs was staggering.
Which was a shame, because if you'd got one that had been put together with care, then you had one of the best cars in the world for price. The front end was all-new and actually pretty good, with new rack & pinion steering and SLALS (short and long arm long spindle) suspension arrangement – basically an el cheapo alternative to double wishbones. In a few years this system would be the bugbear of early V8 Supercars as, with their MacPherson strut front ends, the Holden teams would be unable to match the bite and turn-in of the Falcons, but on a road car that was really neither here nor there. What mattered was that many hit the road without having been aligned properly, leading to distressingly short front tyre life and an early return to the dealership for adjustment. And although a welcome improvement over the XF's recirculating ball setup, the new rack & pinion steering was only as good as what the Commodore had had for a decade, so all it really represented was Ford belatedly catching up.
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| Soft lighting make this interior look nicer than it is: what you're actually looking at is acres of grey plastic, with all the squeaks and rattles that give it away as budget transport for the masses. |
The rear was similarly disappointing, with no IRS, and an LSD only as a $350 option. Otherwise you got the same old coil-sprung live axle as the XF, carried over from the previous model to save costs. This meant it also inherited the XF's rear-end nervousness, as the familiar transverse Watt's linkage still had its centre pivot mounted to the diff housing, leaving the car with a roll centre set far too high. The resulting roll-steer ranged from spooky to dangerous – the wonderfully progressive, slow-motion oversteer of the XD must've seemed like an awfully long time ago.
With that in mind the gutless standard engine could almost be viewed as a blessing – starting with 90 kW at 4,000rpm (and 235 Nm at 3,250), there just wasn't enough power to get you into real trouble. There were three engines to be had, all variants on the long-serving Falcon straight-six: the basic 3.2-litre, a bigger 3.9-litre, and the 3.9 with multi-point injection, or MPI. Units without MPI generally had throttle-body injection (TBI) instead, controlled by Ford's corporate EEC-4 engine management system, and all had single overhead camshafts in place of the old pushrods. They were smoother than their OHV predecessors, but the 3.2's lacklustre torque forced the driver to flog it to make anything happen, which led to fuel economy worse than the optional 3.9 anyway (and thus leading the 3.2 into a quiet retirement in December '88). So the 3.9, which was optional on the base-model GL and standard on anything higher, became the real mainstream engine with figures of 120 kW at 4,250rpm and 311 Nm at 3,250 – better, but hardly world-beating. In 1988 it was all still fairly agricultural, but at least the raw configuration was now in place, and that would allow Ford and their partners to start tweaking it in the years ahead.
Unfortunately, even the 3.9 was let down by the transmission to which it was mated. The 5-speed manual, a Borg Warner T50D with synchros on all five cogs, was actually pretty good, but it was an optional extra. As standard Ford had wanted to use Borg Warner's upcoming ML85LE electronic 4-speed auto, but had known as early as a year before launch that this unit wouldn't be ready in time. To head them off at the pass, a few months out Ford had invited the journalists for a pep talk from no-one less than their star quality control officer, Sir Jackie Stewart. Stewart used his considerable communication skills to dazzle the room into believing in the upcoming Falcon as much as he did, talking long and loud about how perfectly the engine had been matched to the standby Borg Warner M51 – a 3-speeder that was outdated in both concept and execution. Despite Sir Jackie's bluster it was immediately obvious it was garbage – despite being the model all the taxi companies and other fleets would buy, at launch none of the journalists were allowed to drive it. It turned out the unit was noisy and thirsty and its final drive ratio was far too short, leaving the car to run out of revs at around 170km/h. In the end, buyers had to wait until 1990 before they could get the auto the car had actually been built for, and although it would eventually mature into a world-class gearbox, teething problems would often see them lose drive somewhere in the first 100,000km. To their credit, Ford would often cover the repairs on a goodwill basis, even on cars that were technically out of warranty.
Prices started just above $20,000 for a basic GL with a 3.2 and 3-speed auto, roughly $44,500 in 2018 dollars, or about the same as the performance models of the late Noughties – Australian cars were relatively expensive during this period. An automatic Falcon S with the 3.9 – the lowest spec a private buyer would seriously consider – was $22,139, or just over $49,000 in 2018, with air con an extra $1,478 and a rather attractive set of Snoflake alloys $580 (a must-have, as the plastic wheel covers weren't fooling anyone). The real trick was to opt for MPI and a 5-speed manual, as only then did you get a better car than the equivalent VN. With 139 kW and 338 Nm, MPI cars could cover the 400m in 16 seconds or thereabouts, and go on to a true top speed of 216km/h – figures that rivalled a V8-engined VL Group A just 12 months earlier. Not since the GT had gone extinct had anyone seen a Falcon produce numbers like these.
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| Why they got the secret love child of Kimi Räikkönen and Jack Dee to advertise it is anyone's guess. |
Famously, Wheels magazine took both an EA Falcon GL and the rival VN Commodore Executive – both basic as basic could be – on a tri-state road trip totalling 21,000km in just one week. Starting from Sydney and heading south through the Snowies, then through Victoria, to South Australia and back to Sydney again, the cars were flogged along empty roads, outback dust, gravel, snow, sand, tiny towns, and the obligatory water crossing shots. Wheels' mission was to "Break the bastards!" and notoriously, they did: between them, there were loose bonnet latches, shedding interior trim, weakened shocks, ineffective handbrake cables, punctured fuel tanks, electrical infidelity, dangling bumpers and terrible dust sealing. The quality issues that would soon be a big problem for both manufacturers were laid bare for all to see. But, it has to be said, both cars made it back to Sydney alive. Wheels writer Michael Stahl remembered, "Over so many long days at the wheel, my respect for the Falcon's lazy, loping stability was set, over everything from harsh shale to wet, buttery clay. Not just big cars, but big hearts." Mike McCarthy agreed: "What this greatest epic mostly reinforced, surely, was the belief that no other stock-standard cars would take such massive battering over such gruelling distance. Made in, and for Australia, they done good."
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| Reprinted by Wheels in 2016. |
Nevertheless, it was pretty clear that both Broadmeadows and the Bend needed to take their cars back to the factory and finish the damn things off. So bad was the situation that several aftermarket tuning companies sprung up to do the job on their behalf, as a matter of fact... and the most famous of them was none other than Holden's former golden boy, Peter Brock.
Do Not Adjust Your Screen – Brock in a Sierra
Yes, we've mentioned it before, but witnesses at the scene could still report blizzard conditions in Hell – Peter Brock really was racing a Ford. His main sponsor was Mobil, who'd been with him for several years and would remain with him to the end of his career, and they weren't satisfied with mere class racing. They demanded (and stumped up the cash) for Brock to put the BMW aside and jump into a frontrunning car once again. In 1989 there was only one candidate for the job – the former Holden star had to go buy himself a Ford Sierra RS500. The die-hard fans who'd been with him since the Torana days threw up their hands in horror, but Peter himself had no hang-ups whatsoever. "He quite enjoyed the nuisance of it," said Peter's unofficial business manager Alan Gow. "He thought it would be quite funny to show Holden that, 'Well, you can't shoot me down. Here I am!' He didn’t have any nightmares about swapping over to a Ford product at all."
As soon as Mobil promised the money, Brock, Gow and team manager Graeme "Mort" Brown were on a plane to Europe to do a deal with someone. "When we made the decision to go for a Sierra we had a few options," said Gow. "We were either going to buy a couple of Eggenberger Sierras in Germany or a couple of Andy Rouse-built cars from the U.K., because they were the hot cars to have at that stage. We landed in England and looked at Andy's cars. They were such a good deal, because we knew what price Eggenberger was asking, and he [Andy] offered us such a good deal that we made the decision right then and there to buy the cars. Peter then was no longer interested in going to Eggenberger or anywhere else. He'd made a decision and wanted to go back and paint his house. He changed his ticket, went back the next day, and left Mort and I to go to Eggenberger and go through the charade of having a look at their cars. That was typical of the way he handled any business."
Spanner-man George Smith had a similar recollection of how the decision was made.
Brock, Mort and Alan Gow went to Europe to see Eggenberger and just before they left Mort discovered they wanted to go and see Rouse as well. He was furious: "We don’t want to go anywhere near Rouse's." But Brock decided to go and see him first. Mort thought they were getting conned; he reckoned they would get results with Eggenberger because they were really on it, but after the meeting [with Rouse] Brock left and sent Gow and Mort to Eggenberger's. So they went and wasted a day of Eggenberger's time because the Rouse deal was done. They bought two Rouse cars; they had aluminium roll-cages in them so there was no structural stability or anything. – George Smith, AMC #97One wonders what Moffat would've said at the idea of Rudi offering Peter a customer car and Peter only pretending to consider it!
Brock originally imported two ex-Andy Rouse Engineering Sierras for the beginning of the 1989 Australian Touring Car Championship, but it seemed Peter only wanted something to tide him over, and maybe provide some hints about how to build these things, as by mid-year a new chassis was under construction by a new Melbourne startup called Dencar. Founded by George Smith's best mate and partner in crime, Dennis Watson, the name was an amalgamation of the names of Dennis and his wife Carol, and in time it would grow to become a legend of the V8 Supercar scene, the people to whom no-one less than the Holden Racing Team outsourced much of their chassis construction. But in 1989 it was just another tiny engineering firm in the local racing scene, short on cash but long on expertise. In that sense it was a perfect fit for Team Brock, but it was yet another little irony that the name behind so many future race-winning Holdens first cut their teeth on a Ford.
Anyway, Andy Rouse of course had a reputation to maintain, having screwed over both Dick Johnson and Allan Moffat in successive years. With Peter Brock now on his customer list as well there was a chance to complete the trifecta, and he didn't disappoint. Things started badly when both cars blew up after only a few laps of the first test – Smith said they later discovered new sumps had been fitted by the work experience kid before being shipped to Australia. "The first year of the Sierras we kept on blowing up engines all year," agreed Gow. "At Wanneroo, after the Friday practice, we'd literally run out of engines, so the boys had to build an engine in the back of the transporter. We were then faced with putting it in Peter's car, brand new, without being run-in, which is never ideal. We asked the organiser if we could run around the track at night to run the car in, which is what we did. We went for hours. The Sierras didn't have any headlights of any note, so there was a rental car and the race car going around for laps and laps and laps, to run the engine in, and getting faster and faster and faster. The number of times we threw the rental car into the gravel traps, having fun trying to keep up! We'd all swap around. After a while I'd get bored in the rental car so I'd jump in and drive the Sierra while Peter drove the rental car. It became a fun park for a couple of hours in the two cars."
Fun and games aside, the '89 championship was a mixed bag for Brock, with two retirements spoiling any hope of a title run despite three solid 2nd-place finishes (at Symmons Plains, Mallala and Sandown) and even a win in the season-closer at Oran Park. Impressively, that meant it was usually a coin-toss whether he'd finish ahead of John Bowe, who was driving the second Dick Johnson car but spent most of the year finishing 3rd. Consistency told however, and with zero DNFs Bowe was able to finish ahead of Brock in the final standings, though neither were able to offer more than token resistance to Johnson, who ran away with the series to take his record-equalling fifth ATCC title.
Gr8 B8 m8 – the Brock B8
Away from the track, Peter still had an interest in tuning road cars, and that the newest Falcon was so transparently lacking in polish created a serious opportunity. He and Gow duly formed Austech Automotive Developments Ltd in Newlands Street, Coburg, and set about trying to get lightning to strike twice. "Peter wanted me to come in a a partner, and be a director of the company, and it was basically Peter and I," Alan Gow told Australian Muscle Car #82. "We still had the race team but it had a workshop near Airport West. Peter loved doing road car stuff so it made sense to have the two go hand-in-hand, being Ford and Ford."
The EA Falcon B8 – so named because it was the eighth generation of Brock projects – started as a promotion for Mobil and project car for Modern Motor. It was silver, which remained arguably the B8's finest colour. "Brock was doing one side skirt on one car, and fitting the completed rear skirt on my car at the same time," said Craig Fletcher, then-workshop manager, later a director of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation. "He said, 'It's my best car yet, and destined to be my most exclusive too.' I still remember the tagline – Body by Ford, soul by Brock."
That sounded awfully familiar, but Brock insisted he wasn't trying to re-create the glory days of HDT Special Vehicles using Ford products – it was all meant to be much more low-key this time around. That the Brock logo bore a striking resemblance to the later "T-wings" of Tickford was, all parties insisted, just a coincidence.
"We didn’t do it with any idea of getting money out of Ford," said Gow. "Peter also wanted to do it on a much smaller scale than he had with HDT. He didn't want to go down that road again. Funnily enough, the B8 badge on the side of the car was very similar to the one later used by Ford. Everyone thought it was the precursor." So the project got underway, with Brock in charge of vehicle development, Fletcher in the workshop and Gow watching the books.
The deal was, you brought in either a Falcon S or a Fairmont Ghia donor car, then handed over $12,500 (or $9,890 – the plush Ghia required fewer interior changes), and in return Austech would tweak the suspension, re-trim the interior, give the engine a massage and clothe it all in a nice little bodykit. This was no Walkinshaw monstrosity, however, as the shape that emerged was surprisingly tasteful, enhancing what the EA already was with such subtlety it could almost pass for a factory job. Comprising of front and rear spoilers, rear valance panel and sideskirts, it complimented the Falcon's lines quite nicely, avoiding the impression of slab-sided weight that spoiled so many kits. Crucially, it also avoided interfering with the tow bar – clearly this was intended as a usable daily driver, not a track-day-only garage queen.
Like the exterior, the interior treatment was a pleasing blend of subtle form that didn't sacrifice functionality. The front seats were actually standard units reworked for lateral support and upholstered in a tasteful grey cloth with red striped inserts by Paratus Industries, the company responsible for the OEM seats. Using stock frames meant that Austech had no problems with ADRs, helping to keep the price reasonable. Rear seats were trimmed to match, while finishing touches included the addition of a Ghia centre console and the ubiquitous fat-rimmed leather wheel and similarly-attired gearstick.
As usual though, it was the engine that attracted the most attention. Ford's insane quality control programme meant there was always plenty of potential left in their engines, and Austech arguably did the best job of unlocking it. A reworked cam, blueprinted ignition, recontoured airbox (Ford's own were usually optimised for quiet operation rather than flow) and engine management tweaks were welcome, but the real gravy was an all-new set of gorgeously polished six-into-two extractors, feeding into twin exhausts that terminated with a common silencer box and a single tailpipe. With all that, Austech claimed not only were emissions reduced, but power jumped 30% to an impressive 165 kW – which, if true, was more than a VL Turbo, and on par with an XR6 or even a V8-powered SS Commodore half a decade later. Top speed for the manual was a measured 202km/h, and although that was less than the standard car had posted at its launch, that had been achieved on the banked speedbowl at Ford's You Yangs Proving Ground – given the same venue, the B8 could conceivably have been faster. 0-100 was in the order of 8 seconds, and the 400m about 15.6, all good numbers for something that "wasn't a performance car"!
That claim was borne out by the suspension tune. Austech fitted new springs front and rear, specific gas shock valving, sturdier anti-roll bars, modified the top strut mounts and spring pads and tweaked the bushes.The end result wasn't what you're thinking, however. Although it would hang on well after the standard Falcon had given up and landed in the weeds, the team hadn't completely eliminated the EA's understeer, opting for a more compliant ride instead. Although stiffer than the standard car, the B8 was much less unsettled by the bumps and potholes of a normal Aussie back road, meaning in the real world it would paradoxically end up faster than a bone-shaking track car. Again, it was meant to be a pleasant thing to use every day, not a toy for weekends. Neither was there a Polarizer, or at least, “Not that I can recall,” laughed Fletcher. The Bridgestone RE71 tyres did run with suspiciously low pressures for a while, though...
We did two B8 models, a Falcon and a Fairmont [one of which Brock had as his daily drive]. There was the odd one-off and Fairlanes, but that was not the normal run-of-the-mill. We had a good number of Ford dealers who sent cars to us and some private owners. We didn't own any cars. It was very low overheads. The majority of them were silver; the second most popular was [Indigo] blue. The dealers brought them, or the owners. Peter enjoyed it, because he got to play with cars. At one point he also started playing with an aerodynamic truck. It gave him the latitude to try other things.They were helped along by a "silent partner" who was happy to chip in cash to keep the business afloat – nothing sinister, just a fan who was happy to help out (again, living Peter's charmed life came in very handy sometimes). "He was a bloke who ran weekend markets in Melbourne," Gow told AMC. "When Peter needed money, he'd go and see him and come back with a brown paper bag full of cash from the markets. His name was... let me see if I remember. Yes, it was Chipperfield."
They were nice cars. They were a much more subtle car than what HDT were making. They were mainly concerned with a better-handling, better-riding car. It was a bit of extra performance with the straight six, with valve timing and exhausts and things. And things like front and rear bumpers and side skirts. It wasn’t over the top and the cars weren’t that expensive. We had our own wheels designed, he had his seats done by a company in Geelong, and he got Bridgestone tyres that were probably run at a low pressure for a time.
It wasn't a performance package. It wasn't meant to be a performance car. It was only marginally quicker than a standard Falcon. But it had the Peter Brock badge on it. Funnily enough, it's the sort of upgrade you expect now from the Audis of this world. – Alan Gow, AMC #82
"Peter borrowed money as and when he needed it," Gow added. "The company wasn't profitable, but it didn't lose money. It was all right and washed its own face, considering any start-up is difficult to make money."
Ultimately, the window of opportunity was open only briefly. Having planned to build 250, Austech only modified 126 Falcons and 24 Fairlanes before selling out. Those production volumes were dwarfed by the factory, obviously, with 223,612 EAs leaving Broadmeadows in its three-year stint, but few today realise they were even humbled by the 1,000-odd Falcon SVOs built by former race engine builder Mick Webb. The SVO was the one you really wanted if you absolutely had to have a performance Falcon – Momo steering wheel, Recaro seats, Bilstein shocks, the brand names said it all. It was a sharper and more focused drive than the B8, but it was also a semi-official project undertaken by Webb after hiring lots of ex-HDT personnel, and aided by Ford employees (some of them quite high-level) moonlighting with the factory's blessing. Officially unofficial, the SVO was Webb's attempt to land the deal that would eventually go to Tickford. Sadly for Webb, thanks to charisma, exclusivity, the Brock name or some combination of them all, it was the B8 that would go on to become a minor collectible; the SVO, technically a better car, is all but forgotten now and I doubt it would be hugely expensive to buy one, even in mint condition. The market for all these modified Falcons was destined to dry up, however, once Tickford arrived and started building the XR6.
Not to forget the XR8 of course, which would one day highlight the real chink in the EA's armour – no V8. Without a V8 option, there was no true performance version (XR8), no super-dooper performance version with Bathurst pretensions (GT), and nothing to put under the bonnet of the big luxo-barges like the NA Fairlane and LTD limousine. I mean, a Fairmont Ghia would set you back $31,265, or just under $70,000 in 2018, but it was really hard to justify that price and claim a cut-above image when all it had for power was a common or garden six. Plenty of small business owners and Silent Generation retirees opted for a Calais instead, and Ford would eventually be forced to take notice, but too late for the EA.
I'll sign off with one of the strangest photos in my collection, which seems to date from 10 December 1989. As with the preceeding XF, a lot of revheads might tell you the EA never raced: once again, however, Bob Jane's Thunderdome comes riding to the rescue. Here's an EA Falcon given the full Gen-4 treatment and entered in Australian NASCAR, powered by a 351ci Windsor V8.
I can't quite make out the name on the fender, but the VN Commodore alongside it (powered by a 350 Chevy small block) is being driven by Brad Jones, the King of the Dome, and already a reigning AUSCAR champion at the time. Apparently both these cars were built at Calder Park's own workshops and Jane had high hopes they'd be competitive with imported machinery from the U.S., boosting local interest in the series. Does anyone know any more? If so I'd love to hear about it. The comment box is below. Otherwise, just enjoy the free drinks you'll win from knowing even this Falcon saw limited track action.
