Welcome to another edition of my lowly-acclaimed Missed It By That Much series. Today, we get to see almost all of the bodies produced by Ford Australia for their XA Falcon GT cars.
All y’all probably think of Max Rockatansky when you see the Hardtop’s shape. For most of us down here, they have a broader imprint on our collective memories. Alongside the Charger and Monaro (maybe not the Force 7 – hehehe), the Falcon tudor from the early 1970s set a high benchmark for attractive styling. Very rare to see any of these now, but the 1972-73 XA would be the rarest (except the Force 7 – hehehe).
The sedans are rare too. Mostly because the XA was only produced for 18 months, whereas the (almost as attractive) XB lasted three years and the last of the line XC another three years. These examples would both appear to be in Red Pepper, almost the default colour for a GT from the period. I saw a yellow GT sedan the other day, but didn’t pull out the camera. That was nice too.
Haha! Tricked you! Got this one in full.
This sedan has redlines in the tyres, a great touch and worth the effort in my opinion. Not as enthralled with the numberplate frame though. Apart from the NACA-ducted hood, you can tell a GT from the grille ahead of the front wheels. Could be a replica but I’m not buying so who cares.
Now I know many of you will decry yet another immaculate performance variant on CC, and to a large degree I agree. But the XA is so good looking from every angle, I’ll take all the gloss as well. Just look at that face.
If I appear biased, it’s because I had an XA sedan; a bog-standard prestige Fairmont. Mine didn’t have the vinyl roof, but it did have the flowerpetal wheel covers (as I used to call them). White with a 250 six, it was completely original when I bought it in 1994 including an intact interior. It wasn’t a trailer queen though, back then these were still beater-grade cars and the one I found for not much money was just a well-cared-for example.
This was my first big car (yes, I know, but when you grow up in a family of Fiats and Volvos, this is big), and I remember sitting on the curb after driving home from work and just spending a few minutes admiring the shape.
Nice rear too. Those taillights were XA only and make for the perfect ending to this piece.
Further Reading
Love the shot of the coupe, it looks like it’s flying through the turn!
I have long admired the Falcon coupe body, even without the Mad Max tie in, where of course as an American was my first exposure. It looks like a child of the 71 Mustang and the 71 Torino, but with only the good genes inherited. I find it really cool the GT used those star shaped wheels that were similar to the ones used on Ferraris, Dinos and Alfa Romeos of the day, it adds a whole layer of exoticness to what is largely a familiar American Muscle car like aesthetic.
Lest you think I’m all coupe, the sedans look great as well, in fact I thought Max’s yellow XB(which seemed to be dressed up in full GT garb) in the first one was AS COOL as the black one. The coke bottle shape and the distinctive rear end treatment were attractive in their own right, and don’t look like dressed down afterthoughts most American 4-door sedans often looked.
The flowerpetal wheel covers look to be inspired by Motor Wheel Exciter mags
The flowerpetal wheel covers look to be inspired by Motor Wheel Exciter mags
I’d say they were more “inspired” by the Maverick’s wheel covers. 🙂
Touché! Though I’d still say those wheel covers were inspired by the mags, Ford design used genuine Exciters on some of their styling proposals.
One more
XR7 Matt, the alloy wheels on this XA were made by a local South Australian company called Globe Products and were originally called “Daytona” (can’t imagine why). Ford ordered them for a special hot XA Falcon that was never built, so the wheels were given free to owners of the very hot XY GTHO, the last of the US-shape Falcon. This allowed homologation for Australia’s big race, at the very hairy Mt Panorama at Bathurst. So forever after, these wheels are known as Bathurst Globes. Some extensive trivia to help your day.
Nice sightings! That XA Falcon coupe looks to me like a half and half blend of 1971 and 1972 American Ford Torino Sportsroofs (fastbacks). The sedan brings a little early 70s American Chevy Nova to the party in that roofline.
+1 – Before I saw this post was Don’s, I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s a great looking 1970 Torino!”
Don, it still counts – you got 98% of that beautiful, red Falcon in that first frame. Great post.
The coupe always looked like a ’70-’71 Torino body with the front sheet metal from a ’71 Mustang and grill from a ’68-’69 Torino. Certainly a more attractive offering than the ’71-’73 Mustang IMO as well as the ’70-’71 Torino GT (although I prefer the US model Cobra and base Falcon front ends).
The three-light tail treatment looks like a less-flamboyant version of the Mercury Cyclone.
When the movie Mad Max came out in 1979, my buddy was rebuilding a Javelin at the time. He was a huge fan of the movie and dragged me off to see it.
Knowing nothing about Australian Fords at the time, I always thought the hero car in that movie was based on an AMX. Perhaps in my 18 to 19 year old head, my brain formed an anagram of MAX and AMX.
I now know better after a few years reading articles on these very pages. I see a lot more Torino in this car now than I did when this movie came out.
Great shots. Never get tired of seeing these.
One of the few cars where the 4 door model looks as good, if not slightly better than the 2 door model.
Is it a coincidence that both cars were red? Or was that the only color?
I don’t care…..I’ll take the red 4 door.
No, there were a number of colours available but Red Pepper seems to have been the most popular, as well as the default for any tribute cars.
Yellow was actually the most popular colour, although there were 2 variations (Yellow Fire, Yellow Glo); I think one took over from the other.
I remember when those big Falcon coupes were used as police highway patrol cars. They really looked and sounded the business and made impression on us teenage hoons!
Pic from: https://www.facebook.com/XCFalconGS/
It would had been cool if the tv series Matlock Police showed them with these Falcon coupe besides the Holden Monaro in the 1st season and the Aussie Chrysler Valiants in the following seasons. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtKPzEAgPZU
Stéphane, you are always across the oz minutiae. I loved this show
Likewise, my favourite as a little kid. And surely it’s got some of the best theme music ever for a cop show? So serious and portentious, but somehow catchy with it.
Very, very brave stunt driver of that Valiant, as even 50mph on wet country road in one of them was at the limit.
Stephane, I have to ask, how do you know about these ancient Aussie police soaps?
Love the theme music. It’s actually a piece called ‘Industry on the Move’ written by someone called Trombey. Got it on vinyl performed by Eric Jupp and his Orchestra. The LP also has ‘Power Drive (Theme from Division 4)’. hehehe
I founded these infos by luck by Wikipedia, Youtube and this website.
http://www.classicaustraliantv.com/matlock.htm
was it Cheltenham Road where you shot the XA?
It was somewhere east, but can’t remember exactly where.
DAF LF photobomb.
hehehehehehehehe only you Johannes
Rare? really I see XA XB and XCs frequently GTs are a rarity but not regular garden variety Falcons, being out in traffic all day every day probably helps though, I suspect NZ assembly and rust proofing was better than the Australian efforts as the XA was a notorious ruster and survivors here arent generally too bad even now, I prefer the XB styling and owned several though no hardtops. There was never a coup’e they were sold as Hardtops all the way back to the mid 60s models. Only the coup’e utility had that word in its description.
I see more Kingys than Falcs, mostly HJ-HZ and mostly still as beaters. XB a bit, and XC a bit more, but XA I can count on one hand. Yellow ute and these.
Stopped at a gas station for durries on Saturday next to a nice silver 351 XA GT hardtop, not many old Holdens other than HQs around here the later ones weren quite as popular it seems or are less wanted now but an orchard I pickup at has a couple of VH Commodores stashed away in sheds.
Plenty of one-tonners around still. Durable mofos them.
Ive seen three HJ HX utes since this post and a HQ 1 tonne, dunno where they all went they used to be common here, but I keep seeing Falcons ironically old American cars are more common than pre 90s Australian cars on local roads, no import restrictions and tariffs are to blame I guess, though there are some horror stories around some cosmetically nice cars that turn out to be crap when sent in to be vinned,alledgedly rust free California bought cars that must have spent time elsewhere.
Please tell us more about how crap Australian cars are, your awesome ability to trash talk Australian cars is matched only by your talent for being unable to spot a fake GT falcon and the knowledge that f body GM vehicles are the same as HQ series Holden’s. That’s amazing man, my father worked in design at Holden’s and not even he knew. Your amazing dude
You get used to him
He is not wrong about the rusting though! These things rust at an Olympic level, look at the rust in the middle of the boot lid on this one.
And you are seriously uninformed
Those cars look to this American reader like seven-eighths sized siblings of the 1970-71 Torino, with some styling fillips borrowed from the ’72 Torino as well. They may have been big cars by Australian standards; they look closer to American so-called compacts of the time. Handsome cars!
These mayn’t be huge by US sizing, but they’re not small either. In 1988, I drove one whilst staying at a farm in the bush. A bit heavy on the dirt road, ok on the main 60mph road (where it did 80mph in no time) but then I tried to park it in the small town. I turned the wheel with all my might and still ended up on the footpath. Never been so embarrassed in me life. Absurdly heavy steering, a high beltline and poor visibility was a bad combination for this teenaged weed. Gave some grins for the locals watching on though, doubtless being the main event of the week.
It gave me a great new respect for little Mrs Keogh, who used to give me a lift from school in the identical V8 Fairmont to the one in Don’s picture. Her head barely came above the spokes, but her arms must’ve been solid Irish oak. (All other aspects of her driving were hilarious, but for another day).
I didn’t like XA GT’s when they were newish; I couldn’t not see the neanderthal knuckles scraping the pavement (out of the drivers window) that seemed to be installed in every one. I quite like the cars now they’re all gone.
Our US readers might be amused to hear that a good XA GT is now worth more than $100,000 US, and that’s for a sedan. Er, no thanks.
Probably needed an alignment I found the steering in 70s Aussie fords quite light but all mine had constant alignment issues cured by tack welding the inner lower conntrol arm adjusters, recommended and done by the front end shop in Narrabri NSW when I told them the kinds of roads it was being used on, I drove a friends XA hardtop for a cotton season while he was unlicenced the seatbelt mounted to the roof rubbed on sunburn annoyingly other than that it was ok 250 4 speed car $450 in those days you pay a lot more now.
These cars are on the same floorpan as the last US Falcons albeit with bigger suspension componentry change in 71 for the XY model, but a full carpet set fitted exactly into my XY Falcon harvested from a XA parts car.
Mine was power steer. Not fun when the engine dies on a bendy cliffside road south of Sydney.
They did have a pretty basic front end, when you look. Designed originally for a 2.4 litre six in a throwaway economy car, after all. No sturdy wishbones for dirt and bumps. Or 5.8 litre V8’s.
I dunno Bryce, I drove a friends immaculate XB GT years back, and with aircon, 351 V8, those Globe mags, the manual GT steering with (I think) “only” four turns lock-to-lock, the car was a filthy pig to steer. Made that country Falc I’d driven seem like a power-steered Valiant! Not nice at all.
Be damned if they didn’t race them that way in period, though. God knows how they put down the ciggies and beer long enough to do the exercises. ( If I could load photos, cue one of P Brock with ciggie in pits).
I passed my NSW licence in a pwr steer 302 XB, I had a manual steer XB van at the time 250 auto but it wasnt registered so borrowed a friends car I actually thought at the time the van drove better,maybe I was just used to it
when freshly aligned it steered well but living on a corrugated dirt road kept changing the settings untill the alignment guy did his spot weld trick.
You should write an article about Melbourne hook turns. Those should freak out or amuse a few readers.