No, we’re getting into industry news. But the Australian Falcon has a special place in our hearts. Not just because of its storied name, that it’s RWD, and the fact that its potent 261 hp DOHC six cylinder engine has its origins in the lowly 1960 Falcon six. But it marks the end of a long tradition of Australian Ford production, that dates back to 1925 and the Model A.
The high value of the Australian dollar, along with the globalization of the industry, just don’t make auto production in Australia viable, as well as a consumer shift to smaller cars. I saw this coming years ago, but there’s naturally been a lot of denial. So how long will Holden hold on?
guardian.uk hat tip to robadr!
“No, we’re (not) getting into industry news”, maybe? Also, is the Falcon the last Ford still made in Australia? I don’t know why, but I was under the impression that there were more…maybe I was thinking of Holden.
They also have the Territory, which is a unique SUV to their market:
http://www.ford.com.au/suv/territory
They get other Fords, too, but if memory serves, the rest of them are imported.
Only the Falcon and variants like the Territory- sad story but no big surprise.
50 different brands on sale in Australia with a population of only 24 million, something had to give sadly.
Farewell Falcon. 🙁
WIll keep my 2000 Ute and get a fully loaded 2016 model which I’d like to pick up from the factory.
50 different brands? Really? I can’t even think of 50 current car brands!
I actually owned an old Falcon there, briefly. As a car, it it wasn’t great (although it was better than the US Fords of its vintage), but it did provide a lot of good memories for the short time that I had it, and I’m glad to have owned it.
I wouldn’t blame the strong dollar, per se, at least not directly. The Aussies have been eliminating their once sky-high tariffs, which gave the Aussies the chance to buy imports, including cheaper compacts. The Falcons and Commodores have been quite expensive cars by US standards — they needed to be due to the lack of scale — and they can’t beat the Mazda3 or Corolla on price.
The Aussies have also had a commodity boom, which has put money in their pockets. The affluent ones among have acquired a taste for nice European cars, which are getting more affordable due to the tariffs being slashed. Meanwhile, the Falcon and Commodore performance cars are perceived as being for “bogans” (rednecks), so most of the yuppies don’t want them. It’s too bad, really.
Good assessment in a short space.
This is lousy. I like the Falcon more than any of the US-market Ford sedans.
Too bad it was never built over here (in modern form); it would have been a great answer to the Chrysler LX cars. Especially with a Coyote 5.0 liter V8/6 speed manual.
A friend has a 4 month old XR6 ute in red full sedan interior he gets 25mpg the way he drives it so hes happy and a rare person only the 7th NZ sale for the month. The new Ranger is selling like cold beer at a footy game nobody wants the Falcon which is
a shame the upscale models are quite nice though the entry level version lacks roadholding in 6 cylinder form the ecoboost version transforms it apparently the weight loss is very noticeable. Holden will hang on the middle east,US and England are useful export markets and in the correct trim a HSV Holden can show a clean pair of tailpipes to an M5 its quite a car for a bunch of chevy parts Opel parts and a OZZY designed body and of course world V6 engine production is done by Holden Cadillac chassis tuning and the Camaro yeah GMH are a handy bunch to own.
What a shame another link to the past dies .I’ve a soft spot for Australian cars though I’ve never had one or driven one.I see quite a few Monaro/VXR8s in the UK and the Falcon could have been a bit of opposition for them had it been readily available.Dad had a RHD Valiant which I’m sure was an Australian car,my parents liked the style and comfort of American cars being tall but Mum was never OK driving left hookers on her own.More Aussie iron please.We had 2 American Falcons both used which were good looking reliable cars
Post-1966 Valiant would have been from Australia, when they needed to replace the Humber Super Snipe.
I heard it here first it was just on the news very cool Paul Bobs new ute
Nice Ute!
Always liked the OZ Falcons; a shame they will be going away.
Maybe one of our NZ or OZ readers could get some pics of new Falcons at the dealer for an Australian Future CC post?
I think this is shortsighted of Ford…what happens if/when the Aussies put up punitive tariffs?
I disagree strongly with what the Mulally people are doing. Cars that are right for America…are not necessarily so for Australia; for Europe; for Japan or the UK. Standardization of platforms is one thing; but the Aussies need utes; the Brits need city cars; the Japanese need kei-cars that can be parked in a bicycle space.
And many of us need turnpike cruisers. Different lands with different travel distances and expectations; different needs.
Ford may well regret this.
Australia used to have high import tariffs – for a time, they were over 50%. They weren’t punitive to Ford — on the contrary, those tariffs were designed to protect Ford and Holden.
But those tariffs have been scrapped, and Australia has been signing free trade agreements. Those tariffs are not coming back. Give Ford some credit for knowing what’s going on there. I’ll personally miss the Falcon, but there’s no business case for continuing with it.
Even though the Falcon might be dead (production-wise) in the land of Oz, a next-gen model might be made & sold in America, Austrailia/NZ, and the Middle East
Nope is was decided years ago to stop development of the Falcon and let it soldier on as they have. Before Mullaly came that was the plan but, right after he said “what you killed the Taurus name?” He said no more development of the Falcon and no a version of it will not be the Panther replacement nor the basis of the Mustang as Ford was planning at the time.
I agree with JPT’s point. The “One Ford” approach is a good idea, but a car designed in an attempt to appeal to everyone runs the risk of not really appealing to anyone.
I have never driven or even seen an Aussie Falcon, but I liked the idea that they were there. I have also, from what I have read, been sorry that Ford has not found a way to incorporate it into a sport sedan niche here. It is maddening that they have the pieces, but won’t put them together.
My BIL works for John Andrew Ford the biggest dealership in the southern hemisphere they cannot sell Falcons nobody will buy them and they are quite excited about the new RHD Taurus, They have the Mondeo argueably a better car than the Falcon and it sells but not the Aussie favourite. trhere were some good Falcons and some bloody awful ones too but a lot of people got good miles from an Aussie Ford me included.
Ya gotta wonder if Ford corporate took a look at the Falcon to replace the Crown Vic/Town Car here in America before they killed it off. How old was the chassis?
As I mentioned above before Mullaly stepped in that was the plan. They were going to do a long wheel base version to replace the Panther and likely a short wheelbase to underpin the next Mustang. Instead he cut off all development money for the existing Falcon left it to rot. There was a fairly large article about the plans in C&D or R&T 5 or 6 years ago.
Very discouraging news.
I lusted over the Falcon for a long long time, from the first time I saw the Road Warrior/Mad Max 2, to the point where our family got a computer and when I regularly (and very slowly) loaded up madmaxcars.com, ford.com.au and later FPV.com.au on ye-olde dial-up connection. Even in recent years I still load up the latter just to see what awesome cars I can’t get…
Big V8s or turbo in-line 6s in large sleek RWD bodies with double wishbone independent suspensions on both ends with Brembos. Seems so exotic to my hardcore car enthusiast eyes. American Muscle meets European GT; possibly the greatest combination of style and substance imaginable. I absolutely loathed FWD, transverse engines, V6s and virtually anything else associated with the “modern” car when I was a kid, I still do if I’m totally honest. Being able to see these Australian machines from afar gave me hope that there was a marketplace that could keep traditional cars like this alive and evolved, unlike here where we all but abandoned them for appliances.
I still remember when the 2004 GTO was announced. I bought every Pontiac magazine from the press announcement to it’s release just to soak it in. I couldn’t care less about the GTO name being revived, I was just excited about getting an Australian car in America! I thought that would open the floodgates; next the Commodore, after that a ute, and after that Ford will HAVE to bring over the Falcon! “They’ll be here by the time I get my license!!!” or so I thought…
Of course what really happened was the GTO was a flop and died unceremoniously, Ford created the Volvo based “Five-Hundred” sedan around the same time, which I immediately resented. Really, to this day I share the same animosity towards the D3 platform as a child would to an asshole step dad. The Five-Hundred was basically the size and weight of the Aussie Falcon, looked a little bit like it even, sat squarely in the same segment it would, but it wasn’t. It was a platform engineered VOLVO, the antithesis to the Falcon! Then came the G8, and Pontiac got axed immediately afterwards.
Since then I’ve watched GM badge engineer Opels into Buicks, Ford run the Panther into the ground while peddling rebodied Mazdas and Volvos as their car lineup, witnessed Ponycars become giant caricatures of themselves and now watched Ford of Australia disappear before my very eyes. What a dark depressing world this has become. Mad Max’s plot wasn’t far off.
Well said – I pretty much agree with all of that. The irony is that in the ’50’s and ’60’s, my limited knowledge of Australian cars made them seem like poor hybrids of American and British cars. But by the ’80’s and definitely into this century, with the demise of the RWD American performance sedan (and El Camino), Australian cars seemed like better American cars than we ever got here in the US.
Not really surprising, but sad news, 1200 will be out of work. All over the papers here today as the Geelong plant is only about an hour out of town.
I had a Falcon as a rental on a weekend trip last year, and they’re nice cars. In some details, you can tell it’s getting old (it shares a lot of its bones with the previous BF Falcon, which launched in 2002), but the base V6 is a real torquer and the steering and handling are more like a premium European car than a typical family sedan.
I’ll have to write that car up sometime as a future CC while I still remember the details.
I think the 98 AU to the 08 BF was one platform and the FG is another. At the least everything above the floorpan was new. One of the Falcon’s problems is that they last so damn long there’s often no need to upgrade.
My dual Fuel BA Mk1 is nearly 11 years old and still drives like a dream. Costs me $20 a week in LPG. The I6 is really strong – no one beats me from the lights if I dont want them to (unless they have a V8). Maybe I can save up for an FG before they’re all gone…
Could very well be. I’m a US transplant in AUS and the surface similarity between the BA and FG made me think the underpinnings were largely carryover. My main experience of them is taxis. A friend of mine also has an LPG BA and is a big fan. That 4.0 Six sure packs a punch, I sincerely hope Ford finds a use for it globally.
Yes, the FG styling was a bit underwhelming. Maybe a reaction to the AU disaster
At least it wasn’t a Taurus!
I actually really like the FG styling, the BA and BF look a little to conservative for my taste while the FG looks nicely balanced. I especially like the rear end styling. The taillights look aggressive and the bumper isn’t tall and bloated like, say, the Taurus.
From what I have read, the Crown Victoria was the weapon of choice for US Police Forces, and a lot of them were very unhappy when it was discontinued. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed like it had very healthy proportion of the market and Ford just let it die off without a replacement. Of course there was a viable replacement for it, and that was the Falcon. Labour Costs and the high Australian Dollar mean the Falcon would always be a tough sell as an import, but building a copy of the Australian Production Line in the US and spending some money on designing a Left Hand Drive version would have probably resulted in the cheapest Model development of a full sized car in US automotive history. The Police would have been happy (V8 Pursuit Vehicles), how about Taxi Companies (Ecoboost 4). The icing on the would have been selling FPV versions to motoring enthusiasts. Anyway the situation is what it is. To Ford Australia’s credit, they have given their manufacturing staff three years to find new jobs and they are going to release one more new model of the Falcon, they could have just shut up shop straight away. It’s sad, but then again 57 Years is a pretty good run for a model name. I said that I would never buy another Ford again after this announcement, but like most Falcon tragics, if the last one is a good looking piece of kit, I probably won’t be able to resist 🙂
PS: For your viewing pleasure here are Grace Electronics two work utes, good thing they are Built Ford Tough, as of yesterday they have to last about another 30 years. Naturally road tests are available to Accredited CC Staff should any of them happen to be in this neck of the woods 🙂
maybe you can answer something that has been bugging me – why are there no rear headrests on the BA-BF wagon?
I don’t know, we had one, not real good if you a tall passenger sitting in the back and it gets hit from behind 🙁
What a fantastic offer Anthony, any chance you’re near the Melbourne metro area? I’ll be relocating back to the US in a few months and any opportunity to sample this local hero again wouldn’t go amiss. Unfortunately those palm trees look more like QLD…
If your daily drive is a tram, the ute is going to feel like a Saturn V.
Lol 🙂
Haha 1) More like the daily ‘ride’, and 2) yeah it sure would. Ran the numbers on running a car here a few years back and it didn’t add up, so tram it is. Could run a CC on those too right?
Your observation of the local Flora is quite accurate, Gold Coast to be precise 🙂
Something told me that was a Melbourne tram. Whereabouts are you?
Based opposite Melbourne Uni (wife’s studies), working in South Melbourne. Leaving soon though, Stateside for both of us. It’s been a privilege to live here the last few years.
You’re close to where I study. I live in a suburb 15 min from the CBD (on car)
Agreed, it’s a great place to live.
The mighty family steed
Fords desicion to quit Australia has simply made me quit Ford…..I’ll keep my bf, and I’ll restore my XT. I can’t see myself buying some imported 3 litre piece of crap made overseas. It’s a real shame they can’t make a quid out of making cars here, but I suspect they never really wanted too. Cheap labour = bad quality. Ya get what ya pay for.