Ford Falcon FG EcoLPI 2011 Review

Ford Falcon FG XT, G6 and G6E EcoLPI

Australia's first dedicated liquid-injected LPG family sedan has the potential to save the Falcon from irrelevance.

But first, before dissecting the sophisticated new fuel delivery system, a little about the car itself. The FG Falcon is a little like a romantic partner you've dumped in the past. Reacquaintance with Ford's large sedan revives a flood of good and bad memories. Firstly there's the seating position, which can seem strange after stepping out of a Volkswagen Golf 6 this reviewer was driving at the time.

With the seat at its lowest setting the driver's legs feel thrust out almost horizontally. In contrast with the Golf's driving position, the Falcon's seat seems so close to the floor. Jacking up the seat reduces that perception, but combining that with setting the backrest closer to upright leaves a partly obscured view of the instruments, courtesy of the steering wheel rim. There's inadequate rake adjustment in the steering column to reach an optimal position. As observed in the past also, the seat cushion in the base is very soft and almost feels like a couple of springs have broken. In mitigation, these are all traits that a new Falcon buyer would reconcile within a week.

Get out on the road and some of the good memories start driving out the bad. The Falcon feels lithe and communicative; roadholding is secure and the handling is lively, with the responsive steering nicely weighted and providing plenty of feedback. If there's one vice, it's the steering rack's propensity to rattle when the car is being pushed harder through tight corners. It's something we observed in pre-production FG Falcons during the car's 2008 launch and it might be improved, but it's still there. On country roads the Falcon is impressively quiet and tyre noise is far and away better than some imported cars we could mention (that same Golf 6 among them).

For the program we drove the XT, the G6 and the G6E; all powered by the same EcoLPI engine. It was to be expected that the major difference between the three vehicles was the degree of NVH. None of the three truly disappointed; even the basic Falcon XT was muted and refined on the road, but the G6 and G6E were quieter still. It was the interior presentation and fixtures where the XT didn't meet the mark. Plastics were about on par for a rep's fleet hack and you won't get a fully lined boot either. The G6 was better inside (although still with bare metal inside the boot lid), but the G6E was the top pick, for obvious reasons. All three cars felt properly bolted together.

None of this is new, of course. The Falcon has been a nicely fettled beast from its launch three years ago (notwithstanding the points raised above), but in one specific respect it brings something new to the party -- the EcoLPI version of the inline six. And it's this engine that just might make the EcoBoost four-cylinder redundant before it even arrives.

Step out of a petrol Falcon and into one powered by the new LPI engine and you'll be hard-pressed to register any significant difference between the way the two cars drive. There are no tell-tales in respect of NVH or time spent cranking the LPI engine before it fires. If you have an exceptionally fine-tuned body clock, you might pick the LPI variant's stronger acceleration. It's hard not to like the new engine; it offers everything good about the petrol six, but it's cheaper to run and performs better. Ford has matched it properly to the ZF six-speed transmission, making a compelling case for the whole drivetrain.

One matter that will leave prospective buyers scratching heads is Ford's three-option strategy for flat tyres. Because LPG cylinders don't allow the design flexibility that modern petrol tanks do, there's less room in the boot of the EcoLPI cars. Ford offers buyers three options: A full-size spare that sits on the boot floor, a spacesaver also mounted on the floor of the boot, or a tyre-repair kit located out of the way near the offside rear wheel arch.

A lot of buyers prefer full-size spares for obvious reasons and if you could be certain you would never carry more groceries than enough to last you and your partner for a week, the full-size spare might suit. The spacesaver, in the opinion of this writer, is less than satisfactory. It doesn't provide any of the advantages of the full-size spare and doesn't free up much more boot space. If you're buying a large car, you want a large boot to go with it, presumably. That makes the tyre-repair kit the best alternative, everything else being equal. Rural drivers are likely to feel different, understandably.

As part of the drive program, Ford set up two outwardly identical XR6 Falcons for a drag at the Broadford racing circuit north of Melbourne. For the first run, the writer drove the anonymous LPI version (car #2) and found it to be substantially faster than the petrol variant. Forget about launching the car, since the ability of individual drivers and a slightly wet track could result in different outcomes, but the LPI Falcon would progressively haul away from the petrol car on the move. It was a fairly clear demonstration of the LPI Falcon's capacity to embarrass its petrol counterpart.

Sitting in the cabin there was little sense of separation between the two cars (LPI and petrol), although the LPI car's added torque below 2000rpm seemed to be the element that conferred that car's performance advantage at launch and lower speeds. Drivers could simply roll onto the throttle, feed in the torque and avoid loss of traction.

We only had one run in each car and there was little time to learn the intricacies of exploiting each car's performance, but the results were plain enough. According to Ford's PR team, the LPI version won every time out of the 14 races, which is no mean feat given the potential for variation among the drivers.

Out on the road, while overtaking, the LPI Falcon delivered the sort of power and torque that would have been the preserve of Windsor V8s in the days of the AU Series Fords -- about 10 years ago. There's effortless acceleration on part throttle, but pushing the pedal all the way to the floor really delivers in a linear way, right across the rev range. It's unrelentingly strong from zero revs through the mid-range into the peaky area around the redline. At least part of that must be due to the FG engine's split-plenum inlet manifold and the transmission's six forward ratios for optimum performance. Words like 'forceful' and 'dramatic' trickled into the driver's mind as the Falcon jetted past slower cars.

Out on the road, the fuel consumption figures from the Falcons' own trip computers suggest that the sort of flogging they were receiving wasn't helping fuel economy, naturally. Ford claims that the combined-cycle figure for the EcoLPI models is 12.6L/100km -- or 12.5L/100km for the Falcon XT -- but we were struggling to see better than 13.2L/100km in even the best case. The Falcon G6E we drove last of all was hovering up around 18.5L/100km (and that figure was already registered before the motoring.com.au correspondents drove it!).

Of course, those figures must be considered in the context of journalists enjoying 198kW of power under foot. If you're not a boy racer type, be assured you'll achieve better figures, but the point about the EcoLPI Falcon that's worth remembering is this: It is a car to suit boy racers!

Some people buy 'economy' cars to save money, some buy them to save the environment. Here's a car that will save time down the quarter mile -- while you're doing your bit for the environment!