The best Ford Falcon

It must be more than 25 years ago that some radio wag quipped: "If Falcon is the answer, it must have been a stupid question." But, it must be said, although the cars have not been stupid for many years, some of the advertising has been.

'The best Falcon ever' was a catchline used in more recent memory. Well, there's a surprise, the latest model is an improvement on its predecessor! Der! Please don't think the customer is stupid.

On this logic, the best Falcon must be the current one and, of course, it is. The question as to which is the best of all time can only be sensibly argued by pitting the various contenders against their contemporaries and against market expectations at the time. Call this the weighting of history.

Let's compile a short list of ones it 'ain't' going to be... Certainly not the original XK, which tended to ruin its front end without leaving suburbia. Looks weren't everything and Holden's gawky FB was a much better family sedan.

The XD was a great looker, too, that was disappointing when you unwrapped the packaging. It was no match for the first (VB, November 1978) Commodore, flawed as the Holden was, too. The XE was a big improvement over the XD, although not enough to qualify it for consideration as the best ever. Another low point was the XF which offered perhaps the smallest generation-to-generation gains in 50 years of Falcon history.

As for the AU, we'd probably get bomb threats if we nominated it.

Now for the standouts...

The XP got off to a famous start with the 70,000 miles in seven days durability run at Ford Australia's You Yangs Proving Ground. The Falcon was, after almost five years, the car it should have been in the first place, tough enough to handle Australian conditions and worthy of serious comparison with its HD Holden rival. Indeed, the Ford was better. And you could get a drop dead gorgeous Hardtop variant.

The XR was a superb looking car in 1966 which was classier than previous Falcons and had far more interior space. Plus it sired the GT. The XY cannot be mentioned without the words 'Phase III' coming to mind and that is the obvious best Falcon variant ever, but we are looking at the total picture for each model.

The XA, XB and XC models were all good and the 1972 car was far superior to an HQ Holden from the driver's perspective. The EA was case of unfulfilled promise because it was rushed into production to meet what was seen as a marketing imperative.

Of the EB, ED, EF and EL, the EB stands out as being a nicely balanced machine. We have heard taxi drivers nominate the EB II (officially the EB Evolution, but punters liked Series II!) as the best cab they have ever owned! But didn't the EL look old when it was new, some eight and a half years after the advent of EA?

The BA (codenamed 'Barra' in development) was a huge drive forward over the unlamented AU and the BF refined that formula. As for the current FG Falcon, it goes into the final five.

So we come down to XR, XY, XA, BA and FG.

The XY, refined as it was, still owed too much to the XR to take the prize from it. In February 1972 the XA was clearly the best of the Big Three, but as a car it was not dramatically better than the much loved XY.

The FG does not build sufficiently on the strengths of the BA -- which is officially our pick for best Falcon ever when the award is weighted by history.

In 2003 there were few sedans available for less than $100K to equal the excellence of the BA Falcon XR6 Turbo.

This generation was the car that Geoff Polites created after an exhaustive program of self-analysis within Ford Australia. But so much damage had been done to the Falcon brand by then that it never looked likely to regain market leadership for the Blue Oval.

How different things might have been...

Ed: author John Wright reckons his top five individual Falcon variants are:
(1) XY GTHO
(2) XP Futura Hardtop
(3) XT GT
(4) FG G6E Turbo
(5) XA GT Hardtop