EF AND EL FALCON: XRs exhilarate but EL GT truly excites
It's a measure of how rapid automotive development was in the years from 1988 to 1998 that the final expression of the theme inaugurated with the EA Falcon, the EL, seemed so dated by the end of this period.
Some will say that rapid ageing phenomenon was down to the VT Commodore, which arrived to an enthusiastic audience – media and customers alike – in August 1997. But it was also partly that the purity of the original EA styling had been compromised through pretty ordinary facelifts, which makes the decision to leave the exterior pretty much alone for the 1991 EB look very wise in hindsight.
Furthermore, Ford Australia was playing plenty of catch-up through that decade. The EA came to market with a three-speed auto in a world expecting an extra ratio. And while the premium 3.9- litre Multi-Point six-cylinder engine gave good performance with reasonable economy (when a five-speed manual gearbox was specified), the lesser engines were ordinary. There was no suggestion of an independent rear suspension throughout these years. And the driving position placed most drivers too high in the car with the wheel too low even at the extreme of its small range of vertical adjustment.
The EF Falcon – at least as it was launched in August 1994 – represented a case of one step forward and one - sometimes literally - sideways. Unfortunately, its design priorities were compromised. The EF drove like a car that had been engineered by a committee, and that was pretty much the case.
Here's the story. At the national media launch, I was not alone in observing the unsettled feel of the non-XR variants through corners. The turn-in was almost too crisp with the rear end of the car feeling as if it wanted to drift. This was a phenomenon called rear roll-steer or roll-oversteer, seen in early Commodores – the VK in particular – but in the Falcon’s case without the benefit of a real driver's feel: the EF felt tippy-toed, nervous.
It transpired that the engineers in pursuit of reduced Noise, Vibration and Harshness levels (NVH, a term in common usage since being coined by British Ford engineers during the development of the original Ford Cortina) won an implicit contest with colleagues chasing the best possible dynamics.
As launched the EF was a worse handling car than the 1988 EA, itself no star. In the wrong hands on, say, a slippery road with unfavourable camber, the 1994 Falcon was eager to swap ends. While the EF made the short list for Wheels' 1994 Car Of The Year award, the report card noted:
The Falcon shouldn't have such nervous feeling handling (the XR6 lacks the roll-oversteer characteristics the standard range exhibits).
Fourteen months after the EF's launch came the EFII. Extensive changes were made to the suspension, especially the front end. Steering feel was enhanced, while a heavier duty sway bar tied the car down. The nervousness was reduced but, as Bob Hall noted in the November 1995 edition of Wheels:
We're not implying that enthusiasts will be ditching their M3s in droves to get behind the wheel of a Falcon, but the car has much more to offer the keen driver.
Hall concluded that the EFII in entry level GLi guise:
would be a worthy rival to the Commodore Exec at the same price. But with an undercut of more than $1500, it is decidedly the more enticing package - that is, until the VT is launched. This could get REALLY interesting.
And it did. But before we consider the impact of the 1997 Commodore on sales of a Falcon that had been around in pretty much the same form since the Bicentenary celebrations, let's look at the upgrades made during that time.
The EB got - for the first time since 1983 - an optional V8. Equipment upgrades meant an EB Fairmont was level pegging with the EA Fairmont Ghia. The S-XR8 joined the lineup. The Fairmont Ghia was reconfigured as a luxury sports sedan with fabulous BBS alloys and lowered, stiffened suspension.
Next came the EB Evolution in April 1992 with many improvements, most notably a larger 4.0-litre edition of the venerable six and optional (at $990) ABS brakes (standard on S-XR8 and Fairmont Ghia). The front belts got lockers. And the turret was strengthened to the point where it could withstand a three-tonne load.
Six months later came Smartlock, perhaps the world's most advanced vehicle immobilisation system at the time. The South Australian police used experienced car thieves in an attempt to outsmart Smartlock. They gave up after four days.
In those days, Falcons easily outsold Commodores. Year-to-year June 1992 to 1993, the margin was 4190 units.
In August 1993 came the ED. It got what I reckon was a less elegant grille. Body-colour door handles were a bonus. Polynesian Green was new and would prove the most popular ED colour. And the XR range acquired far more visual differentiation from other Falcons with quad round headlights.
Now we come to the EF. This time around the radiator grille was changed again - in the radical sense that it had gone from the lower line cars. The Fairmont and Fairmont Ghia got their own dressed-up frontal treatment with unique bonnet and grille, while XRs got a truly distinctive nosecone. As alluded to above, the pursuit of superior NVH was a priority on EF.
Until the ED, XRs had been officially S-XR8 (from EB) and S-XR6. The latter started out as a Tickford special with more extensive modifications from standard than its V8 sibling. The late Howard Marsden was the product planner and he described the new six-cylinder car as ‘Family Sports’. From 1993 these variants were called simply XR6 and XR8.
Unquestionably, it was the most significant facelift to a Falcon – as opposed, of course, to an all-new look – since the advent of the XK in September 1960. Except for the doors, all exterior panels were new.
The stylists were ahead of their time because the general car-buying public evidently held the view that the grille was a car’s ‘face’; product clinics were negative on the frontal treatment of the lower grade variants. And so the EL got one again, even though it was purely decorative with no cooling effect because a plastic panel intervened between grille and radiator!
The single overhead camshaft in-line sixpack with its multi-point electronic injection remained the entry level engine on the EF but it was significantly upgraded. Maximum power was up from 148 kW (139 in EA days) to 157, while the XR6 jumped to 164, just one kW shy of the output of the 5.0-litre Windsor V8. Hydraulic engine mounts and a new crankshaft with 12 counterweights were big news.
Distributorless ignition, revised camshaft profile and a higher compression ratio were salient advances. Twin cooling fans and an acoustically tuned air intake system were significant factors in the NVH drive.
There was even an EF XR wagon, but this was a marketing niche in which the market itself showed scant interest.
Finally, the handbrake had made its way down to the floor where it always should have been.
Naturally, the Fairlane and LTD benefited from all these improvements, and plenty more. They made their debut on 6 March 1995. Ford Australia’s stylists had given their flagships the most extensive workover since the release of the NA Fairlane and DA LTD in 1988, both of which were somewhat underdone on luxury specification. But these models exuded prestige from the beautifully chromed grille, polycarbonate lens slimline headlights and oval cornering lamps set into the lower bumper through to the longer boot, jewel-effect taillights and dual chrome exhaust outlets. A new attention to detail and Ford’s favourite ‘surprise and delight’ factor were evident everywhere you looked. A driver’s airbag was standard on all Falcons from 1994 and, of course, these long-wheelbase cars. Genuine Australian blackwood trim graced the fascia above the glovebox and the door tops.
As for the LTD, for the first time since the 1973 Aussie original, there was no sense whatsoever of skimping on luxury to bring the car to market at the right price. With standard leather – and the availability of a lovely new Cappuccino colour, my favourite – and 5.0-litre V8 engine, the 1995 LTD deserved more attention than it ever received from private buyers.
The NL Fairlane and DL LTD introduced further refinements but sales continued to slow. The EL Falcon/Fairmont range arrived late in 1996, by which time news of the forthcoming VT Commodore was the oxymoronic open secret. Again, continuing refinement was the theme. This time around, there was a belated tacit acknowledgement that even the extensive revisions to the suspension made for EFII, the Falcon’s handling issues had not been entirely solved.
A senior engineer, John Mole, who had done lots of work with Tickford, was called in to make the necessary changes. He used the XR6 rear suspension geometry, while making more adjustments to the front and to the steering valving. Mole identified the problem some of us had noticed on the EF media launch, namely that the front and rear suspension and the steering feel were out of synch with each other.
What I’ve done with those is tuned some parts of them so that each fits the other. The end result is the car goes straight without you having to concentrate to keep it straight. It’ll turn into a corner with one sweep of the steering wheel without you having to go in and back off. Rear end grip was improved by lowering the Watts Link pivot point 20 mm, which lowered the roll centre.
And so it was when Tickford Vehicle Engineering (TVE), Ford Australia’s joint venture partner in performance cars, developed the 30th Anniversary Falcon GT, they had a pretty good basis to start from. In some respects this GT – a much more impressive effort than the arguably more attractive 25th Anniversary EB GT, which failed to deliver its promised 200 kW of power – was an EL XR8 taken to the max.
The EL GT was the first Australian Ford to boast factory fitted tuned extractors. This four-into-one system gave 50 per cent less back pressure than the standard 5.0-litre V8’s exhaust. Half of the 272 EL GTs were automatics and the manuals used the same gearbox as the XR8. The clutch was the same 10.5-inch single-plate heavy-duty Valeo unit used in the hottest 1993 Mustang. Its Australian debut was in the XR8 Sprint. The clutch was durability tested by performing about 500 burnouts at peak torque rpm.
Unlike most Falcons of the time, this one wasn’t electronically limited to 205 km/h due to concerns about tailshaft vibration and noise. So the EL GT got the same 3.25-inch aluminium shaft as the EB GT, XR8 and police pursuit cars but wrapped in 3.0-inch carbon-fibre. The differential was BTR’s Hydratrak. But it was improved over the version used in HSVs. BTR gave its unit finer tolerances and a higher viscosity fluid to increase the transfer factor by 20 per cent to feed more power to the loaded wheel. Maximum torque transfer was about 200 Nm. This was the Hydratrak HR4, a highly impressive Australian differential.
Perhaps it’s easy to dismiss the EL GT for its in-your-face looks, what designer Steve Park spoke of at the time as the need for the car to draw your attention at 50 metres. But the engineering work was exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting. Take the brakes. TVE and PBR spent 27 months designing, tooling and testing the brakes at a cost of $180,000.
Small wonder, then, that the EL XR8 was more than a little overshadowed. I owned one of these cars brand new and soon after buying it I took it to an aftermarket tuner to extract more power via extractors, a cold airbox and suchlike. Some months later, TVE itself took a similar approach, producing a 185 kW edition of the XR8.
In summary, it’s easy to see why the beautiful new VT Commodore quickly established itself as the market leader over the ageing EL. For once, Holden’s marketing people had outsmarted their rivals. The SS Commodore came with 17-inch wheels as standard, for example (actually at the insistence of chief engineer Tony Hyde) but the best Ford could do was make the previously optional 16-inchers standard on all XRs from shortly after the debut of the new Holden. Nevertheless, the EL was a fine car, particularly in XR form. As for the EL GT, it was magnificent. I was in a minority of one on the judging panel for MOTOR magazine’s 1997 Performance Car of the Year, voting for the GT ahead of the winning Porsche Boxster. Reckon I still would.
