The Elegant Australian Falcon and the Even Better EB
Almost 40 years after the introduction of the Holden 48-215, Ford Australia launched its EA Falcon, undoubtedly one of the most important new Australian cars since that original ‘Humpy’. Fascinating at the time, the EA is perhaps even more interesting when placed in the broader context of Australian automotive history. The EA Falcon was even more Australian than the 48-215 with every element of its design developed locally. Not only that, it was regarded within the Ford world as the corporation’s best looking car.
Australian, yes, but absolutely no local yokel was this Falcon, codenamed EA26: here was the Elegant Australian. When it was shown to a focus group in Dusseldorf, Germany, in September 1984, the Ford Australia designers knew they had a winner on their hands. The left-hand drive clay model was in company with a Mercedes-Benz 190, BMW 5-Series, Renault 25 and Audi 100. Not only was the Falcon the easy winner, but many participants believed it was the successor to the Audi 100, the star of the 1982 Paris Salon which went on to change the shape of the car: all rivals were wedged!
The EA certainly changed the shape of the Falcon. Indeed, Ford Australia executives cheerfully admitted that the Audi provided their starting point. In the early days of the program, it could be said that here was Ford’s interpretation of the Audi 100. What was so revolutionary about that 1982 car was its low coefficient of drag. This had not really been a competitive area of automotive design until then; while advertisements boasted of cars being sleek and streamlined, actual numbers were mostly omitted. Audi’s claimed figure was 0.30, but the production reality – with wheelcaps, mirrors and the other necessary ingredients – was closer to 0.32. Typical 1981 cars were mostly around the 0.45 mark.
Sometime in the mid-1980s I remember questioning senior Ford Australia engineer, Ian Vaughan, who was later charged with the AU and BA programs, fairly aggressively about the CD figure for the then current XF Falcon. Vaughan refused to be drawn but did not dismiss my suggestion of 0.48 – it may have been closer to 0.52. By that stage, of course, the design of the EA was all but finished. It was extensively wind tunnel tested and its number was in the 0.34 – 0.36 range, depending on variant.
They must indeed have been testing days at Ford Australia. I was in the office of the head of PR in May 1985. Of course he flatly denied that the car shown on the cover of the June edition of Wheels magazine was the new Falcon and it was still the better part of three years short of launch. (Imagine all the Ford Oz execs horror at the scoop!) That meant the dreadfully dated XF had nearly three years left in new car showrooms.
The Ford Oz marketing suits had taken a radical approach to launching the 1979 XD. As the old XC struggled for sales against the brand new Commodore in the dying months of 1978 and the early months of 1979, advertisements claimed ‘We’ve got your new car on ice’ and slowly the final shape of the XD emerged from a thawing giant ice block. But when it came to the EA, a higher level of secrecy needed to be maintained. That’s because the EA would render the XF utterly out of date. Who would have purchased an XF if the final shape of the EA was public knowledge?
There were some negatives, too. The car’s official launch in February 1988 was preceded by months of extensive interaction between Ford Australia executives and the motoring media. In mid-1987 a large group of us was invited to a special conference in Campbellfield for a sneak preview of the EA Falcon. This was a sneak preview with the big difference that the star of the show was not a car but a man, no lesser luminary than Sir Jackie Stewart.
For many years Stewart had been retained by Ford internationally as a consultant. His job that day was essentially to hose down media expectations about the new Falcon, still nine months from launch. If we all hoped for too much, then any shortcomings revealed in the new car would lead to negative press.
It was already well rumoured that the next Falcon would not have independent rear suspension or a four-speed automatic transmission. The latter was the bigger worry, since the rival Commodore had used one since the introduction of the VL in March 1986. Stewart’s job was to report his driving impressions to the assembled press. While admitting that a four-speed transmission was to be preferred, he insisted that the three-speed unit combined well with the new engine’s generous torque so that the extra ratio would not really be missed.
There was an element of the ‘we’ve got your new car on ice’ approach used for XD, except that this advertising campaign was to be waged through the journalists – to a person awed by the world’s fastest Scotsman – rather than on billboards; advertising agencies were not involved. It must also have been one of the first times in automotive history than an as yet unreleased car was praised in terms of its engineering conservatism while also being lauded for its advances.
Ford Australia’s relationship with the media had featured many ups and downs, but was generally productive. Key executives from managing director Sir Brian Inglis down had been disappointed when the XD was not given the Wheels Car of the Year Award (and the cover featured a lemon on wheels). But to show there were no sour lemons involved on its part, Ford Australia produced a colour magazine advertisement showing several lemons on wheels, each one bearing the name of a car that had failed to win the award as best car of 1979; The XD Falcon was in some excellent company!
So, no four-speed automatic transmission or independent rear suspension for the EA Falcon, but we knew that Sir Jackie believed the next Falcon to be world-class. When the big day finally arrived, we all had a pretty good idea what to expect. Nevertheless, not all of the journalists were universally positive about the new Falcon. My own view was – and remains – that there was an enormous difference between the worst and the best of the EA variants.
The base model 3.2-litre GL equipped with the three-speed automatic transmission was nothing like the car that a five-speed manual 3.9-litre Multipoint S was. Consider: the 3.2 made just 90kW compared with the premium engine’s 139. The mainstream engine was a 3.9 with throttle-body injection and 120kW. I actually bought a Falcon S Multipoint manual in Silver Slate. On its standard seven-inch Snowflake alloys and 15mm-lowered (and stiffened by 18 per cent) suspension, the EA handled reasonably and had a plush ride. Road tests showed a standing 400m time of 15.6 and I had personally achieved a true top speed of 216km/h on the You-Yangs speed loop in a similar car at the national launch. Short of a GT, I could probably never previously have been happy with any new Falcon.
But how ordinary was that much-discussed three-speed automatic transmission? Top gear yielded just 42.2 km/h per 1000 rpm, limiting top speed to about 170. But more relevant than this figure were fuel economy and noise level at cruising speed: the EA automatic was noisy and thirsty.
In its attempts to keep the Falcon popular against the more advanced – albeit less roomy – VL Commodore, Ford Oz had made power steering and four-wheel disc brakes standard on the XF. But the EA got a much more advanced variable ratio, speed sensitive (Arthur) Bishop rack and pinion system (a-la Commodore), which did more than anything else to make the EA feel like a quantum leap ahead of its predecessor. There were just 3.25 turns lock to lock on a dramatically reduced turning circle. For the first time since the demise of the GT, the Falcon earned the title of driver’s car again, at least in Multipoint five-speed S guise.
An all-new front suspension and geometry, similar to that used in the S-Class Mercedes of the time and referred to by Ford Australia engineers as the SLALS (short and long arm, long spindle), was developed for the EA. This was a far more durable system than the Commodore’s MacPherson strut configuration, especially when the going got rough.
The driving position was excellent with a high, wide view (the bonnet invisible to all but the tallest drivers) and a steering column that could be adjusted for rake as well as reach. Here was another first for a locally manufactured car, developed by Ford engineers in conjunction with Tubemakers of Australia.
I mentioned the drag coefficient of 0.34 – 0.36 earlier. One of the common downsides of aerodynamic efficiency is a greater susceptibility to crosswinds. The Ford Sierra had just been released while the EA was driving in and out of the wind tunnel. The press was critical of the Sierra’s waywardness in windy conditions. Ingeniously, the engineers developed a simple ‘strake’ for the EA. This was a long piece of plastic raised some 20mm proud of the body and running down the C-pillar. It broke up the airflow, moving the centre of pressure away from the rear of the car. (The VN Commodore did not have this feature and was noticeably less stable at high cruising speeds than the EA.)
When I took delivery of my own EA from Ford Australia (it was an ex-press test car), I drove it (express) from Campbellfield to the Central Coast of New South Wales. Unlike every previous Falcon I had driven, it had barely any wind noise at 110km/h and it averaged almost an old-fashioned magic 30 miles per gallon. It used less fuel than the original XK three-speed XD, and could exceed that car’s 140km/h top speed with two ratios left! In summary, the EA Falcon was superior in almost every important way to the XF – faster, smoother, quieter, more comfortable, better riding, with more steering feel, more elegant. It certainly seemed to be the right car for the time.
There were four variants of the sedan: GL, S, Fairmont and Fairmont Ghia. The S added assorted minor convenience items such as remote boot and fuel release, driver’s seat height adjustment to the GL specification but the most important upgrades were the 3.9 engine (in 120kW throttle-body injection form, known confusingly as ‘EFI’), sports suspension, full instrumentation and Snowflake alloys, 1.5 inches wider and up an inch in diameter over the GL’s 14 X 5.5 steel rims. The Fairmont got the same engine, six-inch alloys, plusher trim and air-conditioning. The Ghia came with the Multipoint engine and a swathe of standard features including central locking, trip computer, self-levelling rear suspension 15 X 6.5 alloys and automatic climate control.
The EA wagons, like the outgoing XFs, were built on the same longer wheelbase as the Fairlane/LTD and used semi-elliptic rear springs. The choice was between GL, Fairmont and Fairmont Ghia spec. No manual transmission was offered. But the fuel tank – in pressed steel rather than the plastic used for the sedans’ tank – was up by four litres to 72.
So it was a great start, but problems soon came to light. The EA Falcon was sent to market several months before it was properly sorted. Front suspension and overheating issues blighted its reputation early in the piece. Some old stalwarts of Ford Australia must have shuddered with XK memories!
By late 1988 these glitches had been remedied and quality was palpably better but, by then, the VN Commodore had been released. The VN gave Holden the sales leadership it hadn’t seen in more than half a decade.
October 1989 saw the arrival of the long-awaited four-speed automatic transmission. But all the EA Series II gains in suspension calibration, vehicle security and equipment paled in comparison with that BT-R gearbox. Known officially as the 85-LE, it was Australia’s first electronically controlled auto, the equal of any in the world, regardless of price. BT-R, located just outside Albury, had formerly been known as Borg-Warner.
Lower intermediate gears enabled the Multipoint engine to propel an automatic Falcon from zero to 100km/h half a second quicker than the earlier model. A higher top gear provided markedly better economy and lower noise levels. And where the three-speeder simply ran out of revs in top gear, the new one didn’t.
Series II EAs also benefitted from heavy duty front dampers and superior rear suspension lower trailing arm bushes. The policy of introducing running changes was well in place by this time. Among the revisions had already been stiffer stabiliser bar bushes, shorter bump stops, thicker front stabiliser bars, increased front spring rates and lower front ride height.
As if to drive home the message that the Ford engineers were always working to improve the Falcon, the 30th Anniversary models announced on 12 October 1990, featured further upgrades. The most significant of these were the fitment of the renowned Tibbe lock systems to front doors, bootlid/tailgate and steering column lock on all models. These locks provided the highest level of security achievable in mechanical locking systems. No longer could you lock your keys in a Falcon, while the advantages in improved security (not just from the Tibbe factor but also because the locking buttons now retracted to be flush with the door sills), smoothness and ease of operation were dramatic. And the GL got central locking as standard.
There were equipment upgrades throughout the range to mark 30 years of the Falcon, notably alloys on the Fairmont and grippy Pirellis on the S. Falcon in flight badges – silver on GL, Fairmont and Fairmont Ghia, red on S – graced the front guards.
The EB, introduced in July 1991, was one of the most minor facelifts in Falcon history. One of the more obvious changes was the relocation of the Blue Oval badge from the bonnet to the centre of the grille. But beneath the surface the car was much improved. Uprated springs, gas dampers, negative camber and increased castor geometry were key suspension changes to sharpen the Falcon’s responses.
Bigger news was the reintroduction of a V8 engine option, this unit being the Windsor 5.0-litre, fuel-injected and developing 165kW at 4500rpm and 388Nm at 3000. Interestingly, this engine was 90kg lighter than the locally manufactured 4.9- and 5.8-litre V8 available on Falcons from 1972 to late 1982.
Model for model, the specification was improved with the Fairmont gaining most. Effectively, it was equipped to the level of the previous Fairmont Ghia. The S was much more Sporting. Front spring rates were 39 per cent stiffer with the rear going up 25 per cent. Better side bolstering and see-through head restraints were also welcome.
Combining the sporting credentials of the S and the V8 was the new S-XR8 with limited slip differential and air-conditioning. This theme was also found in the reinterpretation of the Fairmont Ghia, which got S suspension and beautiful BBS alloys with up-spec Michelin rubber.
It was if the petrolheads within Ford Australia had finally been given a say again, for the first time really since the demise of the Falcon GT. The news kept improving with the EB Evolution – popularly known as the EB II – in April 1992. Anti-lock brakes (ABS) were fitted standard to the S-XR8 and Ghia and were an amazingly inexpensive $990 option on all other variants. A strengthened turret and ‘locker’ seat belts were other safety advances.
More was in store in 1992. Nicely in time for Christmas came two hot new models, the first being the top shelf 25th Anniversary GT with the (slightly misleading) promise of 200kW and an out-there bodykit. It was a strictly limited edition available in just three colours, with Cobalt Blue the hero choice. With its plush interior and extroverted bodykit, the new GT was aimed at those buyers who had dreamed of owning a Falcon GT in the Bathurst heyday but couldn’t afford one.
The real performance bargain and a car that was quicker around a racetrack than the GT was the Tickford-developed S-XR6. I lapped Phillip Island (wearing a sports jacket) in an automatic version in 2:06 at the press launch and later had the opportunity to race one (a manual!) in Group E (Series Production) at Calder Park. It was absolutely the best balanced Falcon I had ever driven.
A whole book could be written about the EA and EB Falcons but one more point needs to be made. The rapid rate at which the cars were improved – with special emphasis on performance, safety and quality – reflected the energy of Jac Nasser, who was appointed President of Ford Australia in 1990 and remained in the post until 1993. Later, he became the first person not a member of the Ford family to run the corporation. Cars like the 25th Anniversary GT and the S-XR6 had his fingerprints all over them.
Protect your Falcon. Call Shannons Insurance on 13 46 46 to get a quote today.
