Wheels Magazine: 56 years of Falcon - Online articles

[Ford17]

34 Wheels Falcon articles are currently online:

https://www.wheelsmag.com.au/features/ford-falcon/

[FNQracing]

Been having a good read of these articles as they are released. A walk down memory lane. Huge shame about the poor quality pictures that accompany the articles and the sometimes dodgy OCR scanning. Obviously scanned docs of original magazine prints. Sure theyt have access to the original text?

Would expect more from Wheels, but they are a shadow of their former selves after all. At least they are making them available.

[Joel.]

Thankyou for sharing this. Really interesting reads. Particularly the XF SVO article.

[EDManual]

I am still amazed how slow all these 351's etc are! Ie XE ESP 351s doing 16 second quarters...

Best article is the review on the p3HO! And I really enjoyed this bit:
CARS

AS WE WALKED through the car park to leave the You Yangs proving ground after the TC Cortina press release (full test next month), I happened to ask Don Deveson, now manager of Ford's Broadmeadows plant, what was in his new Falcon. Was it just a Phase Three HO?

"Nup," he grinned, opening the door. "Phase Three plus. She put out 232 bhp at the rear wheels on the dyno yesterday."

Luckily, Mr Deveson's arm is twistable, and he agrees to run a Melbourne journalist and I several laps around the You Yangs high-speed bowl.

Trundling down the bowl's approach road at 30 mph in first (because the 11 to one compression engine doesn't like being under 40 in second or third) Deveson turns down the eight-track stereo to tell us about his latest toy - it's running a Cobra Jet cam, manifold and 850 cfm carbie, a 2.92 diff instead of the normal Phase Three's 3.2 and big, big Kleber radials. Six QI spotlights hide the grille, inside an air condjtioner complements the stereo and at the back there's a tow bar to pull his boat at weekends.

After two warm-up laps run at a quiet 75 mph in third, Don's left hand drops to the gearstick and he pulls it back into second slot. The nose lifts and the howl is unbelievably magnificent as the 351 flies to 80 mph in second with plenty in reserve. Into third, and we go around the banking once more in this gear - but this time the tach is reading 6500 rpm and the speedo (which is dead accurate) is saying 130. Yet the car is far from flat - having the air conditioner means fan belts won't stay on above 6500 rpm, although the motor is designed to run at 7000 rpm for Bathurst.

At last it's in top, and equally as Deveson's foot eases down on the throttle, the speedo needle climbs. At 140 it runs out of graduations on the standard GT dial; and when it nestles where 145 should be, Don levels off momentarily. The clinical, totally controlled conditions of the track, the car's incredibly tight feel on the road and Deveson's smooth driving make it seem like it's all happening in slow motion, so all you can do is listen awe-struck to the exhaust note rising and watch the speedo needle climbing again with incredible speed. Finally the tach stops at 6500 rpm and we are doing precisely 160 mph.

On the deceleration lap, Dev drops back to second and runs the engine to 7000 rpm - just once, to show us how effortless it is, V8 and all. And leaving the track we all smile as we see the three attendants who have been standing stock still for 10 minutes just listening to the boom echoing from the speed loop walls. We don't know it then, but two miles away 50 Cortina press release people have streamed from their luncheon tent to listen, too, and wonder.

But nothing they say will sum up this incredible sedan like the comment of the journo from Melbourne, who said when Deveson first started the engine: "Could you turn the stereo down, please? I can't hear the exhaust."