End of Ford Falcon production in Geelong, Broadmeadows like losing a friend

WITH the last Ford Falcon set to roll off the assembly line at Broadmeadows, Jamie Duncan mourns the loss of a lifelong friend.

DECADES ago, Holden pinched a jingle from its American cousin Chevrolet and stamped its Australianness with a catchy tune about “football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars”.

But it will never have an Aussie automotive icon like the Ford Falcon.

Sure, Holden’s Kingswoods and Commodores are the stuff of motoring legend, but none had the staying power of the mighty Falcon.

Falcon is the oldest continuous automotive name in Australia, and the oldest passenger car name in the Ford world.

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No single model can challenge the Falcon’s status as the king of Australian roads.

More than 4.5 million Falcons and their derivatives — sedans, station wagons, utes, panel vans, coupes, the Territory SUV and the long wheelbase Fairlane and LTD among them — have been built through the combined efforts of the engine and panel stamping plant in Geelong and the assembly line in Broadmeadows since 1960.

The Ford Falcon XR6. Picture: Supplied

The 1962 Ford Falcon XL. Source: Supplied

No car can match the tough-as-nails Falcon’s continuous thread through our culture and society.

I doubt there is a single Australian who hasn’t ridden in a car from the Falcon family at least once.

They have done service as family buses, taxis, police cars, tradies’ utes and panel vans, surfie freedom machines, as fleet cars for sales reps and government workers, and on the nation’s farms and racing tracks.

Prime Ministers once rode in Fairlanes and LTDs.

The Falcon has a special place in pop culture, too. Mel Gibson’s vehicles to superstardom were the film Mad Max and a matte black two-door V8 Falcon police interceptor.

Like grandfather’s axe, the XK Falcon of 1960 and today’s FG-X Falcon have very little in common except that both have similar dimensions and a six-cylinder engine as a base.

As a car-mad kid from way back, the Falcon has also had a big impact on my life.

Where I grew up in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, the Australian car was king.

A new Falcon rolls out of the Geelong plant in the 1960s.

The 2 millionth Australian-built Falcon in 1989. Picture: Supplied

In a sea of locally made Holdens, Fords, Toyotas and Chryslers, my sales rep Dad had a series of anaemic Datsun station wagons as company cars while his passion for British cars guided the purchase of mum’s ‘52 Morris Minor and, later, a ‘75 Triumph 2500 TC.

But there were a few Fords in the family, and dad was no fan of Holdens.

I watched my first Bathurst 1000 car race on TV with him in 1975, aged 3, and have rarely missed one since.

For reasons I don’t fully understand but still make perfect sense to me, I was raised to detest Holdens and, in particular, Peter Brock.

Allan Moffatt and Dick Johnson were my racing heroes.

Really, I must have regarded him as a great driver in the wrong car, because he drove a Ford Sierra for a couple of years after famously splitting with Holden, and even hotted up some Falcon road cars, but then he went back to the old enemy.

Allan Moffatt and Dick Johnson were my real racing heroes, anyway.

My love affair with Falcons truly began when dad’s run of dismal Datsuns ended in 1983, when a drunk driver shot through a stop sign.

Allan Moffat at the wheel of the Ford Falcon GTHO in the early 1970s. Picture: Brier Thomas

Dad was all right. The drunk fell out of his mangled car unhurt and finally, mercifully, that miserable Bluebird died.

The next day, the old man begged his boss to shout him a Falcon to replace it, and soon we had an Atlantic Blue XE Falcon sedan in our driveway. Finally! Street cred was ours.

I adored that car, and the parade of Fairmonts that followed it.

I grew into Ford versus Holden tribalism as a teenager at school. The virtues of old models, all the racing action and every detail of every new model was debated.

It was almost a blood sport.

Dick Johnson in 1981.

I got a job at my local Ford dealer washing used cars. I have no mechanical skill, so it was a way I could work with Ford cars without harming someone else’s pride and joy.

That job lasted six years until I finished uni.

I bought my first two cars there — ’67 and ’69 Fairmonts. They were trade-ins, and the boss sold them to me at cost.

I spent countless days and nights cruising in those cars in my youth.

In the years since, Falcons have carried my newborn children home. I’ve criss-crosssed the country in them. I cheered with every Bathurst victory, few and far between as they have been in recent years.

I’ve dabbled with other makes, but I’ve kept coming back to roomy, reliable Falcons. I still drive one — a 2007 BF with factory LPG that’s easily the cheapest car to run I’ve ever owned.

The Falcon dies tomorrow, aged 56, when the last one rolls off the line at Broadmeadows, ending Ford Australia’s 91 years of local manufacturing.

As strange as it sounds, I feel like I’m losing a friend.