Ford Coupe Utility

wheels The 1953 2013 HOW could Australia’s only contribution to tacked-on, separate tray of earlier the world’s vocabulary of automotive styles utes, Bandt’s design clothed the cargo Greatest FORD not make this list? Young Lew Bandt was the compartment in a smooth continuation of the only designer employed by Ford Australia coupe’s bodywork. It looked good, the coupe- 6 in the early 1930s, when the company’s size passenger compartment was roomy, and COUPE management thought it might be worthwhile banks would loan farmers money to buy it. YEARS building something suggested in a letter The influence of Ford Australia’s 1934 1from the wife of a Gippsland0 farmer. Coupe Utility can be traced all the way to UTILITY The problem was that the car-based today’s Commodore Ute, but Bandt’s brilliance utes of the day were crude. Functional also reached across the Pacific Ocean. In Australian load carriers for sure, but cramped and the late 1950s first Ford, then Chevrolet, uncomfortable to ride in, and lacking launched long-running model lines that owed any hint of stylishness. The farmer’s wife a conceptual debt to the idea of the young yearned for something better. Australian. Americans probably imagine their Turning her dream into reality became Ranchero or El Camino is as American as a job for Bandt, then in his early 20s. His apple pie, but they’re the brainchildren of 0 solution was based on Ford’s sidevalve a bloke who undoubtedly preferred his Car – V8-powered 40A Coupe. Instead of the portable pastry filled with meat. Ever WORDS JOHN CAREY IT HAD TO BE BUILT HERE, IT HAD TO BE SEEN AS GREATW IEN ASKEDITS TI ME,WHEELS AND STSTAFF,ILL WORTH CURRENT THE AND TITLE FORMER, TODAY. TO VOTETHE IN RESULTS,A SECRETPREPARE RANKEDBALLOT, TO BE FROM SURPRAND THESE 10ISED TO ARE1. 70 www.wheelsmag.com.au FORD FALCON FG GreatNESS isn’t the same thing as great that also are the most outstanding. The sales. Ford’s FG Falcon is selling at a slower basic models have benefited most from rate than any other model in the nameplate’s changes, everything from the switch to half-century history in Australia. But it’s six-speed ZF automatic transmissions arguably a better car than any of the across the entire range with the 2010 Mk II three million or so Falcons, spanning six facelift to the introduction of better basic generations, produced before it. infotainment electronics. Soon after launch it became the first The 2012 introduction of the 2.0-litre, four- Australian-made car ever to earn a five- cylinder Ecoboost variant was what propelled star rating from the Australian New Car the FG Falcon into this elite company. Assessment Program. And since then Look around the world for cars which, like Ford Australia has steadily improved it, install four- and six-cylinder engines, as and expanded the FG line-up. well as V8s, and you’ll find Audi, BMW and The super-fast performance variants from Mercedes-Benz leading the list. The Ecoboost FPV, recently brought in-house by Ford Falcon proves that Ford Australia’s engineers Australia with a buy-out of former partner are as adept as any European at doing Prodrive’s share of the business, may get downsizing that works brilliantly. the most motoring-mag ink. Recording the It’s remarkable that Ford Australia has best 0-100km/h times ever seen from an managed, in hard times, to create such honest Australian-made model will do that. and admirable cars. Remarkable, too, that its 8 But it’s the most affordable versions of FG work is sneered at or ignored by so many. HOLDEN HQ AUSTRALIANS were to make the HQ the best-selling Holden of all time, buying close to half a million of them between 1971 and 1974. But that unrivalled sales tally of 485,650 isn’t the reason it’s here. This wasn’t a perfect Holden. Anyone who’d thumbed through the 1971 Car of the Year issue of Wheels would have known the HQ didn’t win because it was built for comfort, not for speed … nor corners, either, for that matter. ‘Jet-smooth ride’ was the advertising promise, and the slogan’s emphasis on ride comfort was no accident. The HQ featured Holden’s first all-coil spring suspension, but American managing director George Roberts had insisted it should ride like a Cadillac of the day. Sadly inevitable was that it would also handle like one. Still, the HQ does deserve inclusion among Australia’s greats. It was the first really all-new Holden since the 48-215, but unlike the first Holden, the HQ was engineered here. And the company made the most of the opportunity. As well9 as the Belmont, Kingswood and Premier sedan line-up, there was a wagon, a ute, a panel van, a coupe, a cab-chassis ute and a long-wheelbase luxury version. It was a massive effort, and highlighted the design and engineering ingenuity of the Australian industry. Holden’s engineers also endowed the HQ with a very tough monocoque body. It was a car that could take punishment, when most roads dished it out by the bucketful. The HQ also must be numbered among the best-looking cars Australia has produced. A Pontiac designer on loan from Detroit, John Schinella, styled the HQ, with plenty of help from young Australians in Holden’s studio. Its remarkably slim A-pillars and great forward vision are reminders that, in some ways at least, the past really was better. 72 www.wheelsmag.com.au www.wheelsmag.com.au 73 VALIANT CHARGER E38/E49 THESE days $2 million might buy a car (six inches). Even though it was essentially carburettors, to nearly 210kW. Revised 7 maker a new doorhandle design. In the a bobtail rear-end grafted onto the gear ratios for6 the three-speed manual were early 1970s it was enough to develop a mainstream model’s nose, it worked. With also part of the deal. From Charger’s second new variant of an existing car. Chrysler the aid of a memorable and effective ad year of production, 1972, the E49 option Australia’s Valiant Charger project relied campaign with its ‘Hey Charger!’ catchline, package upped power again, to 225kW, and on a brand of resourcefulness that was the Valiant’s looks attracted hordes of included a four-speed Borg Warner manual. becoming a trademark of the Australian paying customers. These homologation option packs never HOLDEN 48-215 car industry. This can-do, low-cost spirit To the car’s beauty could be added a delivered victory at Bathurst, but magazine had already produced big results on streak of beastliness. Although V8 engines testers found the Charger was a V8-beater YOU can’T knit a plane, a ship or a gun. locomotive driver from Bathurst was first Holden. The car, based on an unused small budgets; cars like Ford’s XR were part of the Charger model mix, it on their dragstrips. Through World War II, Australia wasn’t photographed beside the first Holden at design for a compact, post-war Chevrolet, was Falcon station wagon and Holden’s HK was the better handling high-performance Created on a shoestring budget by an riding on the sheep’s back quite as high its official introduction in November 1948. very basic: 45kW 2.2-litre (133 cubic inch) Monaro coupe. But the Charger was more versions of Chrysler’s in-line six that outfit overshadowed by both Holden and as it would in the early 1950s, but its Prime Minister Ben Chifley had waited years in-line six, three-speed column-shift manual audacious, more special. powered the car to greatness. Right from Ford Australia, the E38 and E49 were dependence on agriculture concerned for this moment. He’d been Treasurer when, and rear-drive. But it was roomy, tough and One thing that made it so was stylishness. the beginning, the E38 option package lifted the most outstanding cars produced by the country’s leaders. Isolated and with the war still raging, discussions began quicker than many contemporaries. At first, The Charger was built on a version of the the power of the 4.3-litre (265 cubic inch) Australia’s brief but glorious late ’60s to threatened, Australia’s lack of industrial with both General Motors and Ford on how Holden production literally couldn’t keep up VH Valiant platform, shortened by 150mm engine, with its trio of twin-throat Weber early ’70s muscle-car era. capacity was an obvious weakness. During best to start a peacetime car industry in with demand. It was said people bought cars the war there was an urgent program to Australia. General Motors’ less costly scheme like the Standard Vanguard because they increase Australia’s capacity to make the won government favour. By 1946 a small couldn’t get a Holden. complex machines needed to fight. But what, team of Australian engineers was in Detroit The 48-215 wasn’t only a showroom once the shooting stopped, would sustain working on prototypes and Chifley, after the success. Here was proof Australia could the nation’s new-found manufacturing death of John Curtin in July 1945, had been produce more than countless bales of wool. ability? The answer, Australia’s wartime Prime Minister for a year. It was an accomplishment to be proud of, Labor leaders decided, was cars… Today it’s impossible to imagine any result and it changed what Australians thought of That’s why a hat-clutching former of government policy being as popular as that themselves and their nation’s capability.

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