I’ve owned cars with two, three, four, five, six
and eight cylinders. Those with twin turbos, single turbos, superchargers and
electric motors. Euro brands, Australian brands and Japanese brands.
But I’ve never before owned a Ford Falcon.
So what was I doing with the 1995 EF Ford Falcon
Futura 5-speed 4-litre? It’s a long story (which you can read about in
Car Crazies, Part 1 and
Car Crazies, Part 2), but boiled down to the bare
essentials, I wanted a project car for AutoSpeed technical modification stories
and while I’d initially been attracted to turbo diesels, after driving a variety
of cars, I’d bought the aforesaid Falcon.
So what’s it like? Unlike most of those other cars
I’ve owned and driven, here in Australia what seems like millions of people have
driven Falcons, and perhaps many tens of thousands have driven 1995 vintage EF
models. But from my perspective, it’s simply a car unlike any I have ever owned.
And, when I think about it carefully, perhaps ever even driven. You see, despite
having driven for a week a 300kW GTS HSV Commodore, and despite pedalling plenty
of high performance Japanese cars, a supercharged Jaguar V8 and more than a
handful of US performance V8s, I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car that’s
equipped with a manual transmission and has so many Newton-metres per kilogram
at such low revs. (I guess I must have, but I can’t think of one off-hand.)
This is a car where a twitch of the right foot at
1000 rpm gives strong response – almost irrespective of what gear you’re in.
Where you can select first or second gear from standstill and it makes nearly no
difference to your forward progress. On the highway, all but the steepest of
hills can be despatched – easily – in fifth gear. And at these low revs the
4-litre SOHC engine is smooth and immensely tractable. But then again, at
anything over 3000 rpm, the engine sounds like a tractor – perhaps if you’re a
bit deaf you could stretch that to 3500 rpm.
I ran some stopwatched 0-100’s and initially,
despite feeling it would be in the low-mid Eights, recorded a time deep into the
Nines. That was with plenty of single wheelspin (a trait I’ll come back to) but
even so, I was disappointed. Then I realised you could j-u-s-t reach 100 km/h
while staying in second gear. Put up with the NVH which surely at these revs is
the worse of any car I’ve owned since a 1973 Honda Z (and that car was doing
8500 rpm at high revs!) and even with the wheelspin, the 0-100 km/h time drops
to 8.1 seconds. That’s not just respectable, that’s brilliant in a car of this
size and price. Some sticky tyres and/or an LSD would certainly drop the times
into the high Sevens.
So it’s incredibly torquey – and at low revs,
quite refined – but at higher rpm while it makes the power, it sounds and feels
like a tractor.
It’s also a car with two very different
personalities. Driving it 150 kilometres home after I bought it, a trip
completed entirely on freeways and country roads, I was astounded with its
long-legged comfort and performance. Even with the cruise control defective
(always test everything when test driving a potential purchase!), this is
a car in which you could cover a thousand kilometres in a day without feeling
wrung-out. I’d driven a current model Peugeot 307 XSi the other way, and in
terms of relaxed progress, the old Falcon just killed the new Pug.
Despite the steering being often criticised as
overly slow at straight-ahead, in these sort of conditions it’s absolutely fine.
The ventilation is good (except, aggh, the air needs a re-gas!), the visibility
is good and the driving position excellent. The latter’s the case because not
only is the steering reach- and height-adjustable, the base of the driver’s seat
can be separately raised and lowered at the leading and trailing edges, it has
adjustable lumbar support, and of course rake angle adjust. And all the seat
adjustments are infinitely variable by means of large, easy to access knobs.
I’ve driven lots of cars that cost vastly more and have less driving position
adjustment...
But the Falcon’s personality undergoes a complete
change in urban conditions. The gearbox whines and howls, the clutch has an
awful ‘over-centre’ feel (it’s not heavy, but it’s hard to feed-in smoothly
because the weight needed to do this varies through the stroke), the suspension
is noisy over slow speed patched bitumen and filler strips, and in these
conditions the car loses its wieldiness and becomes a big, boofy thing. In the
city an auto trans (as fitted to probably 95 per cent of EF Falcons) is vastly
preferable to the 5-speed manual.
But I don’t live in a city....
Handling? Well, I’ve read all the original reviews
that suggest the back lags rather a lot behind the front, and to an extent I
have to agree. This car has the jacked-up country pack suspension and ultra hard
original-size 205/65 tyres, so my expectations of handling weren’t anything
high. Especially with a live axle. But again, keeping in mind all those aspects,
it is surprisingly good. Turn-in is - if anything - too quick and takes a little
getting used to. I am sure that power oversteer is possible, but - at least with
this particular car - you’d have to throw it in: just putting your foot down
turns the inside wheel to smoke and so keeps the rear relatively stable. In
fact, even just driving around sharp corners semi-normally spins the inside rear
wheel: I think the Falcon must rank with the least traction of any standard car
ever produced.
But the throttle control that you gain with the
manual trans is worth a lot in terms of handling. (I remember when I drove a
5-speed manual Magna and a 5-speed auto Magna back-to-back through a handling
course. I came back convinced the manual trans car had a different, higher spec,
suspension – it handled so much better. But the suspensions were the same – the
difference was just the better throttle control afforded by the manual trans.)
With all that torque, the Falcon is easy to place on the road: take a slow-in,
fast-out approach and the car feels punchy and is quite quick. However, it’s not
the sort of car I’d like to make a big driving miscalculation in...
Inside the cabin, it’s all practical and huge. The
instruments and controls (then new for this model) have that Falcon/Commodore
characteristic of apparently being designed for large and puffy sausage fingers:
there isn’t a control that couldn’t be operated with the sort of gloves you
might wear in the Antarctic. That makes everything look kinda crude, but the
only control really suited to that description is the light switch. It’s a huge
knob with a lever protruding from the side. The lever controls the instrument
dimmer but, incredibly, it has only two settings: bright and dark. That’s right,
there’s nothing in between...
But buried under the skin is the sophistication of
a body computer that lets you wind up the electric windows for a while after
you’ve turned off the car, and intelligently switches off interior lights. The remote
central locking includes a separate boot release, and once that is open, you’ll
find a large space - although with that odd Falcon thing of having an uneven
floor. The rear seat split-folds down and the rear leg space is huge – in fact
the car has far, far better packaging than my ’98 Lexus LS400.
So it has some excellent strengths – and some huge
weaknesses. But at $5200, I think it’s a bargain....
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