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By
EWAN KENNEDY
17 December 2007
In a clever bit of media manipulation the public affairs
people at Ford Australia gave the motoring press its first glimpse of
the new Falcon earlier today.
We had been invited to the Ford test facilities and factory at
Geelong, then to the proving ground at the You Yangs to examine
the company’s newest automotive test equipment. At the proving
ground, seemingly by accident, a new Falcon ute started to drive
into the far end of one of the big garages just as our small group
of journos entered the other end.
The ute was about 30 metres from us and was hurried out by what
looked to be a panic stricken engineer. I caught a glimpse of a
front end that appears to be relatively conservative in its lines.
It looks to be a major evolution of the current BF series Falcon,
rather than anything radical. Seems Ford Australia has learnt the
lesson of jumping too far ahead of the styling race as it did with
the AU Falcon.
Our cameras and camera-phones had been collected by Ford's
security people at the front gate…
Later, I spoke to a colleague who had been in the second group
of journalists, about 15 minutes behind ours. He had had the same
experience, this time with a new Falcon sedan ‘accidentally’
coming into the garage then being shooed out again.
At the R&D centre we also got a close up look at the doors
of a new Falcon that had been undergoing durability testing. They
were in the corner of an area outside a test rig, pretending to be
out of sight, though actually quite easy to see if your eyes were
of the prying variety. The doors featured Euro-style stand-out
handles and the rear edge of the back door had a distinctive
linear look in a rather German manner.
There were several new Falcons under heavy-duty dust sheets, on
hoists as well as on the floor. You really couldn’t see a great
deal, but the big wheels and skinny tyres of one obviously pointed
to it being an XR variant.
The only thing we didn’t see was a station wagon, that may be
coming later, or perhaps the prototype wagon was simply busy
elsewhere. Or maybe Ford Australia isn’t doing a station wagon
this time around, though that seems most unlikely.
We were later given a press kit that included a CD with some
photographs of the factory and test facilities. There was no
indication that pics the new Falcon, code named Orion, was
contained within the CD, but secret Santa had sneaked in some
shots.
These show a black car, possibly a prototype, that’s heavily
disguised. Black never photographs well as details often get lost
in the shadows. The choice of colour was no doubt deliberate and
part of the slow drip feed of information on the Falcon to the
motoring press.
What we can see is a windscreen at a fairly conservative angle,
a long cabin that looks to be spacious, an interesting design of
door mirrors, and a tall tail, the latter presumably for good
aerodynamics and a voluminous boot.
Over lunch I sat with Ford president Tom Gorman and he appeared
to say that diesel engines are soon to be optional in both the
Falcon and Territory. I say ‘appeared’ because he wasn’t
coming straight out and making an announcement that has long been
speculated upon. But what he said was pretty close to being
confirmation of the diesels.
Ford did an excellent job of providing advanced information on
the Project Orion Falcon in this manner, but may have
miscalculated the next stage of the reveal. Because it has
scheduled it for February 6th, not realising that date had already
been reserved by Subaru for a drive program of its new WRX STi.
Given a choice between a great fang on some of Tasmania's
excellent Targa roads in one of the hottest cars ever launched in
this country, or sitting in lecture rooms listening to potentially
dry engineers talking about their new Falcon, some journos may be
tempted to chose the former option. We will certainly have someone
at the Ford function and will report on it immediately afterwards.
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
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