1967 Ford Falcon XR GT Sedan

Description

There was talk of a ‘horsepower race’ long before April 1967, but this was the month when Ford Australia changed the local performance car scene forever. The arrival of the 289 cubic-inch Mustang V8 engine as optional equipment across the new XR Falcon range seven months earlier had certainly been exciting but that was really only the beginning. We can thank that dedicated petrolhead Bill Bourke, the bold American marketing genius, for the invention of the Ford Falcon GT. Oh yes, the Victorian Police Force played a role too! The bronzed Aussie GT was a spinoff of a special pursuit Falcon developed for the said constabulary. In retrospect Bouke’s idea might seem to be a no-brainer but back in short back and sides 1967 when black and white television, Brylcreem and beehive hairdos were still at the heart of Australian culture, when Melbourne pubs shut at 6pm, when the new Prime Minister of Australia was Harold Holt and the photograph of Harold and Zara on the front page of the Melbourne Herald showed Australia’s First Lady smoking a cigarette, a decision to create a seriously high performance sedan was an audacious piece of lateral thinking indeed! With the Mustang engine plumbed into the bay, all the Falcon needed was a manual gearbox, stiffer suspension and a few more helpful tweaks. Bourke cleverly included Fairmont levels of equipment and chose a unique shade of bronze which was called ‘GT Gold’ and, naturally – this being 1967 – a black interior. At first, the GT was a limited edition but when the batch sold out and a second one did, too, the decision was taken to make the Falcon GT a regular model in the XT lineup. And the rest as they say is history.