A Day of Reckoning for the Blue Oval

Sunday was an auspicious day for Australian fans of the Blue Oval: Ford Australia has finally released its new Falcon. Code named the Orion and costing between 500 million and a billion dollars to develop, depending on who you ask, the Falcon is Ford’s last-ditch attempt to recapture the large straight-six market here in Australia. I have to say that I have always had a soft spot for the Falcon—I have owned one and I used to sell them for a living. But putting all my bias aside, I can see that Ford has come up with a great-looking vehicle. They’ve covered all their bases—the Falcon has six suspension settings that are based on the Virtual Pivot Control Link front suspension which has been used with great success in the Ford Territory 4wd. The 4.0L I6 is standard, and comes turbocharged on the XR6 turbo; they’re also offering the Boss 290 5.4L DOHC V8, with a 6-speed manual, in the XR8! The Falcon looks great, and there’s no doubt that it’ll perform and handle fantastically, but will it be enough to make Ford number one?  Here in Australia, consumers seem to have been trending toward smaller cars because of increased fuel prices. Personally, I hope the Falcon is a success on the domestic market—otherwise, we’ll just become another backwater that only has Fords imported. Go to Ford Australia’s Falcon site for more info, and to see a very cool computer simulation of all the car’s components coming together!