Against All Oddities: A Falcon in Upside-Down Car Land, Part 1

Welcome back to Against All Oddities! Yes, that smell is leaking diff fluid. Maybe you’ll get used to it.

With Mr. Anderson as our guide, we are embarking on a three-part series concerning the 1989 Ford Falcon he bought while studying in Australia for a semester in the mid-2000s. He would end up competing with it in time trials, earning a confederation of motorsport license, and road tripping in it with his friend around the Outback for three months. Then, one day six years later, it mysteriously disappeared. Enjoy Part 1! -EW

Many times on these pages, I’ve written about my love affair with Australia and Australian cars. How did it all begin? Well, one day in 2005, I was walking down Dan Allen Boulevard on North Carolina State University’s central campus. Maybe it was because a friend had just returned from Oz, and we watched The Castle every week. Maybe all of my cars were broken and a plane sounded pretty good. Maybe I had been watching Summernats burnout videos on my desktop PC. Whatever the reason, the vine-covered study abroad building got my attention. I went in with curiosity and boredom and left with application papers for Monash University in Melbourne’s Southeastern suburbs.

The moment I became aware that my application was accepted for the exchange program, I started thinking about what kind of car I would need to get around there. Campus would be more than a half mile from any public transportation—an excuse to peruse the Aussie classifieds. Who would hoof it half a mile when they could drive an HQ Holden (slammed on slot mags with venetian blinds) into the middle of Melbourne?

In preparing for my departure, I started researching various vehicle options. My top choice was the iconic late 1960s Holden Kingswood sedan. I started going through a copy of the Trading Post that I picked up at Coles supermarket while shopping for kangaroo meat and Vegemite.

The marketplace was awash with cheap classic vehicles. I soon found out why: Vehicle registration was a lot more complicated than in North Carolina. Before anything else, I’d need a roadworthiness certificate—aka an “RWC.” Confident I’d never owned a vehicle that the Victorian government was likely to deem roadworthy, I proceeded with rare caution.

My first candidate was a mint green 1968 Holden HK Kingswood. I met the original owner, a stout old Greek man, outside his Greek-inspired home in the beachside suburb of St. Kilda. Oh, the vibes. Beneath the date palm trees, amid a seemingly imported Mediterranean backdrop, the Holden fit perfectly with its surroundings. Driving on the right for the first time, especially in someone else’s car, gave me pause. And the wobbly left-hand-shifted three-on-the-tree ultimately convinced me to defer driving duties to the old fella for our test drive. The Kingswood was silky smooth and leisurely on the road with its 161-cubic-inch straight-six. The interior was spotless and also green. But once it was out of the palm shade and ferns, I understood why he was only asking $1200: Large swaths of the outer rocker were completely absent. Spackle filled the wheel arches and quarters. After hearing horror stories about the standards for getting an RWC, I had no choice but to walk away. I was heartbroken.

I spent the following week getting to know the area and meeting new, also-car-less friends. Save for one character who we called Uncle Billy. He was roughly 30 years old, lived in our dorm for some reason, and drove a Mitsubishi Pajero with red duct tape holding the roof in place. My first couple trips to the beach, in said Pajero, involved getting shaken down in both directions for money. My car search intensified; this was no way to live.

My next best option, also found listed in the Trading Post, was a 1989 Ford Falcon S package sedan from the largely hated EA generation. This generation was Ford’s first attempt at a ground-up Falcon and the first couple years on the market didn’t go well. The cars were practically worthless… and I was here to capitalize! The ad bragged of its sports exhaust and lowered suspension. It was painted deep blue with basket-weave wheels, and it had an overhead-cam, multiport fuel-injected straight-six. And, of paramount importance, it had a manual transmission. The vibe was less beachside and more seedy-outer-suburbs, but something mildly modified suited my ambitions of doing track days at local V8 Supercars tracks.

Seeing this car as an economical all-rounder, I had a phone conversation with the selling bloke using my precious flip phone minutes. We agreed on a sum of $1300. Most crucially, he would provide me with a roadworthy certificate. I was instructed to meet him at the train station on Tuesday afternoon, with cash, in a terrible part of town about a half hour away.

Three days later, my envelope full of cash and I were surrounded by shady characters in the Dandenong train station. I will also add that I had no more than a rudimentary understanding of the vehicle registration process. Remember, this was the year 2006, so I could not ask for up to the minute status of the seller’s whereabouts with Facebook Marketplace messages. The chances of me getting robbed at syringe-point seemed to be increasing by the second.

To my amazement, the seller showed up. And it wasn’t only him but also his father (who really looked like he could be his older brother) trailing in a Ford Falcon XB 351 sedan painted lime green with a white interior. “That’s the car I should be getting,” I thought. When I exited the glass in train platform, I got a first glimpse of the Falcon that I had recklessly committed to bring home. It looked a bit worse than I imagined it, but then I hadn’t even seen any pictures. Given the choice to hop in the EA or the XB, I ran towards the green bogan chariot.

We followed my car to VicRoads, the Aussie DMV. The two guys made up for any miscalculations or misunderstandings I had about the process with their decades of experience registering unroadworthy cars with potentially fraudulent documentation. I didn’t think that a crack running the span of the windshield would pass any kind of inspection, but it didn’t matter. In my mind, I was already blasting down the Nullarbor.

When it came time to leave VicRoads, I got the keys, and both guys boarded the XB. In grand ceremonious fashion, they deemed it fully worth the risk to depart with a ten-second-long brake stand, draping all of the government vehicles and police cars in the parking lot in a plume of tire smoke. It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen. It made me want to apply for Australian citizenship. These were my people. (What a beautiful foreword, if I do say so, to my many chapters of Australian car ownership that followed.)

I was awash in a feeling of newfound freedom. Yes, I felt I could broaden my horizons during this study abroad program. And it was nice to be out from underneath the watchful eyes of the resident administrators of my dorm room back in America, who were not happy about the AMC 232 I was rebuilding in my closet. This Falcon offered me serious, wide-open-road, Mad Max levels of do whatever you want, mate. A fresh pair of keys dangled from an ignition lock on an unfamiliar side of the steering column.

The drive back to the dorm room in the wide, powerful Falcon—with its five manually selected gears defying the muscle memory of my left arm—was unbelievably stressful. But I made it just in time to show off my new ride to my friends. They piled in, and we headed off to the Notting Hill pub. It was just the beginning, mate.

***

Matthew Anderson is a North Carolina native, professional engineer, car storage landlord, and devoted crapcan connoisseur. He owns a Holden, a Citroën, a Hobby 600 camper, a Moskvich, a Studebaker, an Isuzu, and he thinks that’s it. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions. –EW