FORD XA FALCON 'SUPERBIRD': AUSTRALIAN MOTORSHOW CONCEPT NO. - JUST CARS

Ford XA Falcon 'Superbird': Australian Motorshow concept no. 4

What's better than a Falcon? Well, a Super-Falcon, or in this case, a 'Superbird' which debuted at the 1973 Melbourne Motor Show. The Falcon XA Series, which debuted in 1972, represented the first real steps to a distinctive Australian identity for the local arm of the Blue Oval empire. Back in the early 1970s, Ford Australia was still very much a child of Ford USA. Americans owned it, Americans ran it and American-designed cars were their products.

The XA was significant for two reasons: the design was all-Australian; and it marked the return of a two-door hardtop to the model range. In GT form, the XA two-door was a potent enough weapon, but Ford chose to make its performance credentials a little more 'apparent' by creating a one-off show car - the Superbird.

The first and most obvious feature on the Superbird concept was the bold 'bird' outline graphic that ran down both sides, stretching from the rear bumper to the front wheelarches. This was bold enough, but Ford made sure it stood out on the showcar's metallic silver paint by making it bright orange. The interior was trimmed in a similarly bright mix of red and pale grey upholstery. The rest of the specification was pretty much standard GT hardtop, although the bonnet wasn't painted in the usual contrast colour. Polished 'kidney-bean' mags and Goodyear Polyglas tyres completed the package.

As an attention grabber, the Superbird was a huge success, so much so that Ford created a limited run of production Superbirds. Unfortunately, these were very much watered-down versions of the showcar, the first concession to 'normality' being a greatly reduced size for the Superbird graphic. Similarly, the engine in the package wasn't the GT's 351 4V V8, but a milder 302 V8. That didn't stop Ford selling a bunch of them, somewhere in the region of 700, showing there was a market for 'stick-on performance'. All three Australian domestic manufacturers of the period would exploit this to varying degrees in the years that followed.

Today, the fate of the original showcar remains a mystery. Speculation that the Superbird went to a Ford employee, or was denuded of its stickers and went to a dealership, is ongoing. Similar scuttlebutt has suggested that the show Superbird wasn't all that special at all, being no more than a GS or Falcon 500-spec hardtop with all the necessary bits added to give it a GT appearance. Once its show duties were done, it's rumoured those same pieces were removed and it rejoined Ford's inventory. One of the more fanciful theories suggests the Superbird was loaded with leftover Phase IV running gear. If that rumour's true, fear of releasing that performance gear to the public may explain the Superbird's disappearance. Of course, it may also be sitting under a tarpaulin in someone's garage, just waiting to be discovered . . .

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