Kicking the hornets nest here...but hey, something to think about...
Has the Falcon become too narrow focussed for what is seen as "a big Australian sedan" in the mold of the Falcons of days gone by?
I would say the rot started to set in during the change to BA. They got lower, they got fragile front lips and less ground clearance, they started to get bigger wheels and lower profile tyres on even lower end models, etc.
Remember the "good old days" when every man and his dog in the country had a Falcon...they'd be everywhere. Before the Commodore, it was Kingswoods as well, but even Commodores up until the late 1990's to early 2000's were seen as perfectly capable "country cars. Back then, the ADR's still stated a minimum, a
minimum, of 100mm ground clearance between the ground and the lowest part of the vehicle underneath...but Falcons, standard, were much higher than that underneath. Now they seem to use the "minimum" as something to aim for to get the car as low as possible.
One of Fords extremely memorable adverts was for that guy who owned a huge station somewhere in the middle of the continent (Wilpena Pound I believe), and he had always bought Fairlanes, as they handled the rough roads easily, and were comfortable mile eaters on the highway. He did the adverts for years in the 1980's.
Now, I admit there's a wider range of vehicles...especially twin cab utes with canopies (got one, guilty as charged) which are far more suited to outback areas and even coastal and inland areas away from the capital cities.
Our G6E on 19" factory wheels was an amazing, smooth, quiet car...on the few times we ventured down to Brisbane and the Gold Coast at least...however once you started to head north on Highway 1 away from the comfortable south east corner and then back inland on the Capricorn Highway, it was shocking...lots of road noise, rough ride, afraid of bitumen drop offs at the edge of the road and swerving to avoid every pothole. It just wasn't suited to real world roads and country areas, as Falcons and Fairmonts of the past were.
I know plenty of people out here with lease cars that are Falcons...mostly XR6 and XR6T's, a couple of XR8's, and a smattering of FPV's...however they either regret getting one and can't wait for the lease to be up, or they have it as a "weekender" and have a four wheel drive or twin cab for normal everyday use. A few of them have binned the 18 and 19" wheels and fitted smaller 17" wheels with decent sidewalls on the tyres to try and smooth out the ride a bit. It helps, bur every one of them is scarred front and sometimes back from gutters and normal driveways that wouldn't have been a problem for Falcons of over a decade ago.
So, is part of the sales problem with Falcons that they have become too narrow focussed...trying to be a low-slung huge-tyred Euro sedan, when what they actually needed to be was something with a bit of ground clearance and normal wheels with sidewalls, something that faces the reality of the country they are built for, and which they had a long tradition of being the "normal" choice for country people?
Flame suit on...
