Australian Ford made Cobras? 2007 models

[Historybuff]

OK, it's not two seat Cobras a la '62-;67 AC Cobras
but instead sedans and a pickup truck called by type a "ute"

Way back in '77 Ford had a hot model called the Ford Falcon XC Hardtop that won Australia's Bathurst 1000 . That car was followed up in the showroom iwth a Cobra hardtop.

The engine sounds pretty hot--it's called the Boss 302, and is a 5.4-liter 32-valve V8 engine rated at 405 horsepower and 398 pound-feet of torque.

Once a few years ago, Shelby was mad at Edsel Ford II for proposing some sort of Shelby-themed car in Australia but now that EF and CS are bosum buddies again, presumably this Australian venture is A-OK. Let's just hope the engine makes it here on some over-the-counter parts list if not the whole car....
If you want to see pictures of it we saw them on Edmunds.com website

[Ronbo]

I don't remember the site but if you google "australian ford falcon" there was pics of the old and new Falcon Cobra. As I remember it was only painted white with blue stripes.

The site also had the Mad Max cars and even showed the aussie chevy that had the rocket motor...

[Aussie Mike]

I believe the Cobra edition Falcon coupe was built to celebrate Fords domination at Bathurst in the late 70's. Ford had a bunch of unsold Falcon coupes from the previous year so they painted them all white and put some blue stripes on them, to emulate the bathurst cars. They added cobra badges and some alloy wheels but were pretty much the same as the regular coupe. They weren't that popular back in the day but now command big $$$ when they change hands.





Ford Australia has recently produced a new version of the famous cobra edition. Ford Performance Vehicles




Tin Top racing is the most popular form of motorsport down under. Aussies love racing production cars and our local offerings from Ford and Holden have tapped right into that. Bathurst in NSW hosts Australia's biggest motor race every year and has been running since the 1938. For many years it was a production car race and that had lead to the manufacturers producing some astounding special edition vehicles.

Back in 1971 the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase 3 was the fastes 4 door production car in the world. Genuine examples are now fetching more than half a million $$$




Cheers

[Aussie Mike]

The new Boss motor down here is the Modular 5.4 bottom end with the quad cam Cobra heads on it.

The really hot motor is the turbocharged Barra 6 in the XR6 Turbo and the FPV Typhoon. The 2008 XR6 turbo is 5.1 sec to 60MPH. The FPV version will be even faster.

Cheers

[Aussie Mike]

Just did a bit of looking around and it seems that next years FPV GT-P Falcon fitted with the boss motor has been upped to 428HP (320KW). The new F6 Typhoon will have 415HP (310KW) from it's 4L turbo 6.

The Typhoon generally out performs it's V8 counterparts because the engine is so much lighter. Current model typhoons are rated at 360HP and are regularly running 13.0 or 12.9 quaters off the show room floor.

Cheers

[LoBelly]

The XB Falcon was the last - for a long time - to have a GT model (the muscle car version of the falcon) [my favorite body shape]

The 2 door/coupe/hardtop body was being discontinued and ford decided to sell the last few hundred in the updated XC model range as Cobras - as a sort of replacement for the GT

All were individually numbered, got the special paint job/interior and a v8 and were sold out shortly after being announced.
Not all of these Cobras were equal. They came with Cleveland motors 302 / 351 not sure if the 351s got the 4V heads

The variability of powertrain meant that they weren't generally as well accepted as being solid performace cars however, as Mike says, in the last few years they're resale has climbed dramatically

The Boss 302 in the new falcon cobras is so called becasue it produces 302kW - I recently read that after the announcement of the Cobra model (which is a GT falcon) every GT ordered was a Cobra version for some time.

But, they're pretty expensive and you have to committed when (as Mike said) the turbo 6s offer practially the same performance.

LoBelly