4WD Falcon announced!

Great news for fans of the Blue Oval:
Ford Australia announced yesterday (15th/11) it would commit A$500 million to bring its all-wheel-drive 'Raptor' off-roader project, loosely based on a Falcon wagon, to market by 2004.

"This project has been totally designed, developed and engineered in Australia" said Ford Aust. president Geoff Polities. "It has been designed by Australians to meet the needs of Australian consumers".

"We anticipate that this project will create up to 400 new jobs at Ford Australia's production facilities and up to 10,000 jobs throughout the economy".

(Holden announced in August that it would spend A$100 million to complete development of its AWD Commodore by 2003 while Mitsubishi is also working on a hi-performance 4WD version of its big 3.5 litre Magna sedan that could be on sale by 2002)

So they finnaly confirmed that thier going to do it.
It could be interesting to see what happens, imagine 600hp 4WD bathurst monsters!!!!!!
(oh thats right they banned the skylines!)

But anyway, how about a WRC spec Falcon? :D

One of the top dogs at Ford Australia has a Twin Turbo Falcon.. the others liked it.. imagine, twin turbo AWD...:)

Can anyone say Skyline GTR???:p :p :p

Much as I like the old bird - I really can't imagine a 600hp AWD Bathurst Falcon Racer.

The current AVESCO rules limit an awful lot of things - and your V8 Supercar has a strictly superficial resemblance to the road car.

Besides, AVESCO limit the performance (and cost!) of running the car and adding AWD to the mix would only add cost, weight and the parity committee would have to find a way of limiting its performance so it would not be marginally quicker than the Holdens...

Having kicked around a V8 supercar pit lane a few times - a few basic things that are different from the road cars...

Engines - the road Ford's use a Windsor and the racer's a special Ford SVO (read NASCAR) motor, even the Holden's use a Chev but not the GEN III it's based on the small blcok Chev which is more like the old Holden V8 than the GEN III.

Both cars use a live axle with a Watts Linkage just like a Falcon Forte - neither using wishbone (Falcon IRS) or Trailing arms (Holden IRS). They do have different front suspensions but very different parts from your fleet special.

The gearbox is controlled (Hollinger), so is the diff ratio, control tyres etc
And the apart from the floor and the exterior panels there isn't much of
the road car left.

It does limit the amount of money required to get semi-competitive but the wealthier teams will always have an advantage eg HRT essentially has 6 cars via KMart and Young Lions to do testing with...

quote

... its all wheel drive 'Raptor' off-roader project, loosely based on a Falcon wagon

btw Spectacular crash by Bargwanna at Phillip Island (15/4) if you saw it.
Rare to see a touring car lose three corners - including suspension, entire diff etc

Moppie quoted...

"It could be interesting to see what happens, imagine 600hp 4WD bathurst monsters.."

So hence I was making an observation. A lot of folk who watch V8 Supercars don't really have much idea about what the cars are about - sure in XA GT, GTRXU1 days the cars were close to the road cars but not today.

And he's right they banned the GTR's. That's one of the first rules of class racing - if someone else completely dominates either the class dies or the rules get changed to reduce the advantage.

As for Barg's bingle at Phillip Island it was huge. Reminded me a bit of Lowdnes crash at Calder - although I'd never seen the live axle come clean out of the car before. Just goes to show the energy a 1.5 tonne car has at 230+ kph.

Murph may have been DQ'ed for the incident but Barg's copped a major fine for the rather unsavory incident afterwards. I understand he would be upset but he did overstep the mark... From my point of view, it was another racing incident no more no less. And Murph doesn't have a reputation for punting people into walls (unlike a certain bearded Tasmanian or a former Formula Ford Racer nicknamed the Enforcer.)

Agree with what you say .. :)

Personally I really miss the golden days when sedan racing meant something rather than virtual Nascar tube-frame specials which is what parity racing has evolved into. (I'm old enough to remember what a Citroen DS looked like around Bathurst, along with push-button Dodge Phoenix & HD Holdens)

There's a 24 hour GTP & Nations Cup race planned for Bathurst in November, btw. Lets hope this leads somewhere.

To my eyes Bargs was the author of his own demise, moving across on Murphy, putting the squeeze on. Ah the quintessential 'racing incident'.

Originally posted by Thunda Downunda
Agree with what you say .. :)

Personally I really miss the golden days when sedan racing meant something rather than virtual Nascar tube-frame specials which is what parity racing has evolved into. (I'm old enough to remember what a Citroen DS looked like around Bathurst, along with push-button Dodge Phoenix & HD Holdens)

There's a 24 hour GTP & Nations Cup race planned for Bathurst in November, btw. Lets hope this leads somewhere.

To my eyes Bargs was the author of his own demise, moving across on Murphy, putting the squeeze on. Ah the quintessential 'racing incident'.

i agree, now the V8 Supercar is nothing like the real road cars.

Dure, the Raptor is an SUV. Hardly a sports car.