What’s in a name? Well, the first thing many of us do after buying a car is give it a name, helping to make an inanimate object a living, breathing part of our lives. Paul Agius’s gorgeous XM Falcon got the name ‘Gracie’ from his wife Angelina, who wanted a moniker that reflected the class of the 1960s era. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Paul’s mother had sadly lost a child named Gracie back in 1964 – the very year Paul’s Falcon had rolled off the production line. The serendipity was too perfect, so the name stuck.

First published in the May 2026 issue of Street Machine

Gracie was acquired as an unfinished project, but Paul saw her potential. With the paint and panel having been largely taken care of by the previous owner, the only treatment the bodywork needed was some paint correction by Paul’s son Joel at Sharp ’N Shine Detailing. Instead, Paul’s focus was on improving the driveline and adding some finishing touches. While the latter might sound like minor tweaking, all the chrome trim required plenty of painstaking TLC from Paul before it was ready to be fitted to the body, with the tail-light buckets alone taking weeks to refurb.

Ford never offered the XM with a V8 – that had to wait until the XR of 1966 – but there was a fresh Windsor included as part of the deal, so Paul used that as a starting point. After tweaking a few performance parts and replacing some polished dress-up bits with black items, Paul ended up with a 347ci combination he describes as “punchy”.

That’s one way to describe a mill that pumped out 570hp on the engine dyno, but whichever way you look at it, it’s plenty for an XM sedan, as those trim, taut and terrific early Falcon models were yet to gain the size and weight of the later, muscle-car era iterations.

With the Windsor backed up by a manualised C4, and the car on a set of Center Line Auto Drags, Paul was happy with Gracie’s cruising manners – until his mate Charlie Azzopardi dropped by. Casually, he gave Paul a bit of a wind-up, asking him what he was going to do next. Paul had always wanted a bit of a meaner stance for Gracie, and knew that tubs and a four-link rear end were the only way to achieve what he was after.

So, within a couple of weeks, Gracie was under the knife for a makeover. Up on a hoist at Charlie’s place, the diff and leaf springs were yeeted and the angle grinder came out for the pair to start cutting. Paul wanted to fit a set of 275-wide bags under the rear quarters, while also achieving the stance he had long dreamed of, but not at the expense of the factory fuel tank – no easy job!

The first step was obtaining a shortened nine-inch diff with a Truetrac centre, 3.9:1 gears and 31-spline axles, all located with a new four-link set-up. While they were getting the rear end set up right, attention was also turned to tidying up the wiring, replacing the fuel lines and relocating the brake booster.

With the rear seat needing some adjustments to accommodate the tubs, the interior also got a full refurbish. The front and rear bench seats, carpets and door cards were all given a rich burgundy retrim, while seatbelts were upgraded to colour-matched inertia-reel items in the factory-style webbing. A re-chromed instrument panel from Early Plastic Chroming takes pride of place on the dash, complemented by supplementary Auto Meter gauges to help Paul keep an eye on the health of the Windsor up front, while a B&M shifter gives him elegant control over gear selection.

Paul credits the four-link rear for transforming Gracie’s manners, with the car driving so much better since the leaf springs got the heave-ho. We reckon he nailed the stance, too. Despite the challenges encountered by his choice of rubber, the 15×9-inch Weld V-Series rims on the rear paired with 17x4s up front are really the only visual cues that hint at the potential hiding beneath the Falcon’s dazzling Wimbledon White paintwork and acres of polished chrome trim.

Given he’s already achieved a result we’d call pretty close to perfection, you might expect that there isn’t too much else on Paul’s to-do list. It turns out, though, that he already has another project waiting in the wings, this one with a different kind of sentimental attachment. You see, in 1999, Paul bought his father’s ZK Fairlane, and with his old man having passed since, it too will be undergoing a restoration. It’s sure to be another stunner; the big question is, what will this one be named?

PAUL AGIUS
1964 FORD XM FALCON

THANKS
Charlie Azzopardi for all his help and know-how; Simon Pace; my son Joel of Sharp ’N Shine Detailing; my beautiful wife Angelina for her patience and support with my hobby.