First published in the January 2003 issue of Street Machine

The electric blue XR6 passed its first test exiting the company car park in smoggy downtown Sydney. Three dudes in suits, waiting on the footpath for the pedestrian lights to change, couldn’t take their eyes off it. A similar thing happened at the next set of lights. And the set after that.

Any lingering doubts that Ford had overreacted to the troubled AU by going too blandsville with the styling of the BA soon evaporated. In the flesh, the new XRs look big and muscular and tough as, especially from head on. Even Holden guys thought it looked the business.

The design vibe is even more positive from the driver’s seat. Not only does the ute strike a smooth profile in shopfront windows, the new interior is light-years removed from the dog’s breakfast that was its predecessor. Although later series AU XRs disguised the lop-sided centre-facia treatment by blacking it all out, the BA interior is a study in clean, elegant automotive design. The XR’s sports dials also look the part while remaining legible day and night. The control stalks for blinkers, lights and wipers fall easily to hand, as do knobs for audio and air, the (optional) leather-covered seats are comfortable and supportive and their adjustment simple and effective. The steering wheel-mounted cruise buttons remain the best in the business and cabin space, particularly compared with the Commodore ute, is in a class of one.

Our test car was an auto, and so featured Ford’s cool new Sequential Sports Shift, common across the range on all floor-shift automatics. On challenging winding roads, a manual is almost always preferred as it allows the pilot to hold revs high, providing progressive engine braking into bends and tons of punch out of them. The SSS system, once invoked, does pretty much the same thing, with the added benefit of quick, seamless shifts, particularly when changing up.

In Drive it’ll shift like any other slushbox. Well, provided you never feel the urge to give it some, anyway, in which case the tacho’s all over the shop as the ’box gets all confused, hunting for the appropriate gear to handle 450Nm of torque streaming through from just 2000rpm. Instead, shift the lever to the left, which automatically knocks it back to third and engages the Performance Auto Mode. This is more like it, similar to the performance mode on previous Falcon autos, with the shift points recalibrated to handle the torque and hold the gears longer. Ah, but there’s more!

Slam the lever forward (to go back to second) or knock it back (to select fourth) and the box shifts to full manual operation. Think of it as a four-speed manual, shifting between third and fourth, and you’ll master the direction immediately. Gears are selected sequentially, like a motorbike, with a failsafe built into the management computer to prevent engine damage and lock-ups from going back one gear too many.

Along a private mountain racetrack somewhere north of Sydney, I was able to hold second until almost 130km/h, at which point the 5900rpm rev limiter thuds in. This provided wonderful engine braking and a practical minimum of 3500-4000rpm to launch down the straights out of the tightest corners, with the turbo whining away like Godzilla. Yeehar!

The motor feels and sounds very much like the hot in-line six that it is, and so will appeal to fans of that engine style. The torque curve is full and flat, but no-one will mistake it for a V8, even if the power delivery is similar. The technical specifications are closer to the import brigade than traditional Aussie muscle; DOHC, four valves per cylinder and constantly variable valve timing on both camshafts are what we expect from the Japs, not dour old Ford. Throw in coil-in-plug ignition, sequential fuel injection and a Garrett GT40 huffer blowing 6psi through a front-mounted air-to-air intercooler for 240kW at 5250rpm to make it one of the most powerful Falcons ever.

The price comes in weight (65kg heavier than the non-turbo XR6) and fuel economy, the latter averaging close to 15l/100km, or a little under 20mpg in the old money, from a mix of city commuting and ballsy mountain blasting.

The steering/handling mix is astonishingly good for a leaf-sprung, live-axle ute. Sticky low-profile Dunlops on 17-inch alloys grip like glue, squealing only when pushed toward their limit, at which point understeer raises its scary head, but only at sports car speed.

The brakes are completely new, with larger 298mm ventilated rotors up front gripped by stiff twin-piston aluminium calipers. An ‘Electronic Brakeforce Distribution’ system, linked to ABS, senses rear wheel lock-up, replacing the previous hydraulic brake-proportioning valve.

Aside from el-cheapo buttons filling the tonneau hook holes on the sides of the tray (they could’ve filled them with putty and smoothed them over prior to painting), it’s a pearler. If it were my money on the line, I’d be waiting for its eight-cylinder brother to hit the showrooms sometime next year, but I’ve always been a V8 guy and always will be. If you go for the raspy bite of a hot six, however, they don’t come much better than this.

Load warriors

1770 Nicholas Cugnot builds the first ute, a steam-powered artillery tractor
1915 Model T Light Delivery released in Australia, crude but effective
1928 Model A Roadster ute comes on local sale
1933 Anonymous Gippsland farmer writes to Ford MD, Hubert French, requesting a vehicle with the comfort of a coupe and the convenient tray of a light delivery
1934 22yo Ford designer Lewis Brandt creates the world’s first ‘Coupe Utility’, and a V8 at that! Goes into production at Geelong, Victoria. Henry Ford dubs it a ‘kangaroo chaser’ and launches a US version soon afterwards
1949 Ford Australia releases Custom V8 coupe utility
1950 GM-H releases first Holden ute. Ford responds with UK-sourced six-cylinder Zephyr ute
1952 Ford Mainline ute (side-valve V8) released Down Under
1955 First OHV V8 Mainline released
1959 Mainline ceases production, the last of the US-sourced V8 utes to be sold locally. F-Series trucks take up the slack
1960 First Falcon (XK) ute launched, based on US Falcon compact
1972 New XA is first all-Aussie designed ute, following demise of US Falcon range
1979 Legendary XD ute comes on sale, the platform for Ford utes for the next 20 years
1993 First XR6 ute (an XG) is released
1997 First XR8 ute (an XH) comes on stream
1999 AU series utes released
2002 BA XR6 tested right here, with the XR8 expected early 2003

Ford Falcon
BA XR6 Turbo ute