Considering he owns three of them, you might say Aaron Hamilton has a penchant for XD Falcons. There’s his purple, muscled-up ute; the gold, Clevo-powered panel van that he ran at Drag Challenge 2024; and then there’s this one, the family runabout. Well, it was until it was stuffed with 1227rwhp of turbo single-cam goodness!

First published in the March 2025 issue of Street Machine

You see, cars don’t stay slow in the Hamilton clan. Aaron’s been competing with his brothers for the title of quickest in the family for years, and it’s going to take a whopping effort to one-up him now thanks to the eight-second timeslip this sedan has gifted him.

The car came into Aaron’s life when he decided his ute wasn’t going to cut the mustard as a family-friendly conveyance. “The ute was my second car, and I reckon I’ve changed every part of it two or three times – engines, autos, diffs, everything,” he says. “But we started having kids and the ute was no good, so I thought I’d get a sedan like Dad’s old car and put all of my old parts in it.”

While attending the kids’ primary school Christmas recital in 2011, Aaron snagged a red GL sedan for $550 on eBay. “The bloke had taken some trim pieces from it to put into his XD ESP, but otherwise it was complete and in good nick,” he says.

Aaron’s initial plan was to transplant a Clevo/Top Loader combo into the XD, but he soon thought better of it. “My best mate had a VL Turbo, and my little brother had an LC with an RB30 in it, so I thought I should give this turbo stuff a go,” he says.

To that end, Aaron sourced a second-hand Snort Performance turbo kit, headed to the wreckers to grab a cheap, single-overhead-cam Intech six from an AU, and jammed it all into the XD along with a built Powerglide from the States and a nine-inch from Competition Engines.

Keen to have the XD move at pace, Aaron then enlisted the help of Jason Ghiller at Tunnel Vision Turbocharging. With a Haltech PS1000 for brains and running on straight LPG, the car spat out a flat 12 at Calder with 17psi jammed into the stock AU single-cam. “It was that good and reliable that I drove it everywhere for seven years before I got around to building a proper engine for it,” Aaron laughs. “I even used to take the used oil from the missus’s Kluger and run it through the XD!”

Eventually, with his brothers in front on the Hamilton Family Street Car leaderboard and COVID lockdowns allowing for extra shed time, Aaron had Jason bolt together a tough SOHC with a view to making four-digit power. The barbie gas was given the flick and sweet E85 took its place, with three Walbro 525 pumps sending it forward from the 80-litre fuel cell. Jason screwed together a new and much nastier single-cam combo with a set of his own custom pistons and Nitto rods swinging off a stock crank. Billet-steel main caps and a girdle keep the bottom end from wiggling its hips, while the deck is sealed by a mildly ported head wearing one of Jason’s custom cams.

The inlet and exhaust manifolds are also Tunnel Vision items, and a Garrett G45 turbo really gets the party started. The old Haltech was also swapped out for a modern Elite 2500 with some extra bells and whistles like flex-fuel and ride height sensors.

The ’Glide and converter copped a thorough rebuild to handle the new powerplant, and Chris at Performance Diff Centre swapped out the spool for a Truetrac. “It was a pig to drive with the spool with any tyre other than Mickey Ts; now it drives like a new car,” Aaron says.

The XD’s standard front suspension and steering keep it moving in a straight line, abetted by a set of Viking coil-overs controlling the bounce and Wilwood discs to pull it up smartly. Under the arse, Calvert split mono-leaf springs, CalTracs and Viking adjustables combine to push the fat PSRs into the tarmac.

Although Falcon tubs are fairly well proportioned from the factory, they’re not capable of swallowing 325-wide radials. Aaron cut out the boot floor, inner tubs and chassis rails to make room for the flat floor and much wider tubs you now see in the boot. The flat floor also allowed his mate Kelvin to whip up a twin three-inch exhaust system to contain the angry six’s howl, and Aaron fabbed a new beaver panel without the factory single exhaust cut-out.

Aaron had entered the XD in Drag Challenge 2024, but events conspired against him and the car wasn’t ready in time. Instead, his significantly slower panel van got the nod, and he spent the week having fun running 15s and helping his mates with their cars. That said, Aaron pedalled the sedan to a stonking 8.8@158mph quarter-mile at his first test ’n’ tune with the new combo, so next year’s DC is very much in his sights.

“I just wanted to run a low nine, but Jason said it’d run an eight the first time out or he’d give me my money back,” Aaron laughs. Talk about delivering on your promises!

AARON HAMILTON
1979 FORD XD FALCON

THANKS
My wife Kelly and my kids Chloe; Owen and Hunter for letting me be in the shed all the time; Mum and Dad; my brothers Boris, Norm and Luke, and all my mates; Jason and Peg at Tunnel Vision; Daniel at NextGen Race Cars; Kelvin for the dual 3in exhaust; Danny Drewitt at SOC Auto Upholstery; Brendon and Richard Fairlam for paint and panel.