First published in Street Machine’s Australia’s Toughest Fords #3, 2005

Balance is the key. Outrageous street machines are fine for show or for serious go, but sometimes a sweet and subtle little beauty is what you need. And if you build it right, getting the right mix of components to gel with each other, you end up with a streeter that’s more than the sum of its parts.

Adrian Hill can tell you a thing or two about getting the balance right. His XP ute is proof. The Bellflower purple Ford looks, stands, rides and goes very well, with nothing over-the-top to cause headaches, yet nothing underdone to leave you feeling flat.

Adrian bought it with a 302 Windsor already in the engine bay, complete with engineer’s certificate. This was essentially what he wanted: a straight, tidy, V8 XP that he could tart up and drive around, take to Summernats and generally enjoy. He figured he’d spend four grand on it, fixing the paint, replacing the 12-slot wheels and freshening the motor. As you do, he went further, but still within the bounds of sanity.

A well-sorted 302 is a beaut powerplant that fits comfortably into the XP’s six-cylinder engine bay. Adrian conjured a healthy 250hp at the wheels from the thing – plenty of go for a relatively small, light car like the XP.

“It’ll spin the wheels easy enough, but you can just cruise around in it,” Adrian says. “It has a bit of a cam in it, and the older-style Edelbrock Torker manifold that’s got a bit of a twist to it, so the carbie doesn’t sit straight. They’re a bit hard to find now, I think.”

The 289 heads copped a rework to suit larger Chev valves – 1.6-inch inlets and 2.02 exhausts. Yella Terra roller rockers smoothed the operation. The smaller heads fit the 302 but boost compression slightly because of their small combustion chambers, in this case to about 10:1 with the flat-topped pistons Adrian used – ideal for decent, ping-free grunt on pump fuel.

“Everything – the carbie, the manifolds, the heads, everything – just matched up right,” says Adrian. “Even the TCE converter – it has a three grand converter and a C4 with a stage two shift kit. Everything was spot on.”

One neat mod was the radiator; it’s from a VN Commodore. The change was a simple one, says Adrian. “They’re real easy to fit – easier than a big Ford one. I cut a bigger hole in the radiator support panel to let the air through.”

The ute’s body had no rust, and despite the previous owner’s excursion through a fence, it was quite straight. There were a few ripples in the rear indicating it was going on four decades old, but high-fill primer and lots of patient sanding smoothed the flanks and had it ready for paint.

One of Adrian’s mates had an HK Monaro painted Bellflower, a Hyundai shade. It’s a surprising colour. “It looks good with chrome on old cars,” says Adrian. “It actually changes colour. In the middle of the day, with the sun on it, it’s a sky blue and at night under lights it goes to a purply colour.” All the chrome was redone. The only body mod is the hole in the bonnet to give the air filter room to breathe – and to satisfy Adrian’s sense of aesthetics.

The interior became a family affair: “My sister had done a bit of upholstering. She did the seats and I put in the carpet. Me and my wife did the hood lining and the door trims. It’s pretty easy. You just take the old one out, unpick the stitching, cut it all out exactly the same and sew it all back together.”

The tray is trimmed with carpet, too, and a small door below the back window gives access to the hidden battery and the stereo’s amps. The stereo isn’t sound-off loud, but it still blares out plenty of decibels.

“If you have the right CD in it,” says Adrian, “it’ll vibrate the windscreen enough to break the glue of the rear-vision mirror. Happened once or twice.”

The lowered suspension, also painted Bellflower, brings the body down so the rear rims sit snugly up in the guards, right where it looks best. “It rides well,” says Adrian. “A lot of people said it’d never handle, but it handles pretty good.”

It’s a good enough car to drive to work every day, cool to cruise and reasonably economical in pussyfoot mode. And then it’s a hoot when you put your foot down. It also draws crowds, whether on the street or at a show.

Adrian has since sold the XP, and he does admit he’d go for a bigger XY with a 351 next time, but he misses the smaller Ford whenever there’s a show on or Summernats time comes around. It’s one of those cars that simply turned out right. As we said, it has the balance right.

ADRIAN HILL
XP FALCON UTE

THANKS
Thanks to Craig Webb, Steve Anderson and Pam, my wife.