First published in the December 2004 issue of Street Machine

Springnats is a pretty big weekend for southern NSW and Vic-based street machiners. But for Shepparton’s Craig Bartlett, last year’s event — in his home town as always — almost faded into insignificance.

“It was pretty full-on that weekend,” chuckles Craig. “We did this photo shoot on the Saturday, then my wife, Tracie, gave birth in the middle of the night, then I gave the car to its new owner on Sunday! Tracie was supposed to be out on the shoot with us but she had to go to hospital. I didn’t see much of the Springnats.” Baby Mitchell timed his arrival perfectly!

The sale of the big, black Falcon ended a 12-year affair, running since Craig bought the car locally. “It was from Melbourne,” he explains, “but a bloke up here bought it. When it first came up it was a really neat jigger with a 351, a Top Loader and black paint. But by the time I got hold of it — it had had a couple of different owners here in Shepp — it had been ‘let go’ a bit. I decided to give it a strip and start again.”

This wasn’t Craig’s first love affair with a Ford and it won’t be the last. “I’ve had heaps of Fords. Always been a fan. An XY mock GT, XY ute, another XT Fairmont … all V8s and that sort of stuff. My first car was an XC GS that I had five or six different motors in. I upgraded a couple and some went pop!”

Like many projects, the Falcon went into hibernation after being stripped — for four years. He’d bought the car with the intention of putting in a big-block and getting it engineered. Eventually Craig got it back on the road after having a 460 built and installed by local bloke Mark Stephens.

“When I first got it going again, it was just flat-black and I did burnout comps in it. To look at, it was a bit of a pig. It had plenty of good bits in it, but needed paint. But because I was doing burnouts and just playing at car shows, I never spent any money on the paint.”

Stephens’s efforts in building the big-block have paid off handsomely. With 460ci sharing the workload in a big, strong block, internal components don’t have to be super-high tech or buzzed too hard to get tough performance — especially with a 6/71 blower on top. The crank is stock, as are the rods, although they’re fitted with ARP bolts. The pistons are hypereutectics with Sealed Power rings, fed from ported iron heads fitted with Manley valves. Two Holleys nest on the blower. The cam is a low-maintenance Crow hydraulic and ignition’s a Ford distributor pumped up with Jacobs electronics. Keeping it cool is an XB Falcon GT-spec radiator. Taking burnt gasses away are exhaust pipes built especially for the big-block conversion.

Behind all that is a tough Ford C6, three-speed slushy, fitted with a shift kit and a Dominator 2000rpm converter. A nine-inch diff swings from a three-inch, thick-wall driveshaft. The suspension uses lowered Selby springs and Koni dampers, kept in check with plastic bushes. Wheels are classic Center Line Convo Pros and the brakes are factory discs and drums.

The engine has been in the car for around six years and has always run strong. “Most of the kays this thing has done have been on the spot!” says Craig. “I had a couple of teething problems with keeping it cool in the early days. I took it to Summernats — I think it was ’96 — and it was 40 degrees every day. Since then, no worries.”

Eventually Craig decided to treat the girl to a new black dress. The Falcon had a good body but Craig wanted his car to look as sharp as possible, so he had Dwayne from R&D Vehicle Body Specialists install four new-old stock door skins.

“Because I was painting it black, I wanted it as straight as possible. Black is a prick — it highlights any imperfections. There were a couple of spots of rust in the quarters and around the back window, but that was all,” Craig says.

With Dwayne done, Shannon (aka Grinner) from Grinner’s Body Works applied Honda CRX Nighthawk Black. “I looked around for a while — I nearly painted it a Holden colour, like on a late-model Commodore — Raven. But then I thought ‘No! I can’t do that!’ so I chose the Honda colour.” The paint went on four years ago but certainly doesn’t look like it.

The most recent addition to the car is the stark interior trim. Craig wanted a bright white interior to make everything stand out against the black.

“I wanted wow factor,” he admits. “Rod Lingard at Hot Rod Trim did it. He’s a bit of a guru, so I just went to him and said: ‘I want white’ and he came up with this.” It’s based on Fairmont seats and retains a factory theme throughout — with the exception of a gaggle of extra gauges and a SAAS steering wheel. The GT dash was already in it when Craig bought the car. “If it didn’t already have the GT dash in it, I probably would have made a custom dash and mounted all the gauges actually in it,” says Craig. “But I didn’t want to cut this one up.”

The interior — in fact the whole car — gets heads swinging. “It’s a great feeling to drive it down the street,” says Craig. “Big, fat, low and blown! It doesn’t really matter if you’re a Holden man or a Ford man. A bloke walked up to me at the Bright Rod Run and offered me a heap of money for it. I said: ‘When do you want the keys?’ The time was right to sell it, I think.”

To replace the now-sold Ford, Craig thinks he’ll buy an XT GT or something similar. “Just something I can cruise in with the family and with less hassles than this one,” he reckons. “I tried not to flaunt it but sometime the cops around here are harsh.”

The XT may have consumed the past 12 years of Craig’s life but we reckon he’ll miss it. “It’s the longest I’ve ever owned a car,” says Craig. “And I’ve driven it the shortest distance!”

Pay the piper

Trimmer Rod Lingard has plenty of satisfied high-calibre customers, with Darryl McBeth, Les Lawry and Howard Astill among them. Howard tells a tale of his expertise: “When I was doing my blue XA (Rock 3) I told Rod I wanted seats with no piping. He reckoned it would look shithouse but I insisted. Later, he rang and said ‘come and have a look’.

When I arrived, he had two seats perfectly trimmed, one with, one without piping and asked: ‘Now, tell me which one you want?’ He’s a pro. If he was going to put his name to it, it had to look perfect.” Howard took the piping.

Craig Bartlett
1968 XT Falcon