I first spied Michael Moug’s weather-beaten XL Falcon at the end of a very long queue for Skid Row at Motorvation 38. “What’s this old shitbox doing in the line?” I thought to myself with a chuckle. “The guy must be lost.” The car’s ground-hugging stance looked cool, but otherwise it seemed like a stocker that had seen much better days.

First published in the September 2024 issue of Street Machine

However, as I got closer, I spotted eight throttlebodies in the open engine bay, and with a few more steps, I noticed they were bolted to an LS1. It really hit me that something cool was going on when I saw that the boot housed not just the compressor set-up for the airbags, but the airbags themselves. Michael had clearly spent a bunch of time and money doing some very trick fabrication on the Falcon, yet it still looked like it had just been dragged out of a shed – and that’s because it had.

“I saw it advertised on Gumtree, and I had a mate grab it for me, because I had to keep it away from my wife,” Michael says. “He kept it for about a year-and-a-half in his garage before I could grow some nuts and tell the wife. I had the engine for it in my toilet block at my business for about the same time. When I told her, she wasn’t too happy about it!”

Michael’s genuine shed find was bog-stock, sitting nice and high on its original 13-inch wheels. While it hadn’t seen the road for decades, it was clear the XL hadn’t lived a pampered life, with Michael exposing a few dodgy repairs once he started digging into it. “Someone had done repairs using roofing metal, which is galvanised, and nothing sticks to galvanising – not even bog!” he says.

Once Michael got the car home, he ripped into it straight away. “I just started chopping it up in my shed,” he says. “Every Friday night, I’d have a few guys come around and help out. I’ve got a hoist and everything at work, but I felt like doing it at home, away from the business. It’s a bit of ‘you time’; no one’s walking in and disturbing you.”

Given the XL’s patina-festooned exterior, the ‘Pristine Panel & Paint’ sticker on the back window might seem like a piss-take, but it’s actually the name of Michael’s business. So, while he certainly had the ways and means to make the XL look as good as new, he figured that with a sparkly ’62 Galaxie lowrider already in the garage, he didn’t need two shiny Fords.

Michael has done some very trick fabrication on the car, yet it still looks like it has just been dragged out of a shed

The LS up front was a pretty straightforward swap, according to Michael. “I need to thank Jordan Pines of Evolution Race Fab for all the mechanical work,” he says. There are XA Falcon spindles and EL discs up front, but you’ll find no brakes out back – Michael’s turned this XL into a skid car.

The boot-mounted airbags were another concession to the Falc’s burnout-pad calling. “That was to stop the tyres from slapping the ’bags,” Michael says. The factory boot floor didn’t leave enough room to do that, so he cut the entire back off the car and replaced it with a new rear clip. “I borrowed a bead roller and got a lot of help from my apprentice, Joel Kepa. He did a lot of the tinwork in the boot and helped out with all of the finishing touches,” he says.

Clearly, my first impressions of the XL were all wrong – this thing is as cool as it gets. However, Michael reckons there’s one thing that will make it even cooler: a blower. Once he bolts that on, he won’t have any problem cutting a hole in that weathered bonnet and hitting the pad.

MICHAEL MOUG
1963 FORD XL FALCON

THANKS
Jordan Pines at Evolution Race Fab; Joel Kepa at Pristine Panel & Paint; Nelg Taylor at Nelg’s Ali Mods; Jamie Staltari at ShiftKits Australia.

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