1980 Ford Falcon XD GL 'Millionth Edition' Sedan

Description

The ‘Millionth Edition’ XD GL Falcon was produced in March 1980. It took Ford Australia just six months short of 20 years to build a million Falcons and this variant celebrates that achievement. It was a strictly limited run of GL sedans equipped with the 4.1-litre engine, T-bar automatic transmission and the elegant alloy wheels usually reserved for the flagship Fairmont Ghia. It would be the XD range that would set Ford Australia on the road to market dominance. While less technically advanced in some respects than its narrower and lighter VB Commodore adversary, the Falcon enjoyed several key advantages, which Ford’s brilliant marketing department soon exploited. Within Ford Australia, executives were taught to consider the Falcon as a Class D-sized car, while the Commodore was in Class C like the Cortina. When it could be shown that the standard 3.3-litre Falcon gave comparable economy to the ‘smaller’ Commodore, the argument became: why not buy the more spacious Falcon? Ford Australian then built on this position by forming a joint venture with Honda to develop an alloy head for the cast-iron Falcon engine which became available in mid-1980. The XD was widely regarded within Ford circles as the most elegant new car in the world carrying the famous blue oval. Any XD Falcon is rare 43 years after the model’s debut, but the Millionth Edition – of which it is believed only 100 examples were produced – is perhaps the rarest of all.