Ford Falcon XD
Reviewed by Unique Cars and Parts
Our Rating: 1
Was it too big ?
THE XD Falcon wagon's one big advantage and, at the same time, its one big disadvantage was its size. The wagon, built on the longer wheelbase of the Fairlane and LTD luxury "XDs", making the XD wagon perfect for a true wagon user who needed space, and lots of it. But the wagon-buyer who wanted sedan enjoyment with wagon practicality lost out, because in that case it was really too big!
Too big? Well nearly all road testers from the time said it was uncomfortable to drive - and after spending many hours behind the wheel of the Company XD Wagon, I have to agree. Despite the excellent vision, it brought back the old, ponderous Falcon feel in traffic; the five-plus turns of the steering was all the more wearying with the extra length of the car to manoeuvre in tight spots; the handling was wallowy; and the rear drum brakes, borderline on the sedans, locked readily and regularly in the wagon.
4.1 Litre Ford Power
The 4.1-litre, six-cylinder, automatic wagon should have been a winning formula. Unfortunately, however, it was a disappointment despite having quite a good donk under the hood. The XD Falcon manual sednas were returning very good fuel consumption figures but the wagon slurped around 14.6 litres to the hundred kilometres average - and this with air-conditioning off. Then there was the performance, 0-100 km/h running out to 14 seconds, 2.1 slower than the sedan. Braking distances were 20 percent longer than the sedan - stretching to a worrying 52 metres from 100. The major problem here was rear-wheel lock-up, which all but the best of drivers simply couldn't avoid as any solid touch on the pedal would raise a cloud of tyre smoke.
The Falcon's electronic instrument panel was also problematic - although fixed by Ford soon after release when they became aware of the problem. Apparently the fuel-sender units were covered with a "varnish" in the areas where a touch of fuel would send them haywire and the first batch of XD Sedans and Wagons came out with a petrol-soluble coating! After a couple of weeks on the road, they would all start to go crazy. Otherwise, the electronic instrumentation was sparse as it was in the basic form sedan but it really was as good as Ford claimed - once sorted.
The speedometer wase dead accurate; at least in the Falcon you can expect a close to spot-on speedo in most cars, rather than the error of up to 12 percent found in others from this era - and dare we say even on today's cars? The XD Falcon wagon's load-carrying capabilities were top-rate, too. Even with the rear seat in place, there was a big cargo area and the internal length was such that owners were able to carry plenty of cargo home from the hardware store.
The wagon's load area was increased overall compared to the XC wagon, though it was slightly narrower and wasn't as high. It measured 1520 mm wide, just 4 mm short of the XC figure, and internal height was 776 mm, 19 mm less. Length of load area was up 84 mm to 1189 mm, to help in an overall capacity increase of 6 percent to 2.44 cubic metres. Overall, the XD wagon was a good vehicle for its job: it didn't work particularly well in a sedan role, but had great capabilities as a wagon.
