Horse 2949 - Could A Falcon Have Won The Daytona 500?

I sit here in 2021 after the Australian Motor Manufacturing industry has been burnt to the ground and with it, most of the brain power and talent that used to be used to create it. I want to wind the clock back 40 years and ponder what might have been because I suspect that no amount of support from the Australian Government would have stopped the eventual closure of the industry. 

The car makers deigned to build cars here because of taxation penalties and it was the removal of those penalties rather than subsidy payments which convinced the car makers that we are a market worth selling to but not one worth employing in. That view appears to be shared by the practically the entire rightist side of politics in this country. We are also swayed by what the United States tells us to do, based upon a crippling existential fear that generic 'Asians' will take over; which is ironic given that Japan, Korea, China, India, Vietnam, Thailand... all appear to be better at having things built in their own country. Australians over the past 40 years have deliberately been made more stupid and less capable by design.

This is why I ponder the broad question of why the United States' car makers continued to be perfectly happy to build bad cars from the so-called Malaise Era and beyond. At no point during the life of the Commodore or Falcon, did the United States produce a better car as an equivalent.

The Ford Falcon which was introduced in 1960 as Ford's "Compact" car in the United States, when built in Australia became Australia's "big" family car. Apart from minor modifications to the platform, most noticeably in 1986 in preparation for EA which debuted in 1988 and for the development of AU in 1999, it remained pretty well much the same for the entire run. Ford's Thriftpower Six engine which started out at 144cid, would eventually grow to 250cid before eventually settling around the 243cid mark. At no point of the existence of either the Ford Taurus or the Ford Fusion, were either of those cars either better built or more capable than the Australian Ford Falcon.

Likewise, the Impala 7 onwards, which was an almost 1:1 equivalent to the VT Commodore,  was also always worse built and less capable than the Commodore. From 1988, Commodore took on the Buick V6 and then the LFX V6; which were American engines. Commodore drove the rear wheels and not the front.

Even today, a 2016 Falcon is still better built and will probably be more reliable prospect than an out of the box 2021 Mustang. The 1964 Mustang was built on the 1960 Falcon platform and the fact that it hung around in Australia for 56 years says that it was pretty good the first time. I have driven the current generation Mustang and I am struck at just how poorly it is built and how unfun it is to drive. 

In 1981, NASCAR reduced the capacity of their cars from an official 450cid to 360cid. They also chose to run 'compact' cars with a wheelbase of 110 inches. Since from 1992 NASCAR switched to bespoke bits of kit which shared exactly zero components with the road car, this means that the 5.7L Commodore arrived way too late for my hypothetical. Falcon only had it's 351 Cleveland V8 until 1983 because worldwide production of that engine ended in late 1982 and Ford Australia managed to wrangle a smallish batch of stock before the end ot the run. This leads me to a pointed question. For an exceptionally small window, the XD and XE Ford Falcon, with its 111 inch wheelbase, would have been technically eligible to race in NASCAR. What I want to know, is could a Falcon have won the Daytona 500?

Standard production Cleveland V8s won the Bathurst 500/1000 in 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1977 and 1981. Dick Johnson's win in 1981 was a shortened race but the same car would front up for the 1982 event and finish that. 1000km is a shade over 621 miles; which means that distance hasn't really been a problem for quite some time.

Also what I think is interesting, is that during the 1981 Daytona 500 broadcast, CBS Commentator Ken Squires made the comment that the cars were generating about 550 horsepower. In the 1982 Bathurst 1000 broadcast, Dick Johnson tells Mike Raymond that his XE Falcon was generating 590 and maybe 600 horsepower; which says to me that a Cleveland V8 in the United States and a Cleveland V8 in Australia are practically interchangeable. 

Obviously a NASCAR Grand National Car would have been geared differently to an Australia Touring Car but gearboxes and differentials and the ratios of gears inside those components would have been changeable. I imagine that a car built for Bathurst, with its 20 corners and surprisingly slow sections, would have far shorter gearing for better acceleration, than a NASCAR Grand National Car which has to cruise on or about 200 mph for 500 miles. Even now they talk about short run and long run speed; taking into account gearing, tyre pressures and other minutiae which has to do with answering a different set of questions. 

NASCAR Grand National Cars of the early 1980s are rectilinear boxes, with massive notches behind the C-pillar and with what is basically a flat facing wall at the from of the car. The Falcon which was a four door, had a much gentler rear rake of the back window; which I suspect should mean that it produced less rear end drag. I also suspect that the XD Falcon and then improved XE Falcon with that lip that bends over the front of the bonnet, should also produce less frontal drag than almost every American car which ran in NASCAR in the period; with the exception of the Oldsmobile Cutlass which had a very pointy front section.

On the face of it, Falcon might look like a bad choice to attack the Daytona 500 with, as it was smacked 8:2 by the Torana and Commodore from 1975 to the end of Group C. Mostly that has to do with Ford Australia losing interest and Holden being the de facto factory team with the most horsepower. Mazda had a tilt and Nissan's Turbo Bluebird was still about 5 years away from doing serious damage. 

This say to me that if privateer Falcon competitors could on occasion compete against and beat the factory Holdens, then the underlying product must have been pretty solid. With a proper racing Cleveland under the bonnet, I think that it potentially had the ability to beat the Americans in their own backyard.