Favourite Ford memories

It had round tail lights, a very basic steel dash, an H-pattern column gear shift and a large white steering wheel.

This family vehicle was bought for a couple of hundred dollars in the mid-1970s to cart equipment and animals from Canberra to the hobby farm out past Dalton near Yass. Every weekend it made the trip up the Barton Highway, then along a rough dirt road, without complaint.

The steering was vague, the body roll horrendous, it rattled like a bunch of keys in a jam tin, but it started every time, without fail.

A year later, I bought my own Ford, a green XP station wagon much the same as the XM. It was sleeker and its grille was straight rather than concave. It rattled as well.

It cost $500 and took me everywhere. When it was knocked back for rego because of a worn steering box, I visited a local tip, pulled the assembly out of a wreck and replaced the worn one. Bingo. It was back on the road.

On a tour of Tasmania, at a remote service station on the West Coast, the grizzled bowser attendant told me what a great vehicle it was and expressed shock that I had paid so little for it. I told him the stereo cassette player I’d had installed cost more than the car itself.

When it came time to part two years later, I sold it back to the person from whom I’d bought it – for the same price.

The Falcon, for me, was part of coming of age. The freedom machine that took me everywhere. Had I held on to it, it would have appreciated greatly in value.

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