As they days countdown to the final Ford Falcon rolling off the production line it's hard not to wonder what if?
What if Ford had decided to go another direction at some point in the recent past? What if the Federal Government had decided to maintain or even increase its support of the local car industry and ensure the Falcon survived?
What, then, would the Falcon a decade from now look like?
Obviously this is all hypothetical, as is our exclusive illustration seen here, but we've tried to ground it in as much logic as possible.
If the Falcon was to continue it would need a major overhaul it to keep it competitive against newer, imported rivals but retain the same character that has made it an Australian icon.
The first step would be new underpinnings, the platform that the car sits on, that is already out-dated in the current range - and there's an obvious choice.
Ford invested heavily in the latest, sixth-generation Mustang by creating a new global platform that can suit both left- and right-hand drive models. Ford is already working on the next generation Mustang that will arrive by around 2022; but there have already been rumours it could be brought forward to 2020.
With the current Mustang sitting on a 2717mm wheelbase, it is only 121mm shorter than the current Falcon giving it scope to be developed into a four-door model. Which opens the door for the Falcon to go full circle and be exported back to the USA as a 'four-door Mustang', similar to the Holden Commodore/Chevrolet SS project from General Motors. It could even be used to underpin Ford's US luxury Lincoln models... but that's another story.
Using the Mustang platform as the basis for the next-generation Falcon would mean the choice of either the EcoBoost four-cylinder and 5.0-litre V8 engines. While the current Mustang offers a V6 option in the US that was a late decision and by the next decade it is likely to have been phased out in favour of the more efficient EcoBoost.
That would suit the next generation Falcon too which would likely focus on being a premium and sports sedan, rather than a mainstream family alternative given the increasing push towards SUVs.
In that case the luxury-biased models would utilise the EcoBoost while the XR range would run the 5.0-litre V8, with a forced induction option for the king of the range.
The 2026 Falcon XR8 would likely be packing over 400kW of power from its V8 and feature touches like the carbon fibre wheels from the current Ford GT supercar.
The move to a more premium focus for the Falcon would mean a new styling direction, which would have a nod to the past with a fastback-style roofline harking back to Falcons of days gone by while also joining the European trend established by Audi and Jaguar.
Our vision of the future Falcon evolves the current (Aston Martin inspired) large grille and moves with the trend for smaller lights and more sculpted fenders.
Modern, luxurious and powerful - the 2026 Falcon could have great.
What the future really looks like
But all of that's just fantasy.
In reality the future of Ford Australia looks very different - and very promising. Ford opted to retain Australia's design and engineering hub in Melbourne as a development centre to produce new vehicles for the rest of the world, as they did on the Ranger/Everest project.
The design studio that would have created our hypothetical 2026 Falcon is still based at Ford Australia's Broadmeadows facility.
It is one of three studios working on production ready designs for the blue oval, alongside the one at the global headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan and Ford Europe's centre in Cologne, Germany.
Todd Willing is Ford's Asia Pacific Design Director and has been responsible for styling products as diverse as the Territory and the latest GT.
While the location means it has a strong focus on designing cars for the booming Chinese and Indian markets, Willing explains the team in Melbourne can work across any project and has grown to accommodate.
"We've had the opportunity in the recent past to contribute to quite a few programs outside of Australia, both global and regional programs, and that's continuing to grow," Willing explains.
"When I got here, back from the States, just over two years ago we've been able to double the size of the studio in terms of headcount in order to really handle the increase in workload. And there's further growth planned in the future as well, which is really very exciting for us."
Ford Australia's history of designing, engineering and building cars for more than five decades has helped make the local operation so important to the company's global operations.
"There's lots of reasons, it's certainly a creative and technical hub for the region," he says. "There's so much experience given the history in Australia, particularly in automotive, there's a lot of highly skilled and experienced key talent here. Also, there's a broader perspective too… We're not just focused on China. We do have product development teams in market as well that we collaborate with.
"The beauty of Australia is the time zone difference really gives us an advantage to have the collaborative practices with several different markets where we have engineering sources as well. That gives us a bit of an advantage over the other regions, Germany and North America, where the time difference is quite different.
"As far as Melbourne goes Melbourne has a lot of good design and engineering schools that allow us to develop our talent here. So that's a really good source for people."
Despite the loss of local manufacturing and the Falcon, Willing is confident there will be no negative impact on the development of local design talent.
"The world is very much smaller these days in terms of information and sharing," he says. "It's such a great environment here in Melbourne not just automotive but product design, innovation, just that way of development thinking is very strong in Australia and in particular Melbourne."
But it's a shame the next generation won't get the chance to shape the next Falcon.
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