Comments by "John D" (@johnd8892) on "American Reacts to Australia - Ford Falcon Extreme Durability Test (1965)" video.

  1.  @IWrocker  Comet test where the Edsel connection is explained : https://youtu.be/JsRVOU2GWuQ Very few in Australia know the Mercury Comet link let alone the Edsel connection. You can see lots of similarity with the body panels of the XP Falcons used in the test but lots of improvements also made to the cheap surplus tooling with strengthening and better motors and gearing to make a now sought after classic Falcon. Back in the day my Father was most impressed by the improvement to the Falcon that this durability run and his friends owning one showed in the flesh.
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  2. Except that the 70,000 miles was the total of six cars. Ford chose the description to give the impression that each car did that. Still receiving fifty odd years later.
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  3. These XP models and the XM models were the first to move away from the American Falcon designs to get durability acceptable to Australians. This durability test was to demonstrate that the changes made to the Australian Falcon had made the car much better. If Falcon had continued with the low sales and bad reputation of the 1960 to 1963 XK and XL Falcons , Ford were looking at closing Australian production. The XM and especially XP models were so much better that they saved Ford by the conscious decision not to use the 1964 US Falcon design but make something better. More of the story of the XP and the difficulties of the durability run from Shannon's : https://youtu.be/nEkrX1qH5jo Used the 1960 Mercury Comet as a basis , which was really a stillborn compact Edsel. So you could claim that one of the best Falcons was an Edsel here.
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  4. The 1960 XK was the first and even worse than the 1962 XL.
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  5. These XP models and the XM models were the first to move away from the American Falcon designs to get durability acceptable to Australians. This durability test was to demonstrate that the changes made to the Audience Falcon had made the car much better. If Falcon had continued with the low sales and bad reputation of the 1960 to 1963 XK and XL Falcons , Ford were looking at closing Australian production. The XM and especially XP models were so much better that they saved Ford by the conscious decision not to use the 1964 US Falcon design but make something better.
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  6. Radial tyres used in this run . From 5:48 Dunlop SP41 radials. I think the first Dunlop radial. The XP was the Falcon that introduced the disc front brake. A certain option for these cars unlike the buying public.
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