AU1 Falcon Ute XR8 by Boyd Coddington

This is definitely one well travelled Falcon! Yep - you read that right - Boyd Coddington has officially 'Hot Rodded' an Aussie icon - and what a way to do it!!! For those who don't know who Boyd Coddington is (where have you been for the last ten years?) he is one of America's most successful Hot Rod & Custom car builders in the last two decades. Not only that but he now markets and designs a whole range of billet wheels, part of which this Ute has been designed to show off.

Most Australians would have first seen this Ute thanks to the super sleuths at Street Machine magazine - who first exposed it as a drawing and in-progress shots taken in Boyd's workshop in the USA. So how did this particular Falcon utility come to be so far from home? Well, rumour has it that Ford Australia had sent an XR8 Ute to America some time back as a demonstration vehicle to Ford USA. After being put on display in Fords head office, it was packed away into storage for a rainy day. Now Boyd's had been heavily involved in modifying F-series for Ford of America (see Boyd's site), and when Ford Australia heard of Boyd's plans for expansion into the Australian market - well - I think you can figure out the next bit!!!

From very early in the piece, Boyd's website had a illustration of the finished XR8 with the following inscription underneath it "1999 Ford Falcon Ute Built for Ford of Australia" (a fact denied by Ford Australia President - Geoff Polites) - an inscription which is still carried on Boyd Coddington's site today! It makes you wonder just how close that relationship really is...

Indeed, the interior of this particular Ute tends to support this theory - with the wind up windows present (all production AU XR Ute's had power windows) suggesting the car is actually a old pre-production prototype! Either way, the finished product should be an inspiration to Aussie Street Machine's and Falcon fanatics alike. And so, just for you Falcon/Fairlane/LTD has managed to capture this fantastic Ute at the 2000 Shepparton Spring Car Nationals, with a whole heap of Boyd Coddington wheels on display nearby...

There is little doubting that the finished product looks magnificent - although I can't help being a little disappointed at the lack of custom touches displayed for a builder of this calibre. - A view shared by many who saw the car. "Why did they have to send it to America just to do that?" seemed to be a much repeated comment as people discovered just how far the car had been. I definitely expected something wilder - especially after having seen so many of Boyd's other creations (well, not in the flesh anyway).

I guess the positive side to the mild nature of it's modifications is that nearly all are quite easily in reach of the person with enough folding green - an important consideration in any "inspirational" build.

Those wheels just looked wild - unless you looked from the side when the front 18's at the front were dwarfed by the monstrous 20" diameter wheels at the rear. Maybe I just wasn't used to this effect but it definitely looked out of balance with each other!!! A trend started in the USA, it seems more at home on a Hot Wheels model than on a street car. Still, the effect managed to look good if you didn't view the Ute from side on! Makes you wonder what the effect would have been if the rear wheel arch was modified to suit - or 20" wheels were fitted to the front instead.

Still, I really appreciated the smaller touches like the shaved door handles, grill inserts and orange / silver highlighted interior. An AU2 XR8 with similar wheels? - OH YEAH!!! Hope you like the shots - For more info on any of Boyd's products or any of his other project vehicles, you can visit his site at http://www.billetwheel.com/.