Revival projects have been my thing for a while now. It’s the first step towards bringing a car back from the dead…once it runs, moves, and stops, you can start fixing smaller issues here and there, slowly working your way back to a useable vehicle. What often gets canned as scrap anymore aren’t broken, rotted vehicles that truly are beyond saving, or crashed vehicles, but it’s the old car nobody wanted to mess with anymore. It was too old, too run-down, and the one that always wins the argument it seems, too expensive to replace. Why would you sink the money into the old car. Wouldn’t you rather have something shiny and new?
Not all of us instantly go for the newest thing rolling. Some of us like the simpler, basic designs of years past. We love the style that pre-dated computers by a wide mile. We enjoy the trim that you won’t see on vehicles again. We enjoy the challenge of bringing a stalwart engine back to life. And we love the connections that come about when driving an vehicle that is well beyond it’s prime. People have questions, kids have curiosity in their eyes. It’s great.
I stumbled across the rescue of an XR Falcon ute yesterday and it’s too cool to not share. For those who don’t speak Aussie-code for cars, XR is the 1966-68 Falcon, the last one that was more-or-less identical to the same year Falcon we had in the States. Next to it is an XY (1970-72), the last variation of the second-gen Aussie Falcon before the switch to the Mad Max body most people know. These aren’t some rare examples or V8 models…the engine in the XR is your basic inline-six that’s somewhere between life and death, and both cars look like desert rescues with hashed paint and all. We’ve seen plenty of rescues before, but this is the first one I can recollect coming from Australia. Check it out!
