Whaddayaknow?
Matching outfit
Ah, the early 1970s; a time when a Falcon hardtop owner could don a pair of snazzy corduroy jeans that matched the colour of his car and head bush. Here’s a series of images received from a reader that caught our eye and had us scratching our heads – and not just because of the ‘lilac at bottom with black top’ theming. Just what on earth was the purpose of this photoshoot? Selling cars? Promoting fashionable threads? Or something else?
Four aging prints mounted on dusty, yellowing cardboard arrived via snail mail from New Zealand from a ‘D Croker’. The pics were accompanied by a brief message that read, “Found in a box at auction. Where is the car? Rare colour? Note stickers including New Zealand. Falcon 500 with 351ci badges, is that right? I’m a Mopar man, so no idea. Single exhaust. Hope you can use.”
All good questions, D Croker. Very good questions. And thanks for sharing them.
Let’s start with what we can answer. Ford did indeed offer the XA Falcon 500 hardtop with a 351ci engine, with either a four-speed manual or three-speed auto. However, we’ve not seen a XA Falcon colour chart with a mauve or lilac swatch the colour of this beast. Nor have we seen one on the road, much less with a black vinyl roof and orange stripe! It’s a unique colour combo, to be sure.
Perhaps this car was the handiwork of then Queensland distributor of McLeod Ford Horn Car enhancements, Metro Ford in Brisbane. Dunno. It’s our best guess, given the shape of the rear spoiler on a Queensland-numberplated Ford. All theories welcome.
Another baffling thing is that neither the car nor male model appear to be the main subject of the shots. They share equal billing.
More likely this is the handiwork of a budding professional photographer keen to show his or her capabilities. The mounted prints feature a sticker pronouncing them to be the handiwork of ‘life photos’.
An experienced professional car photographer would not shoot the coupe at angles exaggerating the front ride-height seen in two of the images. Nor with the door wide open (as shown in Contents) for no good reason.
So our best guess is these are portfolio pics for a snapper taking the rst steps to break into commercial photography back in 1973.
Of course, we’re more interested in learning more about this Hardtop. What were its origins and does the machine that wore OBO-846 plates survive today?
Whaddayaknow?