Hands on the Holy Grail
Bruce Newton samples the Holy Grail tuning kit on the last fast Falcon and exclaims ‘HO baby’. He also learns that it’s a pointer to Premcar’s big future plans.
Ihonestly do not know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh because I am driving the stirring, whirring, snarling supercharged Holy Grail Ford Falcon around the Broadford racetrack. And it’s the best Falcon I have ever driven.
Cry? Because I am driving the best Falcon ever and it’s more than two years after the last production example of that mighty breed rolled from the blue oval’s Broadmeadows assembly line.
The Holy Grail is a revelation, a peek into what might have been in an alternate universe and an unexpurgated demonstration of how much life the Falcon still had in it when it died.
Life? Holy Grail has all the vitality, energy and wildness of teenagers smashing bodies in a Violent Soho mosh pit. Yet it handles with the mature killer smoothness of James Bond cruising a casino.
It really is that good.
The Holy Grail’s ‘Miami’ 5.0-litre supercharged V8 engine rumbles into action malevolently and explodes like a battleship cannon shell when the throttle is pressed to the rewall. This engine is so memorable, so invigorating and so relentless. It simply marches onward at an ever-higher speed.
Along Broadford’s short, undulating back straight the speedo needle arcs well past 180km/h. There’s de nitely more in it than that, but with a 90-degree right rushing up I am not that brave to keep the boot in…
While the engine is impressive, it’s the Holy Grail’s chassis that truly surprises. This car does not tip and cant, it sits at and absorbs cornering inputs. It rides across kerbs in Broadford’s ddly esses without getting unsettled and turns on its nose with a sharpness that de es memory.
And then, as touring car champ and Holy Grail test driver John Bowe proves far better than I ever could, it can be effortlessly rear-steered in clouds of blue tyre smoke around the circuit’s fat, looping turns.
When my drive of Holy Grail is nished I almost fall out the door, stunned expletives tumbling out along with me. The darn thing is just so utterly convincing.
A lot of that is because Holy Grail is the creation of a company called Premcar. The blokes who work at Premcar are the same ones who beavered away at Ford Performance Vehicles developing a whole slew of fast Falcons and the Miami engine that powered a bunch of them from 2012 onwards. FPV GT, GT-F, the farewell Falcon XR8 Sprint were all the brainchilds of this talented group of blue bloods.
But one project that got away was a reborn Phase V GT-HO; yep a 21st century version of the greatest Falcon badge of them all, a badge that reached its zenith in the XY Phase III of 1971, the greatest Australian muscle car of them all.
Holy Grail even pays tribute to the HO with the rst two letters of its name. It’s as clearly as Premcar can make the point without invoking the ire of Ford, which of course still owns the GT-HO moniker and guards it jealously.
Considering Premcar still does plenty of engineering consultancy work for Ford, best to tread a little carefully.
“Holy Grail is basically our ultimate incarnation of the ultimate FPV product,” is how Premcar chief engineer Bernie Quinn puts it diplomatically.
Quinn is part horsepower hoon, part propellerhead, part rock singer, complete Ford nut and Holy Grail evangelist. We’re even driving his personal XR8 Sprint brought up to Holy Grail spec.
There is a lot riding on this car and this concept for him and his company, as it kicks off plans to start developing vehicles for the public, rather than
just working below the line for manufacturers.
Premcar’s even created a new SVT (Special Vehicles Team) operation to do that work. Think of it as renewing an old rivalry with Walkinshaw Group and its HSV brand, which used to hot up Commodore and now converts and tunes imports.
“This is 100 per cent the beginning of our new strategy for getting into the aftermarket – secondary manufacturing if you like,” Quinn said. “We see this as the next big chance for us to increase the revenue into the business, to create a new income stream into the business. We have got projects in the pipeline beyond this, but this is our entry into the market.”
And what an entry it is. A series of engine upgrades boosts the 5.0-litre V8 to a groundshaking 483kW and 815Nm. Key additions are a (triple-pass air-to-water) intercooler, a newdesign cast aluminium intake manifold, revised ECU calibration, signi cant cam timing changes and a new steering pump.
The ultimate power gure and torque numbers don’t come on overboost as per GT-F and Sprint, they’re on-tap all the time, except in rst gear which is sensibly torque limited. The rev limit rises to 7000rpm, nearly 1000rpm more than the standard Miami engine.
From the twin-plate clutch back there are no drivetrain reinforcements. Just like the Miami engine itself, Premcar says the rest of the drivetrain was designed with the durability headroom to cope with Holy Grail levels of output.
Monotube Aussie-developed Shockworks coil-over dampers and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 rubber as fat, sticky and delicious as a pile of pork belly are the headline acts in a similarly seismic chassis overhaul. A bent trailling arm ensures the 295/30R19 rear tyre actually ts. Freed of Ford’s insistence that the FPV GT drive with a fair degree of compliance, the Holy Grail has been wound up to be more sports sedan than grand tourer.
So, it all sounds good right? Well nothing good comes for free. And in this case it only comes in limited numbers.
Including engine, chassis – which Premcar cheekily dubs Handling Options (as it is said HO in GT-HO originally stood for) – and ADRcompliant exhaust upgrades, Holy Grail is a substantial $45,000 on top of your existing Miami-engined FPV or Falcon. But expense does buy exclusivity as just 100 packages are being made available.
There’s no tarting up, by the way: only a couple of exterior badges, a numbered badge inside and a stylised power graph in the engine bay. This kit is all killer and no ller.
The engine modi cations are $24,885, the chassis upgrades $14,790 and the bi-model performance exhaust $4500. They can be ordered separately, but most people are taking the lot.
Based on our experience, that’s de nitely the go. After all, it’s not every day you get the chance to own the best-driving Falcon of them all.