Michael Stahl

IN 56 YEARS OF BUILDING THE FALCON IN AUSTRALIA, THERE HAVE BEEN SCORES OF UNSUNG AND UNDER-ACKNOWLEDGED HEROES. ONE OF MINE IS IAN VAUGHAN: ENGINEER, RALLY DRIVER, MARKETER, AND THE MAN MAINLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FORD AUSTRALIA’S LAST 20 YEARS OF MANUFACTURI

In the way he scaled such success, yet always with humility and humour, Vaughan – now 74, and enjoying his golf – reminds me of another hero of mine, the late Evan Green.

Vaughan’s talent took him to the same international stage, the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon. The youngest Ford Australia team driver at just 26, Vaughan finished third in his Falcon XT GT. The sister cars’ sixth and eighth placings helped win the Teams Prize, doing wonders for Falcon’s reputation, just a handful of years after the weak-kneed XK-XMS.

“I’d been in the Ford Rally Team for two or three years,” Vaughan remembers. “Lotus Cortinas, Escort Twin Cams and Falcon GTS.”

The Marathon, though, was off the charts. “We were going through ... almost unknown countries where the navigation was as difficult as the driving and the durability.

“We were a very outside chance. Ladbroke’s had Harry [Firth] at about 30:1 and I was 100:1. Yeah, we put some money on. I made more out of that than I did out of the prizemoney!”

Vaughan joined Ford Australia in 1964 as a graduate and spent his entire career there. In those 37 years he touched most parts of the business, including engineering, product planning, business strategy, public relations, motorsport and government affairs. He was plant manager at Broadmeadows for a few years and worked closely with Mazda to produce the 323/ Laser and 626/ Telstar twins.

Back then, the industry had room for enthusiastic, swashbuckling executives. “It really helped to be enthusiastic about the product,” he says. “I really felt for the customer and put some of my little rally specialities in there – driving lights in the grille, decent bucket seats, good steering wheels.”

Vaughan was ahead of the curve. “I was pushing to get overhead cams, fuel injection, IRS and all that … There was plenty of action at the board level, differing forces at work.”

In the early-1990s, a combination of factors prompted Dearborn to call an end to Oz manufacturing in 1997. As head of strategy, Vaughan told CEO John Ogden: “We don’t believe in this business plan, we think there’s another 10-20 years in this Falcon product.”

Vaughan and his team dissected Dearborn’s proposal to replace Falcon with the Taurus and Crown Victoria. They won another round of Falcon (the AU). “It was a 10-year cycle, but then we added Territory [ Vaughan’s final masterstroke], so it became an almost 20-year cycle.”

Vaughan admits to “a bit of an attachment” to the Falcon, and especially to the Territory. But his experience lets him accept that the Falcon and Commodore have had their day, obsoleted by factors as diverse as novated leases (killing fleet sales) and a market cleaved to smaller passenger cars and bigger SUVS.

“The company is moving on,” he says. “For the last 50 years it's pretty much been the Falcon Motor Company. They’re putting the Falcon behind them, in as nice a way as possible.”

Back then, the industry had room for enthusiastic, swashbuckling executives