The "Last" V8s Part 3

Number crunching

I am not going to produce a chart for the numbers as that is available elsewhere on the internet. Instead, there seem to be some rules for the XE V8’s that are worth following.

Allowing for wagon variants, there were three distinct XE model lines offered with the V8; the Falcon GL, the Fairmont and the Fairmont Ghia. Wagons were offered in both Falcon GL and Fairmont models. The V8’s were split between 4.9’s and 5.8’s. And there was a specific model sold only to the police. Here are the varieties and total figures:-

Falcon GL 5.8 - sold to the public and the police - 423

Fairmont Ghia 5.8 - sold to the public as an ESP - 178

Falcon GL sedan 4.9 - police only - 43

Falcon GL wagon 4.9 - 139

Fairmont sedan 4.9 - 64

Fairmont wagon 4.9 - 345

Fairmont Ghia sedan 4.9 - 1197

Remembering that there were a total of 2389 XE V8’s we can see that almost half, 1197, were Fairmont Ghia sedans with the 4.9 engine. Included in this total are 360 ESP’s. We can also see that the police liked the big V8.

There are a couple of other conventions which we need to mention:-

All of the 5.8 powered Falcon GL’s sold to the public were four speed manuals, and all of the 5.8 powered Fairmont Ghia ESP’s were manula cars as well. The only automatic 5.8 powered cars sold were the Option 36 police package cars. By historical convention, the police preferred gving their officers automatic cars. However, there are examples of police spec manual cars. It would also appear that the automatic used behind the 5.8’s was the old FMX gearbox.

With regard to the 4.9 powered cars, while exact figures for the police Falcon GL are not known - there may be the odd manual trans car - every one had an automatic transmission, the C4, except for 100 Fairmont Ghia ESP’s which had a manual gearbox. Until someone produces GL figures, or a survivor car, these ESP’s were the only manual 4.9 XE’s produced.