Compliance plates mistakes

Compliance plates would be quite straightforward you would have thought, but as we have seen before with Australian Fords, sometimes there can be slight anomalies, like below.



This is the single plate from a November, 1972 XA GT. But if you look carefully you can see that the cowl has the holes drilled for the twin plates, and the four holes not covered by the single plate have rivets in them. It appears that new twin plate cowl panels may have become available for fitting to cars, before the actual twin plate requirement came into force.

Note too the single plate is displaced towards the driver’s side to centralise the plate within the eight hole spread..



In comparison with the early style XA plate a seen in the photo at the top of the page, and again here.



Of interest too is that the description of the XA is ‘FALCON GT SED.’ when it is a hardtop.

Compliance plates continued

Below are the plates from a September, 1973 LTD Landau.





Note that the description is ‘LANDAU SEDAN’ and again that the ‘sedan’ could be confusing, bearing in mind that the Landau was a two door hardtop car.

Twin compliance plates continued

The twin plate took the following form.



Note that the plate now explicitly defines the car range, the model and a fuller description - ‘XBFALCON 4DRSED’.



Similarily the XB hardtop



And the XA hardtop, when fitted with the twin plates.



Hardtops now had as a description ‘2DRSED’.

The move to two compliance plates

During production of the XA, to comply with new regulations effective from January, 1973, Ford changed to twin plates, which carried on to the XB.



A 1973 XA RPO



A 1975 XB GT

Compliance plate gaffes

Sometimes they get the body style code number - the third and fourth digits - in the VIN completely wrong!



Considering the two plates from yesterday are both July, 1972 and are only separated by 16 digits in the VIN sequential number, the guy stamping the plates must have been having a bad day.

Note also that the layout of the 1970 data plate - below - is different from the 1971/72 plate, as shown immediately above.

Compliance plates 5

This 12-71 XY Fairmont has ‘SED’ on the plate.



As does this 12-71 Falcon 500.

Compliance plates 4

Here, for comparison, is a plate for a ‘FALCON GT’ of the XY model range. Being only four door cars ‘SED(an)’ would appear to be implied.



Or, you could describe it as a ‘FALCON G.T’

More compliance plates

This plate is from a later period, November 1972.



And has the same description as used for the four door sedan G.T. as below.

Compliance plates 2

The information on the plate took the following form.



Note that description on the tag is ‘FAIRMONT SED(an)’ which implies a four door car, whereas, in fact, it decodes to be a Fairmont hardtop or coupe.

Similarily, an XA GT hardtop has the description ‘FALCON GT SED’.

Compliance plates

Early XA Falcons followed on from the previous XW and XY’s and used a single compliance plate, fixed to the cowl and visible from under the bonnet on the passenger side.