The end of Aussie muscle?

Australia adores its powerful cars. Yet with rising fuel costs and stringent enforcement of speed limits, that love affair should be coming to an end. Not so, writes BEN OLIVER

FORD’S AUSTRALIAN outpost has just built its most powerful car ever: the Boss 335 GT. That’s 335 kilowatts (kW), by the way: 450bhp to you and me, from a supercharged five-litre V8 engine shoehorned into the bodyshell of Ford’s standard, rear-wheel drive Falcon saloon. With a bonnet bulge the size of Uluru and that power output stencilled into its black racing stripes, the Boss isn’t subtle: it looks and sounds every bit as fast as it is.

The fact that it exists at all is more important than how it drives. Australia’s devotion to the muscle car easily exceeds the United States’. It builds them far better, and has continued to do so despite conditions which ought to have killed Aussies’ appetite for big, powerful, thirsty cars stone dead.

The heyday of US muscle cars ended abruptly with the oil crisis of 1971: American icons like the Ford Mustang or the Dodge Charger, with big V8 engines, died overnight in an automotive mass extinction on a par with the demise of the dinosaurs. But Australian muscle- car culture was just hitting its stride. That year it produced the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III, the new Boss’s spiritual forebear and now the most valuable Australian-made car, with genuine examples changing hands for €750,000.

Those few famous US names that survived the oil shock were embarrassingly emasculated in the 1970s: the Mustang was reduced to a four-cylinder engine at one point, with no V8 option. But Aussies plainly didn’t care about fuel prices: just as US performance cars hit their nadir in 1977, Ford Australia’s great rival, General Motors-owned Holden, produced another icon in the five-litre V8-powered Torana A9X.

Times ought to be tough now too. Australian fuel prices are closer to Europe's than to the US's, and it suffers some of the most stringent speed-limit enforcement in the world. The state of Victoria has a zero-tolerance policy, fining drivers caught doing more than 3km/h over the limit – enough to cover any margin of error in the camera or the car's speedometer, but leaving no further wriggle room for a driver who inadvertently strays a little over the limit. In a campaigning editorial Bill Thomas, editor of Australia's Wheelsmagazine, described the policy as "draconian and largely senseless", and Victoria's auditor-general has responded to "significant community concern about the integrity and validity" of the camera programme by announcing an inquiry into the €150 million raised annually by speed cameras in this state alone.

But Aussies’ enthusiasm for thunderous, thirsty V8s seems undimmed. “Our customers just don’t think about speed restrictions or fuel costs,” says Rod Barrett, ex-racer and now general manager of Ford Performance Vehicles. “They aspired to one when they were younger, and they buy one as soon as they can afford one.

“The level of devotion to muscle cars is absolutely stronger than in the US, and the Aussie V8 supercar race series has promoted that. Nascar is more about the driver, but here it’s about the car. It’s a very tribal, a very family thing. You’re either Ford or Holden in the same way you’re either Everton or Liverpool, Manchester United or Man City.”

“We rely on people with petrol in their blood,” agrees Mark Roworth, who manages Ford’s V8 supercar racing team. “The level of love for the brand is extreme. Would you be willing to deface your body with a brand? People will only have Harley-Davidson or Ford tattooed over their hearts.”

So does the new Boss 335 deserve such loyalty? It certainly comes at an attainable price. At 71,290 Australian dollars, or around €53,000, the basic Boss is less than half the price of the similarly powered Audi RS5, though the recent strength of the Aussie dollar makes both look more expensive for us than they are for locals.

Like many other Aussie cars, the Boss is pleasingly spartan, doing away with the fripperies to keep the price down. So the glovebox falls open with a clunk, the silver cabin trim looks sprayed-on and the boot is barely trimmed and has no grab handles to pull it shut.

But the stuff Aussie drivers actually need is prioritised, such as long gearing and some of the world’s best seats to cope with long, long distances.

And those distances will feel a lot shorter in the Boss. The supercharged “Miami” V8, the first production engine developed by UK-based race and rally specialists Prodrive, develops huge linear thrust and the acceleration feels quicker than the claimed 0-100km/h time of 4.9 seconds.

From inside the whine of the supercharger dominates but from outside there’s a terrific rip from the exhausts accompanied, usually, by the sound of the rear tyres ripping at the tarmac.

The Boss has traction control, but the system’s main contribution seems to be to blink at you from the instrument binnacle to tell you you’ve lost traction. This can be provoked at will; fortunately its natural chassis balance allows you to keep the car pointing where it’s meant to go. It has quick, accurate steering and a fine ride; not up to the standards of the best European sports saloons, but streets ahead of most US muscle cars.

General Motors has already brought versions of Holdens to Europe and the US.

Ford Europe has no plans to bring its rowdy Aussie cousins here. It’s a shame; the Aussie muscle car is a simple and appealing concept: exuberant, distinctive and fun.

FACTFILE

FPV Boss 335 GT

Engine5.0-litre V8, supercharged 450PS at 5,750rpm, 570Nm at 2,200 - 5,500rpm

0-100km/h4.9sec

Maximum speed270km/h (estimated)

L/100km13.7

Emissions325g/km