Australia’s Only Three-Door Ford XR Fairmont Is As Unique As It Sounds

The unique neon paint was all the rage in the 80s, however the fluorescent pigment that makes the paint so bright also makes it incredibly susceptible to sun damage. “It’s an indoor-only show car now!” laughs Gary.

If the orange paint wasn’t enough, then the XR’s unique body modifications will surely grab you. With everything shut Gary assures us the XR just looks like a standard Falcon with big Simmons on it, but on display the Falcon opens, folds, twists and contorts to look like a bright orange Transformer mid-way through adopting its robot form.

Gary can’t lay claim to starting the wild body modifications, but he’s responsible for taking an unfinished project out of a paddock and saving it from the scrapyard.

“It was a pale blue XR Fairmont - you could tell it was a beautiful car before they chopped it up,” begins Gary. “Someone had started the project and allegedly spent up to $80,000 with a panel shop before skipping on the bill!” he elaborates on the project's near-failure to launch. The shop had carried out all the wild body mods - the suicide door, the extensive work to the passenger’s side door/s, flat bonnet and boot (skinned in steel), as well as the bonnet and boot hinges.

And while the current trend with early Falcons is to keep them looking as standard as possible, Gary explains that the wild body mods didn’t deter him - quite the opposite, in fact.

“There’s a million XY GT-HO Falcons and Phase 3s running around with all the correct stickers and paint dabs on their undercarriage. I’m not in to restorations. I used to have an XA Falcon panel van back in the day named ‘Fire Truck’. It was one of the Top Ten vans in the country, which is where my love of modified cars comes from,” he says, his voice rich with nostalgia.

It’s worth noting that Gary is also the current owner of the OVAKIL Mitsubishi Magna show car that’s been a staple of the Aussie show scene since Daryl McBeth unveiled it in the early-2000s, and with that context, the pairing of the Magna with this polarising XR Falcon begins to make a lot of sense.

With the XR home, Gary wasted no time in cutting out the floorpan which was riddled with rust after its time sitting outside in the paddock, sans windscreen. Instead of simply welding in standard-style rust replacement panels, Gary constructed a flat floor out of aluminium, and while he was in a creative mindset, chopped out the boot floor and replaced it with a piece of clear lexan.

He laid down the fluro’ orange paint himself in the driveway, with a helping hand from his neighbour who happens to be a spray painter. “I’d never use that paint again!” he admits, before detailing nearly a dozen different coats needed for the finished product. “It’ll fade over time, that’s just the nature of the paint, and when it does I’ll vinyl wrap it - probably bright orange again!” insists Gary.

The extensive work carries on throughout the car, which has been converted to a coilover front end, with the steering box turfed in favour of a neater rack and pinion. Gary had Hopper Stoppers upgrade the brakes, including the fitment of the Wilwood master cylinder to the firewall, before he dropped in the running gear from an Ford EL Falcon.

The same Falcon donated its front seats which now live proudly in the grey-trimmed cabin of the XR, along with a colour-coded roll cage and a modest stereo.

“It’s far from a Top Ten show car, it’s just an unusual build,” admits Gary. “We’ll keep working on it and touching up a few small things,” he adds, meaning you’ll get the chance to see FLUERO in the flesh at a show near you!