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The best performance car of 2016, as voted by MOTOR readers, is the Ford Falcon XR6 Sprint. If ever proof were needed as to how deeply the affection for locally-made product is felt with Aussie car enthusiasts, the results of our online poll are it.
The two cars sitting on the popularity podium alongside the XR6 Sprint are the Falcon XR8 Sprint and Holden’s VF II Commodore SS-V Redline and between them, these three home-grown muscle cars accounted for 56 per cent of the 689 votes our poll had received as MOTOR closed for press. It seems that if Malcolm Turnbull is ever having a bad run in the polls, all he needs to do is borrow a Sprint for a week and watch his numbers soar…
But if we’re talking patriotism and sentimentality, why did the XR6 Sprint garner double the number of votes of its supercharged V8 stablemate? From Ford XR Falcon GT to Holden Torana A9X to FPV GT F to HSV GTS, Aussie muscle car culture has traditionally been built on V8s, but it appears that the ultimate turbo Falcon has struck a chord.
Another factor in the XR6 Sprint’s popularity could be that is was essentially a new car. Whereas the XR8 Sprint was an optimisation of the existing XR8 package (new suspension, better tyres) along with a few choice bits from the GT F (twin-pedal throttle map, stiffer transmission mount, ESP calibration), the XR6 Sprint will forever be the fastest six-cylinder car this country ever produced, a huge step in performance over a regular XR6 Turbo and a level beyond even the old FPV F6.
But they can’t work miracles: the performance car game moves very quickly and the basic FG platform is eight years old. It only takes one short drive of the latest performance pony in the Ford stables, the Mustang GT, to show where the Falcon is lacking. Then again, as we said, the entire Sprint development budget was probably equivalent to that of the Mustang’s tail-light design. One constant thorn in our side, however, has been our inability to match the Sprint’s claimed performance times.
But if we’re grown up about this – which is no fun, but bear with me – it’s also largely irrelevant. In the real world, no one ever accelerates from 0-100km/h; whether overtaking or on a winding country road, what you do is accelerate from 60-100km/h a lot, and in this range the XR6 Sprint is an absolute rocket.
We’ll leave the final words to Sprint Program Manager Justin Capicchiano. “It was never meant to be a track car,” he says. “We set out to build a pretty capable road car. It was a statement to the fans and they responded.” They sure did.
