Taurus Ghia entered in Aussie All Ford Day!

[Lgbpop]

Nice wheels. That cockpit looks as cozy as that of an XK-D or XK-E, hope you don't need a shoehorn!

[Jeff K]

Looks great!!

[JIMMER]

Great pics, your car looked like it was show ready.

[don2775]

Looks GREAT!! hoping to get more Aussie parts for mine soon..right now I have the tails, the petrol door, the folding mirrors, and a few badges, waiting to get the front end with the road lights and the headlight assemblies and the fender blinkers.

[Lgbpop]

Originally Posted by 98SilverSable

Odd but cool looking car! A Gen. 3 bull with Gen. 3 Sable headlights, RHD steering, wrap-around corner lights, console e-brake handle

Not sure what's odd-looking about it, looks like a Taurus to me. Although...I'm so familiar with the column and brake master cylinder/booster and all that being on the transmission side of the firewall - how did Ford make room for all that on the RH side of the engine bay? Must have re-routed the exhaust manifolds and pipes, and used a different steering rack.

[98SilverSable]

Originally Posted by Lgbpop

Not sure what's odd-looking about it, looks like a Taurus to me. Although...I'm so familiar with the column and brake master cylinder/booster and all that being on the transmission side of the firewall - how did Ford make room for all that on the RH side of the engine bay? Must have re-routed the exhaust manifolds and pipes, and used a different steering rack.

It's just odd to see it has a Taurus front end but with the larger Sable headlights, and not the individual turn signals and smaller headlight housings. and I never could picture one RHD until I saw this one

[aginkster]

Hi guys and gals,
Thanks for the very kind comments!
Ok, to answer a few questions...
The brake booster is on the same side of the engine bay as yours, exact same spot. What Ford did with the Ghia was build a special bracket piece that goes from the brake pedal under the dash and across to your driving position, so when I press the brake, it actuated this piece and applies pressure to the booster this way. It's quite a nice piece of engineering actually and it was cheaper to do this than to reposition the booster and move a whole lot of other stuff.
The reason we have the Sable headlights is because Australian design regulations of the time stipulated that we had to have a separate turn signal that was located below the headlights and not next to them for some unknown reason. So we got the indicators and the park lights below, then as an added bonus we got driving lights below them, which come on when high beams are turned on.
Well, actually we didn't get Sable headlights, we had Ghia headlights that didn't have a turn indicator in them, but were the same shape as Sable headlights. I have actually bought Sable headlights from the US and fitted them because the Ghia headlights are no longer available and it is extremely hard to find good ones at wreckers where the lens isn't completely fogged over to the point of no return as mine were when i bought the car. In fact the Tauruses at the wreckers here are becoming very scarce, I haven't seen one at my local wreckers for some months now. (Don I'm sorry, I literally have had no opportunity to get that front piece for you!)
A little more about the day and my judging category : my category was won by a 1964 Mercury Marauder MontClair. It was a LHD US car, the Montclair was a limited run that only got to 42 built before they pulled the plug on it, so it is now one of only NINE known in the world remaining. How was an unloved American import like mine going to go against something like that? My category stank. It was designated 'non category' and they throw in all the Fords that don't have a specific category...stuff like Sierras, Mondeo, Lasers, Meteor, Mercury, Cougars... So I was actually up against over twenty different models.. The car that got second in my category was a Ford Torino, 1970 I think. It was nice too, but both the cars that won my section were just completely original unmolested examples that were in stunning condition. The Mercury even wore its original cross ply tires! The lucky owners of these two cars both had big cheque books and bought them from the US and had them shipped over. Ah well, what can you do? I'm not angry or bitter because the cars that won were absolutely sublime and worthy winners, just of all the categories on the day everyone agreed mine was the toughest to compete in! Had they a Taurus category...
I have included a pic of my engine bay I took just now, plus here are some other pics from the day.
If I have missed anything out please let me know or if there's anything about the Ghia you would like to know, ask away!



This is my friend Garry's 1970 302 Boss Mustang. He actually won his category of best 1967 to 1973 Mustang. He imported the car to Aus as a complete rusty wreck and has done all of the work himself over the last five years, so he was completely thrilled!

This is a 1972 LTD Landau coupe.

A 1965 XP Falcon coupe. It won best overall car at last years show.

And a few classic Aussie Muscle cars




This one is my other friend's car, the fastest production Ford made in this country, the 2012 Ford Performance Vehicle's F6 310 Falcon .


This is the 64 Merc Marauder.



I have lots more pics, if you would like to see some more let me know and when I get a bit more time I will upload them.
Thanks for having a look and thanks again for your comments.

[S3CKSHUN]

o.O thats one sexy looking taurus, teach me how to detail like that PLEASE!

[Dschinghis Kahn]

Lol. People with big money win at auto shows. That's just life.

Cool pics. Interesting about how Ford came up with the right hand drive system.

Have any AU Falcon's to show?

Edit to add: Amazing how big these cars make 18"s look. Shows you just how fat cars have gotten, now that 20"s look small on half of the cars on the road.

[monkeydad]

I just can't figure out what's going on here, but I love the way it looks.

Sable lights custom fitted into a Taurus bumper. Where are the amber corner lights from?