Friday lunch with the mates recently included both Newbold, the bloke I bought a classic Yamaha trail bike from years ago, and Jetski, the bloke I had just on-sold it to.
Under discussion was the ‘360’ engine-capacity badge that would normally feature on the heat guard of the bike’s high-mounted muffler – under discussion because it was a missing item. An unobtanium item …
Jetski proposed DIY casting a replacement in pewter in a plaster mould to be formed from a borrowed badge. Pewter was new to me. My own backyard casting experiences over the years were limited to lead. Thumbs up to Jetski for choosing pewter – it has a lower melting point than lead, as well as being lighter.
A minor setback for Jetski was the various pewter items he bought for small change from op-shops included a couple of mugs that avoided the meltdown, when they proved to be collectables of some value.
Jetski’s plan is actually a latter-day version of a yarn I heard as a young bloke after starting out at Ford Australia in late 1969. I couldn’t get enough of the war stories shared by the older blokes about the ‘above and beyond’ stuff many of them pulled off in the run-up to the 1960 launch of the all-new Aussie Falcon, the XK model.
Just as Jetski has turned to DIY casting to solve his 2024 problem, Ford toolmaking specialist Ford Haworth (clearly his parents’ choice of name preordained him to work for the Blue Oval) reached the same conclusion in 1960 on the day before the first pre-production XK was to be unveiled to the press.
Dozens of media people from around the country had been invited to the gala event, a private gathering to be held in the exclusive ‘Bamboo’ function room at the ritzy Chevron Hotel in St Kilda Road.
In 1960 the Chevron was the place to be in Melbourne – Sinatra and Atwell had performed there, and only a year earlier it had hosted Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and lesser cast members during filming of Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach. So with a little Hollywood afterglow still wafting from the Bamboo Room’s drapes, where else would you unveil your all-new Ford?
Ford’s problem, like Jetski’s, was a missing badge – actually a missing pair of gold-bird badges for the front guards of the star car. He had been working closely with the die-cast parts supplier to resolve issues that had delayed supply of production stock. Almost there, but not quite, the supplier finally couldn’t deliver a pair of badges to the Chevron on reveal-day eve where Ford was waiting to fit them before clocking off.
Plan B kicked in with Ford heading to the die-casting supplier to grab the wooden badge patterns used in making the production tooling. Then it was home to outer-suburban Eltham and into his shed, with a Thermos of coffee under his arm.
Late into the night he toiled, first fashioning a pair of plaster moulds, then melting down scrap lead to cast the badges. Finally, after extracting them from the mould, he fettled, filed and polished his precious dummy badges. The finishing step before Ford grabbed some sleep was to hit them with a coat of gold paint.
Up early next morning, Ford’s man Ford, with badges, hightailed it to the Chevron to perform the last finishing touch on the all-important display car. His latenight DIY casting effort apparently worked a treat because it was reported that as the curtains opened to reveal Ford Australia’s stylish new Holden challenger, the assembled reporters and photographers responded with hearty cheers.
I can actually remember, on what must have been the following morning back in 1960 (I was still at school), my Dad showing me the front page of the newspaper. He was a car enthusiast and a Holden man, but he liked the look of the Falcon, admitting that it looked more modern than his FB. He added, “It looks a bit leggy, though,” in the full front-on shot.
My recollection is that he reckoned the low camera angle exaggerated the Falcon’s apparent ground clearance. I also remember the subsequent update after he finally checked out a Falcon at a Ford dealer.
He reckoned the XK’s ‘skinny’ 6.00 x 13 tyres (compared to the FB’s ‘proper’ 6.40 x 13 tyres) might have contributed to the ‘leggy’ look. As I said, Dad was a Holden man…