Car number 20 was a 1999 Ford Falcon AU Forte (where did that name come from!). It came to us in around early in 2000. We originally bought it for Hedy, her new job demanded a lot of travel and we thought it best that she do that travel in a car with air-bags. As luck would have it, the company actually changed its mind just a couple of months later and gave her a car (another AU Falcon) so this one became “mine”.
We bought it with only a few hundred kilometres on the clock. Just after being built it was caught in a severe hailstorm while sitting in the holding yard somewhere in Sydney. Ford sold a large number of these vehicles off to dealers at a post-insurance claim price. A mate of my cousin Paul (both of which are dealers) had bought a number of them and this was the last. When Paul bought it for me, his mate had just decided to drive it himself and had had it slightly lowered and a very nice set of 17″ alloys and 50 series tyres. I never saw it before buying it, the most I knew was that it was “green” and had alloys.
It was also covered in hail damage. Paul arranged for that to be fixed (new boot lid and bonnet, dents taken from the roof and then re-sprayed). We also had a CD stacker fitted by Peter (lots of family in this story) and a towbar by Rodney (see what I mean about family).
All up, fully repaired with the accessories and on the road the purchase price was about $23,500 … or around a whopping $10k under what it would have been without the hail damage.
There was something about this car that I loved. Yes it was basically just a big aussie 6 cylinder family car … but it looked great and sat the road as well as just about anything else I had had up to that point.
It gave us no trouble at all … other than the time when I went to buy the first 2 new tyres.
Me: I need 2 new tyres to match those on the car.
Tyre guy: No problems, we have them in stock. Around $550 should do the trick.
Me: Bloody hell … $550 for 2 tyres … you have got to be shitting me!!!
Tyre guy: Yep … I am … $550 each !!!!!!
I went with a cheaper brand.
This one also got a whack up the back from some idiot in a ‘Cruiser one morning on the way to work … but other than that no trouble at all.
This … I think … was really the last of the big family cars for us … the next one is much smaller and just a much a candidate for my most favourite.
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