Engine: 302 Windsor
Trans: C4 three speed
Diff: Ford 9"
We'll have to admit to blushing wildly when we saw under the bonnet of Jenny's mad, pink Falcon XM Coupe. Right there it reads 'Hot Pussy' and, uhh, seeing Jenny's a lady and all, umm... "I don't get hassled about that," says Jenny, whose husband Peter is usually on hand to cover the situation.
Not that this 302 Tudor has any trouble standing up for itself. Jenny, a self-confessed revhead, reckons on an easy 230 horses at the rear wheels. "It's pretty deadly the way it goes - it'll beat GT's off the mark," she grins. The XM was also pretty deadly during it's build up, from a rusting shell bought in Kiama on the south coast of NSW. Jenny tells how she and Peter came to call it Christine, after the Stephen King story: "It tried to electrocute us, burn us..."
Trailered back to Sydney, the XM introduced itself to its new home by clipping a pillar on the three car garage, caving the garage roof onto Peter's two XB GT's. Cost 'em three grand to fix the GT's and twice as much again for a new roof. Fun times lay ahead !
" This one was pretty sick and sorry," she says. "It had some rust, but it was nowhere near as bad as all the others we had seen." Peter , a vinyl layer by trade, did all the body work himself, which included mounting a centre aerial, messing with a Valiant Charger petrol cap and putting the radii into the rear wheel arches. Not only do Peter and Jenny prefer the round guard look, they also wanted to bypass all the rust.
Finding the right colour took about the longest time, and that's including having to do everything else twice because this demon car was intent on rejecting any work being done on it. Jenny was tempted to go for fluro pink, but heard of the difficulty with fading. So she trundled around the paint shops, looking at colour charts, eventually settling on a PPG Pink Pearl with "a dash of this and that thrown in". Chris and Dean at Unique put down six coats.
Super grade fuel from the Speed Pro high volume pump goes in through a Holley 600 vacuum secondary, and an Edelbrock dual plane manifold. Sparks come from a Ford coil, Motorcraft electronic ignition and a bunch of Eagle stainless leads. All other wiring is hidden. Oiling's done by a Mellings high volume system, slurping from a finned aluminium pan. Sprint headers pass the gas through a twin 2-1/4 inch exhaust system with Lukey mufflers. The show's kept cool by a three-row radiator, twin thermos and a Ford seven blade flexifan.
Nolothane bushes are used throughtout the suspension, where Petere lowered the front upper control arms in the body. All the suspension bits were powdercoated on Pink Blush. It uses Lovells springs and Koni adjustable shock absorbers at the pointy end and reset Ford leaves with Konis out back. The sway bars are by Lovells.
Deciding to leave the interior basically stock, Jenny went along to Western Motor Trimmers in Sydney and picked through their sample charts, making it up as she went. The XM bench had to go, and she settled for a pair of buckets from what she called a 'mystery vehicle'. No mystery when you've got a pair of avowed fans, who crumble in physical pain at the mention of the word that begins with "Comm...."
The seats, door trims and roof lining were all trimmmed in grey vinyl with pink detailing, and the boot fully carpeted. Other details include a wood rim steering wheel. Hurst shifter, Mallory 11,000 rpm tacho and nifty JVC stereo. At the end of 12 months of heartache, anguish and blood-knuckles, Christine rolled out of the (rebuilt) garage.
Copyright ACP 1993