The Superbird

You may recall that the Superbird was a marketting exercise by Ford, to sell specially optioned XA hardtops. The cars were offered in three distinct colour schemes:- Polar White with Cosmic Blue accent, Yellow Fire with Walnut Glow accent and Lime Glaze with Jewel Green accent. It would appear that most folk remember the white and blue cars, perhaps because they closely resembled the colour scheme on the 1973 Ford factory race XA hardtops, but I am going to look at a surviving Lime Glaze and Jewel Green car.

Note that the FORD script on the boot lid

Is much closer together than that shown in the Suprbird catalogue, as shown in magnification below.

And on this XA GT hardtop.

Yet, my understanding is that Falcon 500’s, upon which the Superbird was based, did not come with FORD script on the bootlid, as shown in this photo from the hardtop brochure dated 7/72.

Perhaps the early brochure is wrong, and the FORD script was added to all hardtops through their production run.

The Superbird brochure then mentions the unique colour-keyed exterior paint treatment, shown above on the tail panel and wheel arches, as seen above, and here on the bonnet.

With paint application similar to the blacked out bonnets of GT’s, but in gloss.

There was also application of the Superbird decals.

On rear wings and glovebox.

The dash featured full GT instrumentation, but a standard steering wheel.

And under the bonnet, the 240hp 302ci V8.

Styled steel rear window louvre and matt black standard grille.

Plus the unique 302 engine callouts on the front wings.

The one thing this car does not have is the unique 6” by 14” styled steel wheels with GT chrome wheel trim rings,chrome centre cap and wheel nuts.

Quite a good looking combination.

Just to remind you what Lime Glaze and Jewel Green looked like when applied to a whole car.

You may remember that the production Superbirds were based on the car that Ford presented at the Sydney Motor Show as here. The show car was based on an XA GT, and featured the wild bird decal. Ford actually offered this decal as an accessory for sale and it was designed to fit hardtops, but a few ended up on station wagons. The original show car had a hand painted bird in orange and tracings were taken of it to produce the decals in black, orange and silver.

Here is a Lime and Jewel Green Superbird - sporting the big bird decal. .

Thanks to Drew of the Falcon GT Club of Australia for these photos from the All Ford Day, 2005.

This white and blue Superbird was also at the show.

Note that in the above two photographs it can be clearly seen that the wheels are painted the same colour as the lower body paintouts.

Here is a bigger picture of the big Superbird decal on the Lime Glaze Superbird above.

This car is a genuine Superbird to which the first owner added the XB vents and the XA driving light grille, and the big bird decal kit is an original Ford one which has been on the car for over 25 years. Very impressive graphics.

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