Why is there an EB Fairmont Ghia on the front page of Driving Enthusiast? Bear with us, we are going somewhere with this.
Anyone holding their breath for the Australian muscle car bubble to burst is on a hiding to oxygen starvation. HSVs, FPVs, turbo and V8 Falcons and Commodores are still asking substantial money on the used car market, such is the post-COVID and post-manufacturing reality. As time goes by, they are getting scarcer and thinner on the ground.
While you can still pick up an old Executive or AU Forte for cheap, anything with a spicy engine (turbo six or V8) is now unobtainium for most.
Today’s tidy and relatively affordable car will appeal to the Ford anorak looking for a rare engine/gearbox combo with a bit of history.
Manual versions of flagship Aussie luxury cars were a thing – you could get a manual VL Calais or XF Ghia wagon, with sedans continuing into the early 1990s. After that, Holden and Ford streamlined variants, leaving only the automatic Ghia and Calais.
After the EA Falcon’s bumpy start, the EB righted a lot of that car’s wrongs. The EB series II heralded the introduction of the 4.0-litre engine, with Fairmont Ghia including much nicer materials, some tasty BBS 15-inch alloys and an Alpine eight-speaker stereo with a CD-stacker – the peak of 1990s cool (Just ask Baron von Herzenberger).
About this time is when the Fairmont Ghia became an automatic sedan only, so this manual version was initially a head-scratcher. Could it be a DIY conversion? After skimming the official build sheet, this is indeed a factory manual EB Series II Fairmont Ghia – one of only eight. According to the seller, it was a special order car for a bureaucrat.
Even a glance at Ford Forums shows this combination might have been missed. This proves that there are probably plenty of special builds and one-offs still out there, which have thus far eluded even the most ardent of Ford nerds.
The single digit numbers of this configuration put it up there with the T3 TL50 we saw at All Ford Day last month.
For more details or if you’re interested in purchasing a very unique and unusual Ford Falcon, head over to the for sale listing on carsales linked here. The asking price at the time of writing is $16,900.
