Ford Falcon XR8 Vs Holden SS-V Redline

Throughout Australia’s rich muscle car history the models that cause the biggest buzz, and are usually held in highest reverence, are those with bespoke engine packages. Special cars have special heartbeats. It creates desirability among the diehards and resonance across the motoring landscape, even if no difference as to how well a car actually performs.

Halo cars are important regardless of how brightly or dimly that halo glows because we Aussies love an ‘instant collectible’, separate from the off-therack models. Car culture needs them, as much now in the twilight of local industry as any time in history.

Right now we’ve got two: HSV’s GTS breed, with its hellacious 430kW and 740Nm blown 6.2-litre V8 in a choice of sedan and ute. And Ford’s brand-spanking XR8, loaded with 370kW and 570Nm of supercharged 5.0-litre bent-eight action.

Simply the fact there’s conjecture surrounding Ford’s official 335kW rating and the actual 370-odd-kilowatt power output the Five-Oh makes ‘in ideal conditions’ when the ambient temperature is below 30 degrees C adds a satisfying level of mystique. There’s certainly a buzz around the XR8 not enjoyed by the XR6 Turbo or Commodore SS. Nor the XR8’s arch showroom nemesis: the SS V Redline.

Hang on. Surely HSV’s Clubsport R8, at 325kW and 550Nm, is a much closer and fairer face-off, right? Well, no. That’s because, at $52,490 (man) and $54,690 (auto), the XR8 is a whopping $20K more affordable than an HSV offering parity of output. By pure coincidence, we’re sure, the SS V Redline asks for the same $52,490 (man) and $54,690 (auto).

Thing is, not only is the Holden powertrain less ‘special’ in lieu of its shared status with regular SS stock, its outputs are a far more modest 270kW and 530Nm. Unless you tick the auto ’box, which drops the kilowatt count a further 10kW to 260kW.

Yep, that’s the quandary. The XR8 offers so much grunt for such little coin.
It doesn’t stop there. Is there any series production model variant on Earth that offers so much bang for your buck? We doubt it. Let alone a car that has its special engine hand-built and individually initialed by the very technician who built it in its country of origin, in this case Ford’s Geelong engine facilities using much of the old FPV machinery. Even before you crank it into life, for bench-racing alone the XR8 is, by many measures, very special indeed.

If power and price are your only measures of greatness then the XR8 has hosed all-comers before it’s turned a wheel. You might as well stop reading this comparo right here. But, of course, there’s much more to this match-up than these bold-faced numbers.

The SS V Redline wants for almost $10K more than the regular SS with which it shares an identical powerplant and outputs. So the obvious question is: what does ‘Redline’ bring to the table?

Well, the Redline treatment is far less about broad obvious strokes as it is about devils in details, and there’s a lot of important enhancements this brings mostly for stopping and handling.

That extra $10K above the SS gets you firmer FE3 suspension, lightweight forged 19-inch rims (SS has 18s) offering a staggered footprint that plies 275mm rear rubber (SS runs 245mm), plus a suite of electronic tuning trickery facilitating a Competition drive mode that, at once, alters the force and feedback of the steering and loosens the stability control’s window of intervention. Crucially, the Redline spec also adds a robust Brembo brake package replacing the SS’s palpably undercooked single-slide caliper design.

Climb inside and the SS V Redline is also richer in appointments than the SS, offers better seats and adds paddle shift functionality that seems to add focus to the slushbox’s character. Also note the push-button start-up, finer digital central instrument display and the sat-nav system. All absent in the regular SS.

On outward appearance, differences between the SS and Redline are subtle though noticeable. The staggered-width black-finish rolling stock and hunkered suspension provides the Redline with a more purposeful look and sinister stance.

It’s the most handsome and fearsome Commodore of recent generations, despite the weird green paint job.The XR8 looks fantastic too (disregarding the awful grey hue of our test car), partly because the new Global Ford facelift has made such a successful transition into Falcon form and because it gets the neat bulging bonnet and twinexhaust outlets not offered on other FG-X models, but mostly because it’s lost the gaudy Mustang-aping stripes that FPV persisted in applying throughout its nowdefunct existence.

Warpaint gone, this is a lean, clean and contemporary-looking Falcon that’s free of excess in all the wrong places, but with enough familiar cues 19-inch FPV wheels to suggest potency under the skin. It leaves this XR8 feeling, frankly, the most dinky-di Australian Ford muscle car in long memory.

Without sugarcoating it, this XR8 is essentially the old FPV GT and R-Spec running gear shoehorned into more or-less a regular Ford-badged Falcon package. The plus side is that the only V8 Falcon you can now buy is the only FG-X that gets Brembo brakes, a bespoke ultra-firm suspension setting with R-Spec rear axle tuning and SS V Redline matching 245mm front and 275mm rear tyre stagger missing from prior XR8 generations. The minus is that all the goodness is underpinned by roots planted in an ancient AU generation a Falcon that’s getting very long in the tooth.

So the XR8 is the same ingredients, different recipe, then. For better or worse.
Bar the new central touchscreen with Sync 2 functionality, not much has changed inside the Falcon cabin. Some of the finishes have changed colour the headlining is now black, for example but there’s not much to write home about. Crucially, for a final generation Falcon, Ford Oz still didn’t get the ergonomics right. You seem to sit too high, both the dash and steering wheel set too low (I’m convinced it’s the floor set too high). It’s an acquired taste and you acclimatise easily, but it’s certainly not as hunkered in and cosseting as the more richly finished Commodore cabin.

The XR8’s Q-car soul beats its chest the instant you uncork thatengine. The off-the-mark tractability is effortless, the sheer shove once the tacho needle swings past 3000rpm is monstrous. It doesn’t let up until the soft rev-limiter and the beautifully slick (German spec) ZF six-speed auto upshifts cleanly and intuitively, keeping the blown 5.0-litre on the constant boil.

Sheer bloody acceleration, regardless of how quick it actually is, is the XR8’s one big party trick and most satisfying feelgood trait; one most owners will no doubt tap on a regular basis.

The Commodore lacks such manic shove but delivers its goods in a more linear fashion it needs a good 4000rpm for a proper wake-up. But it’s still ample, particularly for public road use, and wickedly potent despite the (debatable) 110kW deficit. Tractive effort-wise, there’s not much between the two cars, it’s just the Ford delivers it with more drama. Once you’re moving at cruising speeds, the XR8 accelerates cleanly with a squeeze of the right boot, while the SS V needs a kick-down and some extra rpm onboard to make added haste.

How does this play out on the strip? Even without electronic launch control which proved fractionally slower than unbridled Scott Newman Mode the XR8 is 0.3sec quicker to 60km/h (2.6sec), 0.6sec swifter to 100km/h (5.09sec), and its 13.15sec at the 400m mark is sheer daylight to the Redline’s best of 13.9sec. The Ford’s terminal speed (177.95km/h) is also a clear 10km/h faster than that of the Holden (167.56km/h). To illustrate just how much punch the Falcon has on the move, its key 80-120km/h overtaking time is 2.78sec versus the Commodore’s 3.6sec effort.

The colour of the SS V’s stripes, though, begin to emerge in emergency braking. From 100km/h, the Holden pulls up in 35.65m, over two metres shorter than the Ford; the first strong sign that Redline’s development team chased gains outside of sheer acceleration. Gains that would become more apparent as the pair tackled roads across the north-eastern Victorian countryside.

The XR8, which gets the firmest of four suspension tunes in the FG-X range, is quite fidgety in its ride quality. On a swift punt, the vertical movement settles a little, but at normal driving speeds its ride is uncomfortably abrupt and one-dimensional. Ford says the tune specifically tailored to buyers’ requests; buyers who can’t distinguish between ride comfort and sportiness, it seems.

The Redline’s FE3 tune feels much more resolved. At once it manages to soothe road irregularities with a higher degree of polish anywhere from a peak-hour crawl to a red-hot back-road crack, all the while maintaining nicely disciplined body control and providing convincing connection with the road. Against the XR8, the Redline feels more multi-dimensional with a ridehandling balance better attuned to the vast inconsistencies of crappy Australian on-road conditions.

Sure, Holden asks a handsome premium for that enhanced Redline handling, but suspension tuning was a key cornerstone of the FG-X update. The XR8 tune, though, feels a little cut-priced.

Then there’s steering. Frankly, the Commodore’s electric-assisted system is lightyears better than Falcon’s hydraulic assist design in every way. That the Falcon is cumbersome at low speed and airy during a hard punt as if assistance is engine speed dependent has long been a bugbear not amended in the FG-X program. And while, on a red-hot go, the XR8’s steering feels convincing in weight, it has very little feedback and detail when you push the nose hard on corner entry. There’s dullness to the front end no doubt caused, to a significant extent, by a huge, heavy lump of an engine between the front strut towers.

The Commodore, by contrast, is not just clearer and lighter at normal speeds, it feels genuinely weighted and brimming with information when you turn the wick up. Better yet, when back-to-backing against the regular SS, the Competition mode tweaks add an extra layer of purpose and feedback to the nose of the Holden.

With so much energy on tap, it’s thankful that Ford provided XR8 with FPV’s top-tier R-Spec rear suspension tune to discipline the rear end. However, despite the stiff tune, the Falcon still feels soft-edged when you load it up in corners and the rear-end breakaway is more than a little urgent should you treat the right pedal with disrespect. The rear doesn’t load up and sit on the outside rear tyre as confidently as the Redline. Perhaps wisely, Ford has tuned the ESP program to be so iron-clad that, when exiting corners under full noise acceleration, the stability system cuts torque until the XR8 is firmly on the straight and narrow. Safe, but not terribly fun.

By contrast you can dance the Redline between opposing corners. It reacts to direction change more playfully, engages the driver more directly, provides better communication across both axles and puts its more modest outputs to the floor with more efficiency. The XR8 rewards a cleaner and more conservative driving style but essentially you need to guide the Falcon to extract its best. The Redline, though, is a car that’s a joy to dig into.

Proof? Despite a yawning deficit in output and acceleration the Redline’s 1.43.2 laptime around Winton was 1.5sec swifter than the XR8’s 1.44.7sec. And the difference of reward in driving feel was much larger than the scant gap suggests.

Engaging and satisfyingly quick, the SS V Redline is undeniably the finest and fittest rear-driver ever to wear a Holden badge. Unfortunately, and despite its explosive straight-line ability, the same can’t be said of the last of the V8s to come out of Broadmeadows.