Truck: Tickford AU XR8 ute
Pod Name: AU1XR8.pod
Version: MTM2
Released: 22 February 2003


Thanks for downloading one of my latest MTM2 trucks - a painstaking replica of the AU-model XR8 Falcon utility. I hope you enjoy it!

The Falcon made its debut in Australia in September 1960 with the XL, based on the US/Canadian designs with minor modifications for Australian conditions. After 1970 production of the Falcon ceased in the US, and with the launch of the XA in 1971, the Falcon became a uniquely Australian car: there was no longer a US equivalent, the car was designed specifically for the local market. The AU Falcon was introduced in September 1998 as the first of a totally new shape to represent the then pride of Ford Australia (hence the name 'AU' as in representing Australia). Today, the Falcon is Australia's last entirely locally designed, developed and manufactured car (excluding the V8 motor).

The long awaited AU utility finally arrived in the middle of 1999 to an astonished audience, bringing converts from both sides of the camp. If the base AU's styling created a handsome vehicle, and it's driving dynamics are better than any vehicle bereft of a balanced front/rear weight bias has any right to be, the XR6 & XR8 just manage to do everything right  and must just about be one of the most desirable two wheel drive utilities anywhere in the world. Either that or Ford have the world's first two door 2 seater with a huge boot!

This truck is a development of the AU Falcon ute I started building sometime around mid-late 2001... so long ago was it, it's hard for me to remember exactly (and frankly, I don't really want to remember either :). The plan was to build a model of the AU Falcon ute entirely from scratch in BINedit (documenting it as a tutorial for my BINedit Resource website), and use the base vehicle to produce a likeness of the XR models by building a new nose and implementing a few other changes here and there. The main construction of the base vehicle only really took me a couple of months: unfortunately, I lost momentum near what should have been the end of this gargantuan project as I got bogged down in dealing with real life. Then I started to get qualms about some aspects of the truck that needed improving... so it was back to some heavy BINediting work to enlarge the style-side bed and increase number of the polygons in the wheelwells. Then there were texture flaws, needing more remapping and shuffling of the layout of the texture files... you get the idea. But it was all worth it as I was able to make many (often subtle) improvements along the way, and what I've got at the end is not only a superb new vehicle for MTM2, but an ideal base for further developments as well as the possibility of converting to other games (how cool would it be to have in the car simulation Racer - http://www.racer.nl ?).

The truck was practically entirely hand-built by me. As stated, the body was built starting from an entirely blank slate in BINedit - every vertex and face being manually placed (and then with a new nose cone housing the distinctive round quad-headlights) - and the sportsbar was made in the same manner. The tyres are heavily customised from an existing set, and the frame is a cut-down version from BigDOGGe's converted-from-NFS Holden ute truck. All the textures are hand-drawn, save for the headlights and taillights and the face of the wheels, which were copied from photographs, and the texture for the underside of the chassis, which came from the Ford TS50 in Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit II (with those underpinnings, this vehicle should really kick butt on the track!). I also made custom 'light fuzz' textures all round to properly fit the lights of the truck. Finally, I topped it off with shocks and an exhaust pipe, added couple of days ago.

So, how's it go in-game? Ford's Falcons have a reputation for good ride and handling and precise steering in particular, which is something I tried to bring out in my monster trucks, and I think I succeeded in that task... the truck has very nice handling in the game, with little if any of the annoying understeer that plagues many trucks (admittedly, many of my previous releases...) without being overly tail-happy. You can provoke it into oversteer, but any rotation is predictable and controllable, and the real joy is the accurate pointability - it's really quite nimble.

After all is said and done, with all the hours of hard work fading away, I'm extremely proud of this truck. This is my BABY. You are welcome to use any of it's parts, or the truck as a whole, in your projects (just don't go saying you made the whole darn thing...). I'd love to hear if you intend use it for any repaints (or something a little more wild...) - there's no need to ask permission, I just wanna know your projects :)


Suggestions and comments welcome please.
You can e-mail me at d2smtm2@email.com
Check out my websites at http://mtm2.com/~d2s/

That's about all... have fun with this!

---Drive2Survive
"Live for the Ride. Drive to Survive."