Australian Ford Falcon uses LS1 power to thrill the crowd at the Perth Motorplex Burnout King Competition.
While Americans obviously enjoy a good burnout, no one in the world does burnout competitions quite like Australian gearheads. This burnout – which comes to us from the YouTube channel of Flinty460 – features an Aussie Ford Falcon putting on a proper show.
In the United States, the vast majority of burnout competitions happen with the car or truck sitting in place. Usually it involves a drag strip burnout box or in a specially prepared spot at a car show. In Australia, burnout competitions are held on what are essentially huge parking lots, where the cars and trucks are free to do donuts, drift and perform any other actions which will create tire smoke.
Next, in the United States, gearheads looking to build an inexpensive high performance car will often acquire a Ford Mustang and install a GM engine – often based on the LS platform. In Australia, they only recently got ahold of the Mustang on a large scale, so when Aussie gearheads want to build a Ford performance vehicle with a GM engine, they turn to the Ford Falcon. Although the Falcon is best known in the US for being an affordable compact from the 1960s, the Aussie Falcon has been a leading performance model Down Under for years (although it has recently been killed off with the arrival of the Mustang), making it plentiful and popular.
More importantly, when an Australian gearhead builds a burnout machine, the goal isn’t to just have enough power to smoke the tires. No, they want enough power to literally blow the tires off of the car. In many cases, these burnout machines will run supercharged funny car engines. However, the owner of this GM-swapped Ford Falcon opted for the simplicity of an LS1.
Fortunately, this built LS1 provides more than enough power for this Ford Falcon to smoke the tires hard for more than a minute, resulting in the death of both rear tires and a huge cheer from the crowd.
"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.
"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.
"Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never “work” a day in your life," adds Rall, who has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now automotive journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular auto websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.
"I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.
"My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.
