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Falcon Sprint a head-to-head Clubsport LSA rival: “Our car is $21,000 cheaper than the competition”

This week in Australian motoring has been both sad and exciting, with Ford Australia releasing its final and fastest-ever Falcon.

Paul Maric

17:2017 March 2016

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Falcon Sprint a head-to-head Clubsport LSA rival: “Our car is $21,000 cheaper than the competition”

The Falcon XR6 Sprint and Falcon XR8 Sprint both mark the culmination of almost two years of engineering between a team of 15 engineers.

During the press conference at this week's vehicle launch in Tasmania, Ford engineers fired a shot at HSV, suggesting that the new Sprint models were both designed to go up against the best from Holden and HSV.

2016 hsv gen f2 01 clubsport r8 sedan 18

The Ford team benchmarked the Sprint range against the VFII Holden Commodore SS-V Redline, the HSV Clubsport LSA and the mighty HSV GTS.

CarAdvice spoke with Falcon Sprint program manager, Justin Capicchiano, who said that the Sprint product was cheaper than the competition and aligned to the $83,490 Gen-F2 HSV Clubsport R8 (LSA).

"It was comparable. It was comparable especially considering our car is $21,000 cheaper than the competition."

"Ideally what we're saying is the LSA Clubsport is the car that we suggest it's more aligned to than the GTS. But...the GTS is $30,000 more expensive."

While these may be bold claims, Ford engineers claim to have achieved 0-100km/h times in the mid four-second range for both the Falcon XR6 Sprint and XR8 Sprint, making them on par with the fastest from HSV, the GTS - which claims a 4.4 second sprint to triple digits.

The Falcon XR6 Sprint is capable of producing 370kW of power and 650Nm of torque during overboost, while the Falcon XR8 Sprint can push out 400kW of power and 650Nm of torque with its 10-second overboost feature.

The HSV Clubsport R8 on the other hand makes do with a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 engine that produces 400kW of power and 671Nm of torque, but doesn't require nor feature an overboost function.