Ford XW Falcon SurferRoo ute Project

As a 19-year-old in 1970, Wally spotted the near-new XW Falcon SurferRoo at Pearce Motors in Sandgate, north of Brisbane. With its bright orange paint, distinctive surfboard rack spoilers and GS striping, nothing was cooler, so Wally jumped at the chance to buy it. Back then, the SurferRoo was one of a handful built by Ford to gauge interest in the idea of a 'recreational' ute. After a tour of duty around Ford showrooms in southern Queensland, the vehicle that eventually became Wally's ended up in an auction house in Brisbane, where Pearce Motors came by it. At $3,000 and with only 3,000 miles on the clock when Wally bought it, the SurferRoo was a bargain and became the young Queenslander's daily driver for many years. By 1978, the demands of a young family saw the Surferoo, with 128,000 miles on the odometer, taken off the road and replaced with more practical transport. Wally started to restore the SurferRoo, and got as far as stripping it back to bare metal and pulling out all the interior and running gear. With the body in primer and the engine ready for rebuild, the project stalled. . . for a few decades!

In September 2010, Wally decided to get the project going again. Despite more than three decades in storage, the Surferoo was still in fairly good condition. There was some rust, mainly around the sills, bottom of the pillars, jacking points and so on. Having sat so long in primer, there was a fair amount of surface rust, too. Crucially, the SurferRoo's unique fibreglass rear section was still there and in good condition. When he became unable to do all the work himself as originally intended, Wally sent the SurferRoo to Senko Auto Restoration in Albany Creek to do a full rotisserie restoration on the body, back to factory spec, while Wally's son-in-law Wayne took care of the engine.

Senko started by sodablasting the body to remove the primer and accumulated surface rust. Stripping the SurferRoo back to bare metal exposed some serious rust around the sills and bottom of the pillars on the driver's side - a common spot - which was cut out and replaced. Other corroded areas on the underbody, doors and bonnet were also identified and repaired. Fortunately, the rest of the body was straight and in good order. The tray area, usually one of the most painstaking parts of a ute restoration, was in particularly good condition, no doubt thanks to the custom fibreglass section that covered it.

While the team at Senko were working over the body and fibreglass parts, Wally was checking over the condition of the interior and making a list of replacement parts needed.

"With XWs, you can just about get anything you want these days, so there was no drama getting parts," Wally said. Most new bits for the project were sourced through Mustang Auto Parts in Bulimba.

From the factory, the SurferRoos carried Fairmont-spec interior trim as standard. That meant adjustable bucket seats, a four-speed floor shifter and full-length console, full instrumentation, rally-pack dash, sports steering wheel and floor carpeting. Thanks to careful use when new, most of the original interior was able to be re-used. The seats had been re-upholstered just before Wally took the SurferRoo off the road, so they were almost new. Door linings were good enough to reuse, as were the winders and handles, dash and steering wheel. The only new interior items required were the hoodlining and carpets.

On the outside, a new set of ute-specific GS side stripes (different from GS sedan stripes) were found online, but the distinctive SurferRoo sticker had to be made from scratch. As there are 'left' and 'right' versions, the design also had to be altered to accommodate each side of the ute.

The motor is the original 302 V8 that was in the car when purchased. Wally had pulled the motor out 20 years ago with the intention of rebuilding it, but like the body resto, that side of the project was held up by other priorities. Overall, the engine was in good condition, and only needed mediablasting, basic refurbishment and cosmetic work by Wayne before it was reassembled and ready to drop into the car. Like the engine, the four speed toploader manual is also original.

By this stage, a good eight months into the project, Mick and the team at Senko had all the bodywork done and the fibreglass pieces repaired. Correctly fitting the fibreglass pieces to the body was one of the most demanding parts of the project. As Mick rightly pointed out, the back of the SurferRoo is its most distinguishing feature, so it was important to get it right.

With the fibreglass rear section on, it was time for paint. Mick recommended MPA in Brendale. With only a tiny sample of the original colour from the fibreglass to work from (remember, Wally had stripped and primered the SurferRoo), MPA managed to get an accurate copy of the colour. Knowing that Wally wanted the SurferRoo restored as close to factory spec as possible, MPA did the job properly, first by matching the sample in period-correct acrylic paint, then replicating that colour in modern 2 pak. With the colour sorted, Trent & Clint at MPA hit the spray booth to give the SurferRoo its vibrant orange paint. The end result, especially when combined with the orange/red GS striping and black vinyl roof, looks stunning. The vinyl, along with the interior hoodlining, was done by All Car Interiors in Windsor.

Remarkably, the slatted timber tray that sat in the ute bed, another distinguishing feature of the SurferRoo, was still in good enough condition to be reused. Wally also had kept the original tonneau cover, which stretched from the extended roof panels down to the top of the tailgate. Unfortunately, the tonneau hadn't survived the decades as well as the rest of the ute and needed replacing. As this article was being compiled, Wally had sourced some vinyl in the correct shade of orange and was in the process of getting a replacement made.

Finished in late April 2011, the resto of Wally's SurferRoo took a little over nine months. Even before it was finished, word had got out about the rare project. The Falcon GT Owner's Club of QLD found out about it and requested Wally bring the SurferRoo along to Easter's 14th Falcon GT Nationals in Queensland, so he trailered the still unfinished vehicle to Lakeside for its first public appearance in more than 30 years. A couple of weeks later, and with the project finished, Wally and his wife Val drove the SurferRoo to the Macleans Bridge Classic Car Display, also at Lakeside, on May 15.

"We finished in the top ten!" Wally said. "Which was pretty good, because we've never really been to a show before! We actually took it to the GT Nationals a couple of weeks before, but we had to take it on a trailer because it wasn't ready. It was a real head-turner (at Macleans Bridge). Everyone stopped and had a look at it. We'll be going to (Brisbane's) All Ford Day (at Kedron on October 2nd) and we might put it in a few more shows, too."

We're sure a lot of Ford fans will be looking forward to the opportunity to see this rare machine in the metal.

Special thanks to Wally, his wife Val, daughter Paula, and the team at Senko Auto Restoration for their assistance in compiling this article.

Thanks also to the Macleans Bridge event organisers and Motor Book World, VIC.


SurferRoo history
A lot of conjecture over the SurferRoo centres around exactly how many were built. Some sources claim only one, others believe three, while five and seven have also been quoted. Based on the research undertaken by JUST CARS, we believe three or five to be the more accurate numbers. Irrespective of the total, the examples built are believed to have been sent to various Ford dealerships around the country to gauge interest in the concept, and generate showroom traffic. SurferRoos are known to have been in circulation in South Australia and Victoria, as well as Queensland, which lends a bit of weight to the more-than-one theory and makes the figure of five seem more realistic.

As they were a creation of Ford's Design Centre in Geelong, the SurferRoos were all professionally built and finished. Changes from a stock XW Falcon ute were confined to the fibreglass body pieces, which made the conversion relatively easy. Ford's designers made sure the SurferRoo was practical too, by adding recesses and tie-down points in the spoilers for the octopus straps to hook into, and rubber pads on the tops to help grip the boards. Cleverly, the rear rack is also slightly higher than the front one, so when mounted, the surfboards are angled down, making them less likely to be lifted by the wind. Bench seats were moulded in fibreglass into each side of the tray area. A storage area, which also allowed access to the fuel tank inspection panel, was moulded into the fibreglass behind the cabin, too.

Amongst a rare lot, Wally's car is even rarer.

"(The dealership) told me mine was the only one made with a black roof," Wally said, referring to the black vinyl trim on the roof and fibreglass side panels. Anyone who's seen images of a SurferRoo may recall the orange floral pattern roof on the example that graced the cover of Wheels magazine back in 1970. The vinyl trim was ostensibly added to cover the join between the metal and fibreglass parts of the roof. In the case of the SurferRoo, the floral treatment was no doubt inspired by the 'Mod Top' mopars that appeared in the US around the same time.

Despite its quality of finish and distinct appearance, the SurferRoo generated neither the buyer interest or showroom traffic Ford were hoping for, so the project never went beyond the STP (Strict Trial Production) stage. If it had been released a few years later, who knows? The SurferRoo may have been a contemporary of the Sandman, rather than its forgotten predecessor.