The Ford Falcon AU is an odd enough car, as it is.
Introduced in 1998 as the blue oval's Australian answer to the Holden VT Commodore, it was panned almost universally for its design. The late '90s were a time when Ford were pushing for globalisation among its platforms, resulting in the Falcon deriving at least some of its wedge-lead looks from wind-tunnel studies and from what Ford was doing with the Taurus overseas.
As with all weird things from the '90s, however, the AU Falcon is now ironically (or unironically?) cool. People want to make internet memes about them, people want to preserve them, and more than anything else people want to know about how on earth such an out-of-character car came to be.
Among the most interesting YouTubers out there for all things Falcon AU is MotoringBox. The one-man channel has produced some of the most well researched and produced Falcon AU videos on the internet (a hard-fought title, that one) with his recently acquired Ford AU Fairmont Ghia. And his latest video tackles one of the single most bizarre features to ever be offered on any car; the 'Mobile Office Pack'.
At the height of the 'rep-mobile' motoring era, Ford Australia decided it would be a good idea to add a factory options specifically targeting businessmen and women working on the run in their Falcon AUs. The feature was a big slab of plastic that could be perched atop the transmission lever and centre console to be used as a sturdy computer desk.
Maybach, Bentley, and Rolls Royce, eat your heart out.
A computer desk in of itself is hardly interesting. But, what makes the hallowed Mobile Office Pack curious is that barely any of them are known to exist — to the point where some wondered whether the option even made it to production. But, MotoringBox managed to locate a brand new version of the pack. And, somehow, it manages to be both more tragic and more useful than we could've imagined.
Check it all out in the clip above.
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