What’s it like driving a 1973 XA Ford Falcon Coupe down a drag track?

“The buzz you get is unreal,” says Josh Boscovich. “I’m changing gears in the air. It’s that cool.”

And Josh would know. He’s been doing exactly that since 2002 when, as a 19-year-old apprentice, he bought an old XA as a roller with a dream of following his father, John, into the family sport of drag racing.

“Dad had an XD streetcar—I think an ’82, maybe ’83,” Josh explains. “It was the quickest streetcar back then. It was beating race cars. I think it ran 11.2 (seconds) or 11.1 in ’84, which is pretty quick, even by today’s standards, in a full-size Falcon.”

“I couldn’t find an XD, so I settled for an XF, which I mini-tubbed, rollcaged, and we were at the process of building the motor. Then we went to Willowbank, which is the Winter Nationals in Ipswich, in Queensland, and I spotted this XA for sale on a trailer. “And that was it. It was all over. I needed it. I wanted it. So, I struck a deal with the bloke. It turned out he actually knew my dad from a long time ago. I only paid about 16 grand for it.”

The Falcon XA was Ford Australia’s first locally designed and built car, rather than a reworked US model. It was created in 1972 as a competitor to Holden’s Monaro and it quickly became an Aussie favourite—helping the Falcon name live on Down Under long after it had been retired in America.

Josh—a Capricorn Member who owns Bosko Mobile Mechanical in Wandandian, in the Shoalhaven, in New South Wales—spent two years reconfiguring the cockpit, fitting large rear slicks, installing wheelie bars, upgrading the safety of the chassis, designing a new rear wing for downforce, putting in a new fuel tank and getting the body sprayed black and orange. In June 2004 Josh took the XA to the Western

Sydney International Dragway (now Eastern Creek Speedway), where it ran in the Super Sedan bracket with a 358 Cleveland 4V naturally aspirated tunnel ram and a T400 transmission. It carried his dad’s old racing number, 551.

Over the next two decades, the black and orange XA would become a familiar sight at Australian drag races, getting steadily faster and performing better as Josh continued to tinker and improve the car. He installed a nitrous system, then upgraded it. The 358 became a 383, then a 393. After regularly top qualifying in the Super Sedans, he stepped up to the Top Sportsman category. In 2019, it was finally time to upgrade the recognisable black and orange paint job for something more modern—and it was here that the XA’s story very nearly came to a tragic end.

On 26 November 2019, a lightning strike started the Currowan bushfire. It would burn for 74 days, destroying almost 500,000 hectares and 312 homes, damaging another 173 houses and killing three people.

“I’m on two acres and the fire came up to the fence line of the property behind mine,” Josh said. “We’re talking fire as high as the trees, fireballs; it was bizarre.”

The fire coincided with a major overhaul of the XA.

“The car was in pieces. Parts of it were here in the workshop; parts of it were in the trailer; the roof and quarters were at a mate’s place; I had the chassis here at the shop. I started loading everything and the fire changed direction and went towards my mate’s place. His car was already loaded and he said, ‘what do you want to do with yours?’ Well, all the front end was on the hoist. I said, ‘leave it there’. For two weeks we were walking on eggshells about whether the fire was going to hit us. I was like, ‘just hurry and burn it, will you?’ But, in the end, luckily, it didn’t.”

The fire changed direction again, turning towards Bateman’s Bay, and saving the XA.

Then Covid hit. With drag events cancelled, Josh had plenty of time to work on the vehicle and refresh its look. He upgraded again, to a 410-cubic-inch Fontana block coupled with a four-speed dump clutch Lenco transmission and added a nitrous fogger system. For the upgrade to the paint job, Josh chose a silver that matched his Ford Ranger work truck.

It was a very classy makeover— turning Josh’s beloved XA into a silver bullet on the track. In 2021 the XA came runner-up in the Outlaw class at Grudge Kings.

“We PB’d all day, which was an achievement in itself,” Josh said.

Two years later Josh (together with his small team, including wife Nicole and his 13-year-old twin daughters) won the Nitro Champs and Round 4 Track Champs on a very competitive race day, with no wins from red lights or breakouts.

“After 19 years of racing, it was the one we had worked for,” he said. “Sure, we had won a few accolades before but none in our bracket and none with such a competitive field of fellow racers.”

Despite the victory, Josh is still tinkering with improvements. There’s plenty of racing left in both the XA and in Josh himself.

“I just like playing with,” he said. “I love to know how it works, why it works and what result you get. I’ve always done everything myself. If something’s not right, I’ll pull it apart, check it. It’s like therapy—but you’ve got to be crazy to enjoy this type of therapy. But I love it. I grew up racing.”