When we heard that the Touring Car Masters were going to allow the XD Falcons to be eligible to be on the grid as of 2018 we were super excited, I couldn't wait to see how some one would turn one of these big ex taxi's into a full on racecar, I know they raced these back in the day but to see what they do now with all the modern bits and pieces and to turn an XD into pretty much a V8 Supercar is just super exciting and lets just say when we rolled up in the pits at the most recent Sandown 500 Marcus Zukanovic's XD did not disappoint.
On the Saturday of the Sandown 500 we went and found the XD in pit-lane and then introduced ourselves to Marcus, if you ever happen to be at an event and the TCM cars are there do yourself a favour and go have a chat to Marcus he and his team are some of the most approachable and genuine people we have met on pit lane, after having a little chat with him and explaining who we are and what we do he was inviting us to take the camera stick it inside the car, under the car and giving us a really good run down on it and the build.
Once we started really going over the car with our cameras it become really obvious that the level of the TCM field had just been taken to another level with this build, if you were to put a pre COTF V8 Supercar next to the XD there genuinely wouldn't be much of a difference, the main things is this car still runs a H pattern it has 15 inch wheels and a leaf sprung rear end but apart from that it is an XD V8 Supercar by all means.
Unfortunately the weekend ended terribly, about an hour after we had been in pitlane chatting with Marcus about doing this blog post we begun to head up to turn 6 to get a couple more shots of the XD out on track, everything seemed pretty good they went passed for the warm up lap Marcus was starting from a decent position, the race begun and we could see the beautiful XD heading towards us coming into to turn 6, Marcus was running a very competitive 3rd, I watched the whole thing unravel in front of me it felt like slow motion and I swear the front left had some kind of issue as it seemed to lock up very early in the braking phase and before he had applied any real amount of steering angle, the car really didn't wipe off much speed and made heavy front on contact with the tyre wall, a couple of drunken fans begun to cheer but I instantly felt panic for Marcus and sadness for the XD it felt like quite a long time before Marcus seemed to move but a true testament to the build of the car he jumped out and gave us all a wave before jumping in the medical car.
The guys have since had the car fully repaired and rebuilt for Bathurst where they once again proved how good the XD is after going from 30th to 3rd in the last race, Make sure if you see this on track at a race meeting you go on down to the pits and check it out it will not disappoint.
Bonus Images.
