AND..ANYONE KNOW WHERE TO GET A REPAIR MANUAL FOR MY 57'????

what you were told is true we never imported 57 or 58's into aus we still had enough 55-56 bodys left over for another 2 years we did keep importing engines though it was the first time ford australia was out of step with ford usa & canada.

yes it is true we got 4door sedans only no vickys or club coupes, customlines & our coupe utility which we called mainline.

our 57's came in 1 or 2 colors & some with a black stripe on the quarters & our 58-59's came in 1-2or 3 colors (all different) untill mid 59 when we got the tank fairlane.

interestingly our f100's were all the same as usa & canada but we didnt get the y-block untill 55 & it was the 272 only our f100's had the 292 as did our thunderbird's.

that explains why we never got them all our stuff came from canada henry wouldnt export to australia for some reason, yet in 1933 when lewis badt designed our coupe utes he went to america in 1935 so henry could meet the man who designed as he called it "the kangaroo chaser".

i met lewis bandt once he came in for petrol at the service station i worked at, he had 3 cars which he designed that he owned one of which was his 1934 ute, he drove it every day sadly at the age of 76 while driving his ute home from making a tv documentry about it he was killed in a head on collision with a 5 tonne tip truck. he gave ford australia some amazing vehicles. he was also the person to change the customline's into  coupe ute mainlines as you can see mine in my signature.

         That's interesting, never knew that. Moz, is there some kind of a book or article on the utes? Probably explains where we Yanks got the idea for the Ranchero and/or El Camino.

frank i do have a book on ford in australia its 21 years old now but its our best book on the history of ford hear which like canada started in 1904 fords were first assembled in geelong from 1904 to 1925 when the factory in geelong opened  so fords first factory was in my home town & if i look out my office window i can see the giant ford sign ford is also #1 sponser for our geelong football team.

according to my book lews ute design was a world first followed by gm holden copying it lew designed all of our coupe utes untill 1976 when he retired he was also responsible for a lot of other inovative designs a mk1 cortina fastback they only came in sedans & a mk2 zephyr station wagon the roof line of which he cut of a gm holden he also came up with a convertable version of our falcons in the 60's but yes it probably is where the ranchero's & elcomino's came from apparently old henry was very impressed with the kangaroo chaser.

you can google lewis bandt & heaps of stuff comes up you can also google ford factory geelong then click on highlights of ford australia which has all of fords models & info up to 2001 & for those intersted you can just google geelong to see all about where i live.

you can also google ford discovery centre whick is our  museum & has info as well.

John in Selma, IN