Ford Australia management made the trip to Dearborn to pitch the proposal for a unique SUV based on the Falcon platform. They built that scale model, had it all costed, basically they wanted approval to spend the money to develop the model into reality. I'm fairly sure that's Edsel Ford II second from left. He actually did a stint in Australia and was responsible for the Falcon Cobra....................................
Being such a cost driven company, I can only assume the costing to put a unique body style into production was heavily in favor of the Australian team compared to engineering and building an existing model in right-hand-drive, then importing it instead of doing it locally. The local Ford and Holden teams were renowned for this, managing to do stuff for a fraction of the cost compared to their US counterparts.........................that's why you guys got the 2000's Pontiac GTO based on our Monaro.
Anyway, they got approval, then the US guys liked it so much they did their own version.
Freestyle -
SX Territory -
Most Territory's were powered by the naturally aspirated 4.0 inline 6, at least until the 2.7 diesel V6 arrived. They did however put the 4.0 turbo engine from the XR6 Turbo in there for a short while, with 245 kW (329hp), or the 270 kW (362hp) FPV version.
From what I can gather, the Freestyle wasn't very popular, probably because most would have bought the bigger Explorer. The Territory on the other hand basically killed off the Explorer in Australia. The Territory went into production in mid-2004, was facelifted in 2009, then a heavy facelift for the 2011 SZ model. The last one was made when before they closed the factory in September 2016. In 2004, the Falcon was the volume model, however over the last few years before closure, the Territory was significantly outselling the Falcon, people just didn't want sedans anymore.
You would think with such a popular nameplate, Ford would have had a replacement for the Territory? Nope.