The Ford Mustang is more than just a car, it’s a literal legend in the automotive industry. For Ford as a car company, the Mustang has represented a chance to drive interest in other Blue Oval products as well. With global sales of the 2015 Mustang nearing launch, Ford’s Australian division is finding that pre-orders for both the pony car and it’s four-door domestic muscle car, the Falcon XR8, are exceeding expectations.

“In terms of what we planned, the Mustang is well above expectations and the interest in the Mustang and the XR8 is in fact driving Falcon sales to well ahead of where we expected them to be,” Ford’s director of communications and PR Wes Sherwood told Motoring.com.au. While that doesn’t mean anything for the end of Ford’s manufacturing operations in Oz, it does mean that the outgoing Falcon won’t go quietly into the night.

In fact Ford announced back in March that it was more than doubling planned Falcon XR8 production following higher-than-expected demand. Ford had planned to build just 1,200 XR8s through the end of production next October, but the automaker now plans to make around 2,800 vehicles to meet sales expectations. A lot of this has to do with the special final editions that have piqued the interest of Australian Ford enthusiasts and collectors, but the introduction of the Mustang to Australia is also getting people into dealerships, and sometimes driving home in a Falcon instead.

Just how many Falcon sales can be attributed to the 2015 Mustang is difficult to say, and even Ford is having a hard time predicting the mix of four-door and two-door Ford performance cars. Ford does have about 2,400 firm orders for the right-hand drive Mustang. The 5.0 V8-powered XR8 models now account for about 10% of all Falcon sales despite a lack of advertising, and once the final special edition models are released next year, that number is even more likely to leap.

But from then on out, it’ll be up to the Mustang to deliver the rear-drive performance that Aussies crave every bit as much as Americans.