The Ford Falcon BA road car was introduced in September 2002 as a heavily re-engineered update of the preceding AU Falcon. Under the V8 Supercars regulations of the era, the racing version used a purpose-built space-frame chassis clothed in body panels matching the road car's silhouette, powered by a 5-litre V8 engine developed to the series' homologation rules. Ford began fielding the BA-spec race car from the 2003 season. The BF road car followed in October 2005 as the third and final iteration of the sixth-generation Falcon, bringing a range of mechanical refinements, and the racing body was updated to reflect the new model's styling for the 2006 and 2007 seasons.
Marcos Ambrose delivered back-to-back V8 Supercar Championship Series titles in the Falcon BA, winning in both 2003 and 2004. Ambrose, nicknamed "The Devil Racer" in reference to his Tasmanian heritage, became a defining figure of the Ford program during this period. His team mate Russell Ingall also raced in the BA during this era. The success of the BA in championship racing led Ford Australia to release two limited-edition road cars in tribute: the Enforcer and the Devil R, both based on the XR8, available exclusively in Envy Green and Shock-Wave Blue respectively, each bearing the signature of the respective championship driver.
The BA Falcon also proved competitive in endurance racing. Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup won the 2006 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 driving a Falcon BA, demonstrating that the model remained a front-running proposition even as it aged within the V8 Supercars field. By that point the BF-spec body was beginning to take over for shorter sprint racing, though BA-bodied cars continued to appear for a time in the grid.
The BA and BF Falcon V8 Supercars used the 5.4-litre V8 architecture that mirrored Ford Australia's road-going Boss V8 family. Structurally, the race cars shared only the outer body panels and certain aesthetic features with the production vehicles; the chassis, suspension, and drivetrain were all category-specific constructions. The BA Falcon race car's bodywork drew heavily from the road car's conservative European-influenced styling, giving the racing version a distinctive, upright profile compared to some of its rivals. The connection between the road car and the race car was a deliberate part of Ford's marketing, with the FPV range of performance road cars explicitly designed to visually echo the BA Falcon V8 Supercar.
The Falcon BA and BF era defined Ford's mid-2000s touring car identity in Australia. Ambrose's consecutive titles with the BA made him the first Tasmanian to win the championship, and the first driver to win back-to-back titles in the V8 Supercars era at that point. The BA's Bathurst win in 2006, delivered by Lowndes and Whincup — two drivers who would go on to become the dominant partnership of the following decade under the Holden banner — added a further chapter to the car's legacy. When the sixth-generation Falcon was succeeded by the FG series in 2008, the BA and BF era was remembered as one of the more competitive periods in the long Ford-Holden rivalry that underpinned Australian touring car racing.