History of the Ford Falcon GTHO

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] they work hard to drive they were extraordinarily powerful suddenly your head a big car but stopped and kept stopping and handled and nothing else had done that until then cars gobbled fuel went very fast wore out tires and brakes that are very very high rate but they were just wonderful beasts of motorcars and to drive them on the road was almost as exciting as driving on the racetrack the GT Falcon on steroids it was just a bigger tougher faster racing version of the GT and again that was built with one purpose in mind win Bathurst [Music] the legend of the Falcon GT just grew you know in the H Oh handling options and the shakers and all this sort of stuff I mean blokes were giving up sex to have those cars [Music] in 1966 Ford released a new sedan they called the Mustang bread Falcon the XR in the following year it introduced a high-performance version bearing the GT badge for the first time it was powered by a 289 cubic inch v8 producing 169 kilowatts with a sensational top speed of nearly 200 kilometers an hour it only came in one color cold and it created a sensation the current fellow said drivers think how terrible they were but you got to remember we were in an era that we used to ordinary tires and ordinary brakes and ordinary handling cars and even though they were a production car Ford had gone to a lot of expensive problems to make them Virginia GT so a lot better car and I didn't find anything wrong with them but I mind you if you got out of a supercar you know one of them now you'd probably think boy that he sounds so good but that's just like getting out of my car at the moment and getting back into a 1967 model of any car [Music] 56 feet tread on the pedal and some $100,000 searches for word in a blue haze of burnt rubber now the GT was considered perfect for the 500-mile Bathurst and Errol the gallagher 500 and that year seven of the new cars were entered when the the XR GTS the first falcon gt's derived the Bathurst it was just it was people had never seen anything like this you think how sleepy the Australian motor motoring scene was before the first Falcon GT arrived this car just set a whole new benchmark and it really was extraordinary people had never seen anything like this before not even to the performance that the fact he had a a powerful v8 Falcon but the paint job you know the stripes the gold paint the chrome wheels this was real hot riding stuff and no one had ever seen anything like this for more from Ford Motor Company in this country and here's that right among the starters was a factory entered machine prepared and driven by the vastly experienced Harry Firth and a 21 year old rookie called Fred Gibson I was very lucky to get there dry because the drivers going to get a frank managed and Frank got stuck in America with the K&M race and I knew Frank pretty well because I had a sports car used to use Goodyear tires and he was the Goodyear Tire agent and they in French so I can't get back because they canceled the Canyon racing at the stay and they said well who are we gonna do get the foot in the car and he said well as young guy draws a sports car think it's going very well you give humoring us and give him the drop I think you'll go well so the guy for Ford in Sydney rang they said we're not drive this car with Harry first the ballast I said me like this I said yeah yeah I mean I'll be in that and it's amazing Charles how things happen I said yeah I'll do that and you don't hear any more about it well you've got the drive and we'll see your ballast in the iSchool yeah and I said well kind of a drive with one of these cars you forget the brothers oh yeah so they've got a press can I Drive around the streets of it in it and like that's the way I Drive this GT for the first time and that was fine I thought I well okay I went to ballast and I said what I do I said Oh Harry's a Harry staying at the I think Abercrombie and betters or something I think it was as they can't see Harry on Friday when you get in and see Harry never met Harry for my life so I dragged a ballast and knocked on this motel how is it Fred gifts now you come in I said I was chatting away good to meet you nor saw thee and I said Harry how we gonna go because this is the first time like a falcon sorry ieave the eights run about this but soon as the alphas and kubarz in that minis in there he said I will win the race I will win the race good Harry that's pretty positive start with in it he said he said there is no substitute for cubic capacity he said will win the race you they would I tell you to do and will win this race right okay and we did he did two thirds gone far as Dabo and the three big Falcon still Gagan gives him Martin open a sizable lead on the field I went and practices the current qualified and I think we're the first kind of race three minutes really and he said well done well done and then this thing is in the race I think he started or I don't who start of it in the race they hang out with a fence and because there was a wooden fence of Bathurst those days and there's no radios ready and look at this Harry hanging out of the fence going God he must want me to go faster and it's amazing had Charles I thought I was working a freckle off doing his best I could driving this thing as high as he wanted me the driver and all sudden ease told me to go faster it's amazing when someone like that happens you can find more speed and often exactly when he come out and I've cut my Westmont he wanted me to get a gap on the car whatever whatever and I just amazing how you find time we're in a circuit when this is done the bosses hang over the fence did go faster and I learned a lot probably not in my career on that first meeting with Harry and racing with Harry driver's talk to their machines coax them round here's the actual difference between Gibson on Kagan on the last lap Gibson is the dark car up front 53 although Gibson and Firth won the race their victory wasn't initially recognized because of a mistaken lap scoring that had the Gaghan brothers crossing the line first in another GT Falcon up in the tower the cross-checking they are DC execs now a more the suspect they've made a boo-boo what they did originally was they're warded the race went to Leo and Pete Gaghan in another X our Falcon but there was a huge kerfuffle after the race when Harry Firth who was driving with Fred Gibson he protested he said the lap scores had got it wrong and after they did like an hour or two hours I don't know how long it was they went through their books and I realized that Harry was right what had happened was that during the race Pete Kagan had come up pit straight turned into a hell corner to go up mountain straight and the car was running out of fuel so he thought I'm not going to make another lap so he turned into the road it was about halfway up Conrad Strait drove into the back of the pits down through the paddock and into the pit apron to refuel now what happened was the laps chorus thought that he'd done another lap so in actual fact they were awarded the win but they were behind the Gibson firth car not in front weeks later officials rectified their mistake but this was no real compensation for not being winner on the day I was disappointed that way had finished possession now at finished we didn't get the checkered flag at the finished he ready to be one Arthur on the Left score but it was was familiar my career like I was nobody I was like that this young kid racing the car no money in that season and that's before Ford murder coming I mean so I was driving this car and also I got the opportunity to drive this Falcon with Harry Firth it was a guru the exiled Falcons production run ended in February 1968 with nearly 85,000 being built including 596 GTS the new XT Falcon was released in April with the GT version getting a larger 302 cubic inch v8 and a choice of colors and transmissions it had only marginally more power with 171 kilowatts but was faster and more refined Ford with the first to decide to build a production racing car in the Falcon GT back in 1967 and it really was a racing car it had to be a road car first of all to be able to race at Bathurst and Baathist by that stage of the game and we studied to become quite an important event to win and Ford in 1965 had brought out the Cortina GT 500 as a production modified version of the ordinary Cortina GT it was specifically to race the Bathurst the next step was to go to the Falcon and that brought out then an entire train of Falcon GTS that Holden even though Holden were not involved in motor racing Holden decided that they had to do something about it so we first of all had the Monaro in 68 and 69 and then we went into the tirana era but that was really 1968 was the first head-on clash between the two big motor car manufacturers in this country only minutes to starting time in Australia's toughest race for standard sedan cars in the Ford camp the Gagan brothers leo and feet sporting a new crash helmet are confident of better luck than in past 500s they were flagged in first last year but lost on a recount of laps Paul positioned on the grid following fastest practice times yesterday are the new Holden Monaro 's 1960 gate solar first hardy 400-500 at Bathurst with eight Falcons and eight Haldeman arrows taking fact time they reach the aesir's des west holden monaro number 14 has hit the front followed by the Holden's of Hawkins Muir and power then the Falcons of Gagan and Gibson there were three worst GTS the goons with Spencer Martin in an change as he did mastiha when only narrowly beaten the time save could win the race for him this year [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and in the pits co-driver of the leading carpet Gibson confidently leads the worries of staying in front - Barry Seaton the Seaton Gibson car was leading the race with less than 20 laps remaining lead when a stone punctured the radiator and caused a cruel engine failure it's the leader Barry Seaton in with a suspected blown head gasket time is running out and every second vital a radiator Ito some rapid cooling and the car is sent back onto the track the gegen also suffered troubles after trying to run the full distance without a brake pad change and running out of front brakes the new Holden Monaro GTS 3 to 7 driven by Bruce McPhee and Barry Mulholland ended up winning the race it marked the beginning of holden ford rivalry on the mountain 67 we won brothers 68 we lived by this against the Monaro 's and we led the race that was one of the hardest races that Barry and I ever did because the cow is our powered by the Monaro but we had the workout we would pass them and I rode the queue in front across the top of the mountain to gain time because the car handle better I'm gain time across the top to hold him off down the mountain and we did that during the day and we led with 20 laps to go or something and he understands the radio and cooked the engine so we could have won that race but then with the Fallon's the menara with the Windsor motors we were really competitive and we were winning races still then the cleveland engines where we went downhill slowly all excitement happening at your board in the following year Ford introduced a new xw falcon with a faster more powerful GT models and with Bathurst in mind there was also a new premium performance version of the GT designated the GT h oh by 1969 the battle for Bathurst supremacy between Ford Holden and Chrysler was really starting to hot up and forward raised the performance part and new heights with creation of this car the first Falcon GT h.o with the distinctive Subaru decals on the front mud guards now the HL was based on the GT but it was an out-and-out batter special built by Al Turner's special vehicles division now the first phase of the GTHA program introduced the new more powerful 5.8 liter windsor v8 engine a long-range fuel tank and much improved suspension and brakes interesting point the 8:00 show letters originally stood for high output but they were changed to handling options just before release to try and cap some insurance premiums that were going through the roof on these cars I knew that Ford were developing a car and eventually we were able to obtain one of those cars and in fact was a standard style I flew GD HIO as I remember and so when we got the car of course we knew that these cars were going to be a bit special but I had a you know two-handed view of it because I wondered just what we would find when we actually got them onto a circuit in any case the first real impression I out of that car was following our decision to drive it over some considerable distance to just condition it embedded in I remember leaving rock tile the day or so after we received it from Melbourne and I drove up through the city round South Downing Street and onto the expressway it was a wet mid-morning wet slippery morning and I remember the thing slid sideways and this is on a city street and I hadn't driven at more than two or three miles you know I don't I thought god these things are going to be a handful on a circuit because remember it was a series production car and in theory at least we were not supposed to be able to change anything so that was the first impression I had a lot of torque and by today's standards a clumsy car to drive but nevertheless there was some bike for its time it was quite an exciting car to drive but a lot of oversteer he'll have forged built a special car to win bethis this year all I really everybody there's been quite a bit of controversy about this whether or not it's been a special car but we considered a normal progression in our what we term as a performance via the hecho come along and a guy called al Turner come along now was the the brazen American had worked at Ford Motor Company in Detroit and he was the man that did all the dragsters over there and that and he was the account was going to set the world on fire in Australia so we started out with a high Joe but then we sort of and I was very successful in the hide shows particularly in Sydney I had a Sydney car drove for forward I work scoured row with Moffitt and I had a Sydney cow I run out of my own workshop in Sydney and did all on parks Andrew parks and those sorts of things and we become over the years with a hecho pretty dominant in that's sort of racing in Sydney one that when one series number one on the car I was a guru and you sell while sorting and my business was was really mechanical business and I was just in them day was Falcon Duty hours what in their cars were done so I was making money as well out of it well the first time I was involved with Ford was in 1969 and they flew me down to Melbourne and that was just before sandy and in the same week actually and I walked into their workshop there and of course we'd never seen anything as professional as this before being in Queensland and I walked in and there were these three red or whatever violet whatever color they call it sitting there like a professional racing team and it was quite impressive when I thought about that I was going to be driving one of them at Sandy and that year the GTHA was it was an extraordinary development when you think of how the GT development had gone xrg T XT GT and then you got to the X W model that wasn't enough they wanted to build a super high-performance version and the whole purpose of building that car was to win batis that's how important Baathist was and that's why the place has that mystique these days winning Bathurst was the most important thing for a car manufacturer in those days and I think Ford were really at the head of pushing that bar up further and further but they did have their first race of Sandow and they're immediately successful moffat had been in Australia a couple of years in and it was making a name for himself as a competitor yes it was couldn't have had a better Drive and I was actually very fortunate to get it because Turner was lookout Turner the American who was running it was looking around for a driver for Moffitt and feed Gaghan said well you want to get frenzy he's not too bad so that's how I got the drive Sandom was to be the first competitive outing for the new GTA chose in September 1969 at the detsen three hour race a new cars had the perfect debut finishing 1-2-3 with canadian-born works driver Allan Moffat and Queensland's John French leading the way I wasn't doing this professionally so I wasn't as excited about it as Alan was but when we won and they did a lap of honour for us with him and I sitting on the bonnet or something he said I can't believe we won this I said why said Harcourt he said this is the best thing as happen to me since I've been here and I said okay but you know it was I'd been fortunate enough that won a few races from when I started in 1957 and you know it's just another race and we're lucky and we want the worst part about racing in those days of something that our authorities took quite a while to come to grips with was just flopping around in the seat it was a nightmare by their standards in Via dei they were fantastic by today's standards it's just like now getting out of a contemporary motor car or a contemporary sports car and getting into a an mg TC and you say to yourself why on earth that I want to buy this there are hard cars to drive like I drove a phase-three of sand and a few years ago for some guy I dunno why ever did it come I've never done anything since and I just wondered how we were driving I said to the guy I said the way you you're driving this car it is it is bad to drive you know because we've moved on now but that was seriously bad cars when you come down the straight at a hundred and forty mile an hour in these things on the old balustrade and you come across and sometimes you coming down to pass a slow car and you look at the wind sock that a wind sock about this weather which way the wind was blowing on the stripe and you come down three wide pass and small cars you at them know which way the wind was blowing and give yourself enough room to because lift off the ground and move you across the track that was you seriously fast motorcars but then you get to the end of the straight because the drum brakes in the back after sort of maybe sort of like halfway through the race the back brakes were useless so used to come down and we used to have this saying where you have your foot hard on the throttle coming down the stray and you give the brake pedal with your left foot for the left and two of the right so you have to pump the pedal up so you're coming on the straight and you've got your foot hard down you're doing 140 mile now and got your left foot coming across the pump the brake pedal up while putting the brake on is to pump the pedal up and get the pedal pumped up and then when you're getting the brake in there you go the clutch can put this first the throttle on the brake and give it a pump and stop the car and that's what you did for half the race and like a lot of people as you see probably in those Brothers films they went off the track under bracing that for they had no brakes they just burned him right out but muffle was a master and he was probably the best mother to me Allen wasn't sort of even though he's a personal friend and everything he wasn't a natural driver like a Pete Gaghan mother was a thinking driver Allen was the sort of Drive they had to think about it lets us the things SAS the circuit have a pond Roberta and psych himself up the driver and he but he was breed at that and in a race he was mild looking after the tires and the brace and the whole thing and he would work himself hard and wear himself out but you see him Ellen getting out of a car for a long actually nekkid he was worn out because she'd worked yourself hard largest crowd in the history of the race has come to see what promises to be the most thrilling motor race of its kind ever staged with main interest in the battle for line honours between the new and specially built Ford Falcon GT a chose and the car that won convincingly last year the Holden Monaro GTS by the time bethis came around in 1969 it seemed everyone wanted to drive a GT h o 14 were entered in the great race with free works cars driven by Allan Moffat and Allen Hamilton Fred Gibson and Barry Seaton and of course the flying Gaghan brothers that was the Windsor engine pay chose and the cars were dominant I really would don't they they sort of like they had that they had the man arroz we had whether we had more power we had a bit of package cows are better package one of the worst things with the car was a drum rear brakes the cow is a good car and I think morph and I we're up we won two through something one stays here the Kagan car is pacemaker at excel corner and their speed up the mountain is nearly as fast as last year's going down the Falcons had dominated practice but some didn't get past the first lap when a major crash involving Bill Browns GTH Oh entangled a quarter of the field [Music] when the dust settled and the track was cleared the falcons continued to lead the new holden monaro GTS 350s but a decision to try new Goodyear racing tires would prove costly for the Ford team the main problem with the the forward attack at Bathurst in in 1969 wasn't really the speed of the cars those first days were very very quick cars there was no doubt about it but al Turner who was the competition boss in those days he wanted to do everything right he wanted to give his teams and his cars every chance of victory so what he did was an import a large batch of these latest Goodyear racing tires from the US now the way I understand it is that Moffitt Allan Moffat was the only man who tested these tires when they were determining whether they'd be suitable for Bathurst now the problem was that Moffitt was a master of throttle control and master of keeping the car straight a master of driving these series production cars so based on his testing feedback those tires were fine but what they found when they got to Mount Panorama that the other drivers who perhaps didn't have the same sort of throttle sensitivity the same sort of finesse that Moffitt had they were burning these tires up left right and center and there are blowouts all over the place and that really brought the whole forward attack undone it's interesting though that out of all those cars Alton had brought Allan Moffat in because he was concerned he'd seen all these tires blowing and he said I can't leave Moffitt out there but as they found out the race that Moffat stars were actually in very very good shape and if Turner had left him on the track he could well have won that race one of the things that we implemented instantly that year was a racing tire it still had a tread pattern and this was fine but my teammates hadn't actually had the luxury of this type of tire on a production touring car before and not to be unkind but just facts are facts they hammered the tires too hard and both the two team cars in front of me had blowouts with rather dramatic holdin tactics are to push the GTA chose making their drivers keep foot to floor and brake as much as possible so with every GTA Cho has a GTS close behind [Applause] down in the pits to the Falcons are in trouble at our blow-up rings hurry gaps in for much-needed attention for trouble this time it's the leader Pete Kagan and he's also had a blowout but still speeding to the vents Leo is to take over but this unscheduled stop could cost the race it was expected especially important tires would only be changed once but now there must be another stop and L Turner rightly called me in thinking that I was also in danger when in fact and my tires were in good shape and if I hadn't have had that premature pit stop I do believe Ellen Hamilton and I could have gone on to get our first victory up there but I just had to wait a year another driver having his first outing in the new t th o was sydney privateer jean goss but he too had problems and couldn't finish I don't think I had any real expectations in terms of winning the race my first expectation was to try and get some experience in this category that was really the primary expectation I had and as it was in our first past 500 it was Dennis cribben and I went into it with a bit best commitment we could make but Dennis lost control sometime into the race hit the bank left the car but went returned to the car and drive it back to the pits and that meant of course that we we were disqualified so we were out of our first 500 before we'd gone very far at all we probably cover 150 miles or something like that allowing balance I'd completed 60 laps amethyst and that was invaluable experience the series-production touring car race 34 laps seventy six point five miles and the coveted pole position in this very big field is car number 32 a Ford Falcon GT h-o to be driven by Allan Moffat of Victoria in the first half of 1970 the GT h.o later referred to as the phase one was campaign successfully in series production racing especially by Moffat and Gibson who won many races in the why they go anticipating the flavor a very even start and going on the outside in thirty-one wrenching for second year is still level with moppet as they go around there's no way for the Holden's to go anywhere and this is the formation appearing Montford slips to the lead gag and tucks in behind him on the inside in third place phase one was a great car was a Windsor was hydraulic lifters I was up against the 327 mine arrows it was better than I was having to 350 minute was better than them I won the um we erase an hour race with Brock in the 315 manaro Bobby Morris was in the street to menara I beat them in Sydney in the Sydney races in Bathurst net they won in Bathurst and that as well but the thing is so as a Windsor engine car before the Cleveland car when the face restarted and those sorts of things that's when we started to have troubles in gone out of the picture at the bottom and Moffitt across the ditch at the top chuckling the wheel there making sure he doesn't get to sideways and spent Ford's agony at losing the 1969 Bathurst race only intensified the company's win at all costs approach for 1970 it brought out this car the xwg dho phase two with an even more powerful 5.8 liter v8 engine sourced from its us engine plant in Cleveland Ohio now the combination of the new engine plus a year's testing certainly did the trick this actual car was driven to victory by Allan Moffat at Bathurst in 1970 the new phase to GTHA was released in august 1970 bethis was the major target and once more 14 phase twos made it to the mountain taking advantage of the pole position moffat leads up mountain straight with BOM skillfully maneuvering into second place ahead of Seaton and MacLean speculation about ports tactics is rife there are those who feel Moffett will attempt to break up the field especially as he's backed up by McPhee and Seaton but the majority are convinced he'll drive only as fast as the dictates of the race demand these cars were very fast with a sub 15-second standing for a time and a claimed top speed of over 230 kilometers an hour there were times when you had to use all your judgment in card and negotiate slower cars at such a high closing speed on what was effectively a narrow country road and it's worth remembering as well that the edges of the verges and the edges of the circuit were really just that country road post and rail fences and concrete culverts and stuff like that and gravel verges and if it rained uncontrolled drainage over certain sections of the road along the top of the mountain so it was you were driving a road car basically with a lot of energy on a country road stretch in New South Wales or hopefully a nice Sunday afternoon and you were driving it bloody quick and trying to avoid running into other competitors and staying off the hardware you know but that was quite a commitment driving them at speed after five laps Moffitt regains the overall lead resisting bonds challenge to an early duel Moffitt instead concentrates on pre-race set speeds [Music] maintaining the form that took him to success in the Tasman series at Warwick Farm Anderson down three our race prior to Bathurst Moffitt's control and handling is giving him scope to virtually dominate the 500 even at such an early stage it seems only bad luck could rob him of victory it was about the first time anyone had ever been under three minutes at Bathurst and I think for memory we were Moffatt was done up 50 or 51 to 52 51 or something like that and I was a bit slower but the the cars had improved a considerable mayor excitement surrounds ma Bert's first scheduled pit stop after 45 laps [Music] as new tires are being fitted on the GTA Cho and fuel replenished by a well drilled pit crew there's West's four-barrel pacer flashes parts to take over the lead but al Turner is unperturbed we've made our first stop Bruce McPhee and it took two minutes and nine seconds to change three tires and we put in 25 gallons of fuel we've got moppet bills up again with more tired than 25 [Music] although the new GTA Cho's were fast in qualifying filling the top three places on the Bathurst grid race reliability would prove to be a problem Fred Gibson suffered differential trouble while five other phase 2 drivers were forced out with engine failure they weren't specialist engineers like Ron Harrop and the gearbox people that that just had everything perfected people were getting bits from all over the place and so and these guys were stretching cars hard but the other thing was this they were not the electronics to look after them so Formula one cars blew up everything blew up because some drivers over drove them some teams didn't prepare them as well sometimes you had bad luck sometimes you got bad rods or valves or whatever so you know there were less perfect days these days the electronics I mean a person in Japan knows as much about what more about what's going on in a Honda Formula one engine driving in the Grand Prix at this moment than there's the driver Jenson Button in the car and can say switch off Park the car don't destroy it because I know the oil pressure or the temperature or whatever or the power on one cylinder or whatever is being affected there was nothing like that in those days we're a private team and I remember that we had to try and deal with running engines in you know this was the age before chassis dynamometer and stuff like that and one great an overnight panic at Bathurst when we were based in the the Ford dealership Clancy motors and we were there were a number of other four teams and after practice in 70 most of the bloody phase twos had piston failure and there was a hell of a pass I mean yeah you had a piston failure in your own engine and you thought god we better go away and deal with that quietly and then you got back to the garage and you found everybody had the same problem you know but there were phase two is all over the place with pistons pulled out of them and dealer principals cars so you know people like Max Wright and Max McCloud had driven you GT a chose up to Bathurst well they all fell down and some saw being pulled off and Pistons and rods anyway we rebuilt our engine and we took a set of eight Pistons and connecting rods from Max's personal car and fitted them in the engine and we had we really wanted to run that engine for some distance before we had to face the start the next morning and so I said to Bob look let's take it for a run out to Blaney and then we'll cut across and go out to orange so by this time it was probably 2:00 a.m. we went out to Blaney back diagonally to the western highway and we were heading west now and I looked at the temperatures and pressures and I he was driving the car and I said look you could increase the engine speed a bit and we ran it up the speed range a bit and we came to a little town called Lucknow and I mean as quick as I warned him about the speed limit sign but as as quickly as we saw it it disappeared past us you know and inevitably I would ironically I looked around and there were two little headlights coming out of the side street and I said gee I think there's a cop there mate and so we slowed down and pulled over and a mini ass highway patrol mini s ran up behind us and stopped the policeman jumped out put his hat on and Bob said I'll handle this so he got out and walked around the back of the car and started talking another cop and I could see I could hear that he was getting nowhere because the policeman was Tata he was in fairly modest style on the car so I got out of the passenger seat and went around I convinced the policeman that it was our own operation and that we legitimately were trying to run this car in and so on but it looked like a pretty heavy fine and I said to this young cop I said have you ever driven in one of these things and he said no one said well would you like to drive it into orange I said Bob you take the yes and that's what we did he drive it into orange and he stopped when we got near the town he said I think I better stop here the boss might be a didn't his you know patrol car anyway that was a great story and so we parted friends and they were the sort of things that happened to us in those days when we were running these cars on public roads and now and again it wasn't now and again you get caught and in this case we we didn't see a speeding sign and that was a good story and I too remember during which the crew makes their fastest turnaround Moffitt who'd been fastest in practice chose to drive the entire 500-mile race distance solo unlike many other GTA Cho drivers he managed to avoid major reliability problems but Moffitt did suffer in another way there was one problem that I hadn't been counted on and this was towards well certainly towards about the five hour mark something started to get rather difficult to hold back and had a pit stop and in those days the pit stops were about three minutes and I was determined that I had enough time to get my fly undone and I didn't care where it was gonna go I just kept my feet up on on the pedal so they didn't get wet and I knew the floorboards would be hard enough to dissipate anything that was going to come out of me and this was fine until I get a little knock on the window and it's Adrian Ryan from channel 7 saying Alan would you have a minute and I would still love to see the look of my that day where I didn't dare stop what I was doing because that was too important and I'm carrying on a conversation through the window at the same time I didn't have time to get Ruiz IFFT up and things were quite drafty on Conrad straight for three or four laps until I could get myself back to the the manner in which I started the race shall we say in 1970 ionically both drove the race single-handed and my remaining memory of that was going beyond those limits that I'd ever been in before in terms of continuously driving a car on a circuit and during the afternoon working at keeping maintaining concentration and that sort of stuff relying on some water and some chilled grapes I used to carry in the console but really not having any any difficult with it difficulty beyond driving within what you reckon was your own physical limit but when I got out of the car after my guess six hours behind the wheel five and a half or six hours I remember going a walk and I felt as though I was walking on my knees I had no real feeling no sense of balance that's what it was and that came back in a few minutes of course but it was a you know it was satisfying to think that I'd completed that race single-handed and Alan had done the same I'm pretty sure we both drove several of those events in those years less than half a minute ahead of McPhee as the race reaches its closing stages robert's recaptures third place from chippers with some attacking driving but almost immediately after going over skyline Roberts car spins and crashes backwards down a steep slope another G th ER driver doing the race solo was private aid Tony Roberts who failed to finish after surviving one of the most terrifying crashes ever seen on the mountain when he left the circuit tail first over skyline officials and spectators rushed down to render assistance but although the car is a write-off fortunately Roberts is only dazed moffat realms forest elbow and heads for Conrad straight for the last time he leads McPhee and goes on to win from his team mates with Don hollenberg a lap behind Moffitt's dominant performance to take out the race was a taste of things to come and Ford not content to rest on its laurels seriously upped the ante in 1971 the XY Falcon GTHA phase 3 was the third and final phase of the aho program now this car was the first to introduce the shaker scoop which attached to the top of the engine through this hole in the bonnet and it shook side to side when the engine was running hence the famous name now the phase 3 certainly deserved its fearsome reputation Allan Moffat demolished the field at Bathurst in 1971 this car over here was the top place privateer at Bathurst in 72 finishing second overall and this car took Allan Moffat to victory in the 1973 Australian Touring Car Championship under the new group C rules the only full-time professional in the race Allan Mullins with Ford marketing director Keith Horner John French back up title - Muffit Muffit and i were with a quickest in practice and an AO Judy was to just go round around and me following and gain probably I couldn't pass him anyhow I don't know [Music] [Music] as those at the rear of the field battle for positions in the chives - Hari farrotto corner market powers up Mountain straight already out on his own [Music] [Applause] so solid is the pace the field is fairly well spread out midway through the opening lap Moffitt is pursued by French and Makai who's improved one place on his grid position unleashing its newly developed power Moffatt accelerates the GT ho2 something around 140 miles per hour down Conrad French also has his foot down interpret straight and Moffitt sets about dictating the pattern of the race the phase three GTHA was that the ultimate gdh oh and it was the most powerful it was the fastest and certainly at Balthus it was the most dominant the extraordinary difference I think between the phase 2 and the phase 3 was Moffitt in practice or official qualifying for the 1971 race he went out there and he just sucked the doors off everyone else in the field I think his time was something like 13 seconds faster than the lap record from the previous year which gives you some idea of how much faster the phase 3 was the Falcons increased their margin over the smaller cars who whilst having a cornering advantage are out sped on the straights [Applause] phase three was a pretty useful sort of a car and particularly for the globe wheels by now I think at Bathurst we were running up to a terminal speed of about hundred and forty-eight miles an hour pretty quick in those days and I can remember might have been during practice or the event at Bathurst strong crosswinds and at that speed these were basic elementary touring cars in essence and I can remember trying to judge to get up to windward of us of a class car as we had closed on and down the street and on two or three occasions I can remember cresting one of the intermediate humps coming out into open air and the car being said across the circuit with a stiff cross wind gust and having full opposite lock in the gravel verge on the ride at that speed of 445 odd miles an hour so that was scintillating stuff to say the least you know but great memories again over the terrific energy and speed of the face I love the face read only 300 of the new phase threes were built but there would be one less after the race the car driven by the once again unlucky privateer Bill Brown in fourth place and the Jon Newell entry is Bill Brown at mcfillin Park a burst tire on Brown's car causes the most horrifying crash ever witnessed at Bathurst that accident took place fairly late in the race as I remember and bill at that stage in the race I was driving the car as quickly as I could because we had to be there were so many things to consider and I was here I used a low profile Goodyear front which fouled the ball joints and you had to be mindful of that and so you had to try and avoid allowing the car loading the front tire walls too too heavily in cornering but and so at that time of the race I was concerned to see bill closing from behind but I had to discipline myself to allow that to happen because I mean you didn't want to be passed we were racing for track position and Bill came closer and over those few laps as he came from being in the distance in my mirrors to being quite close I could see along the top of the mountain trials of blue smoke coming off the right front tire and I knew that his front tire the bag on the tie was binding on the top ball joint but of course I had no we're warning anybody and they know in in the in the particular fateful lap his car just went out of control right behind me and I saw the whole accent as much of it as I could but I could see it was a bad accident I expected the circuit to be closed next lap around but it wasn't we got through but I saw them assisting bill out of the car and I'd hoped that he was all right but it was a hell of an accident but I from a technical point of view in my view it was inevitable that's the point I'm trying to make and I knew I knew bill and I knew how determined he was and I was just hoping he'd just ease off on those fast rollercoaster curves along the top of the mountain but it didn't happen and obviously what happened was that the the right front tire filed and catastrophic failure because the wall would have been cut through and the car went out of control and he went up the bank and ran along the fence as we know we have a time at about one minute fifty and for that we have put on at least thirty gallons of fuel and on four complete tires he's a very happy man every time he comes by the smile gets bigger time keeping the mother does his wife Pauline who nowadays regularly carries out this task [Music] consolidating his grip on the classic profit houses rivals struggling to keep within range I think at one stage we were nearly a lap in front of everybody and then with about 30 or 40 laps to go I can't remember exactly my car started to miss I stopped and they looked in the fuel tank and put change the filter there I went out again and it didn't make any difference so it came in again and they looked at the filter in the carburetor and it was blocked up they fixed that in a way I went again and I think I finished up fifth or something like that I'm offered one by a lap and you know we would have finished a good first and a second but he didn't really matter because I think the top five or six cars were all Fords now in control Moffitt averaging around 249 there are some close calls for those pressing are little too hard moffat has an advantage of almost two laps and barring misfortune is a short of victory [Music] Vons and Scotland have taken over second place and Mackay is close behind [Music] [Applause] [Music] his concentration inflexible Moffat is in no danger of becoming complacent the race ended up being a Ford benefit with the GTA chose filling five of the top six places Allan Moffat claimed pole position and led all the way to take his second Bathurst victory in demoralizing style Ford entered a three car team on many occasions so just keeping Freddie Gibson at bay was a pretty good start and that was always a pleasant chore because Freddie and I got along extremely well John French was the was the court jester on many occasions kept us all smiling when we could but I was aware of my responsibilities to try and win I was a paid professional driver and as such if if we were going to to get one through I felt very keenly about trying to do that unfortunately we really did have plenty of opposition from the Xu ones if we ever faulted and although the v8 had its advantages going up a mountain straight and could haul the mail as I mentioned a fairly quickly down the straight it had very lackluster brakes and it did roll a lot through the corners and they actually ones were very nippy and very well driven naturally with Colin and Peter and they were always a big threat Moffat is our happy man as he approaches Murray's corner 500 miles I can assure you this is the happiest turn a driver can make is this left-hander on to the straight waiting for the nearest opponent is over on left behind and his overall time of six hours nine minutes forty nine point five seconds betters the previous record by about twenty minutes the Phase three was so dominant at Bathurst in 1971 it was the catalyst for a number of changes one of those was holden and back to the drawing board after getting hosed by these big thundering v8 falcons at Bathurst they signed off on Harry Firth who was the boss of the Holden dealer team going off and developing a v8 version of the of the Toronto X you want he actually got as far as building a prototype and GM H were at a point where they were going to manufacture these cars for the 1972 race before of course the supercar scare of 1972 scuppered all those plans but that just shows what an effect that car the phase three had on the Australian motoring scene Bathurst was so important in those days that Holden were prepared to sign off on something as crazy as a v8 xu1 Torana to knock off Ford at Mount Panorama that's how important bethis was this is the South Pacific Touring Series and his alma Marx to give us a rundown on the competitors thank you about the first one we're looking at a talent Moffitt 50 his gdh a falcon mr. Foster's time in practice yesterday the second on the grid will become a Peter Brock in carnival 47 litre honor each year one and on the ridge route three is John and Gus in his GT HIV in 1972 the phase three carried on where it had left off the year before but named drivers like Allan Moffat Fred Gibson and John Goss continuing to rack up great performances in the car [Music] still holding a petition right side traveled when car number 44 Sealift on the start van picking up the leader Allen offered as expected as he goes down into the right-hand corner makes his way down around the bottom end of the circuit now and this the first left on the South Pacific touring series John Kasich the GTHA Falcon or Leo Gagan must win the event today to take out the championship this is the final round final of four rounds held here in Virginia and Joseph Kagan must take it respectively there was a lot of racing to do and we had limited resources but often it was frantic and I can remember that at Oran Park I competed in the Basel x100 marathon and that was 100 laps of the short circuit at Oran Park on a hot summer night and I can remember that Brock had Paul and he managed to pull ahead of me in the race and we just couldn't understand it anyway I drove as hard as I could and you know after about 20 laps I had really no brakes at all which which we expected it but the nature of the circuit was such that you could slide the car into the corner at the end of the straight and also in a girl coming down off the Little Dipper but I Drive on and I got pretty good at watching the speed off with a slide you know unfortunately we managed to get through on tires but we finished a strong second and later on actually the hardened dealer team Commodore was disqualified because they had an illegal camshaft which I had animala gated or whatever it was so he actually had won it and didn't know it at the time but at the end of that night at about 10 o'clock we we had planned to go to the Queensland or hope to go to Queensland the next day if we'd been able to finish race for the gold case 300 and so at the end of that night at 10 o'clock I work with my brother Paul and we loaded a tool box into the backseat of that car and a spare wheel and put a handful of chicken wire up each of the side exhaust pipes four inch straight-out pipes and my brother Paul drove that car overnight to Queensland but anyway I hurried I'm to rush Carter's Bay slept for a few hours and caught the first T on a flight for Coolangatta and I remember that night I just had to pack up my driving suit in or a small bag and it was still saturated with perspiration and got to Queensland the next morning got down to the circuit and the car wasn't there at that time it hadn't arrived and at 10 a.m. I saw there was a and of course you had to enter the circuit you can only enter the circuit at surface during between events because the circuit crossing went across the track itself anyway at around 10 o'clock now I saw Paul drive across the circuit I was much relieved because the 300 was to start at 11 o clock or something like that so he bought her straight around in the back of the pits and Peter Jeffries and the guys at Ford Jack the thing up and changed the brakes all around disks pads and shoes and drums at the rear change the oil and filter replaced the air filter I think they might have put a set of plugs in the thing dropped her off the jack I started from the back of the grill and we finished third and flew iron that night so that sort of thing couldn't be done today you know so we'd raced in two states over night and we had when we'd won in New South Wales and came third in Queensland wonderful you know so there are great memories of the track however a political storm was brewing that would kill plans for future improvements to the Falcon GT h o breed in June 1972 media and political pressure forced the manufacturers to stop building their so-called Bathurst suit cars for the road holden scrapped plans for its Tirana xu1 v8 I stood forward with its successor to the phase three the XA g th o phase for the 1972 supercar scare killed off what would have been the ultimate high-performance falcon the XA GD h o phase 4 you know when Ford decided to ax the car the Ford works team were well advanced with construction of three race cars for the 1972 bethis 500 race now as you can see if this car was the earmark for Allan Moffat to drive it's the only one of the three that was fully prepared for racing and it's now owned by David Belton quite simply the phase four would have been the fastest the best handling the safest of all the JTA chose right down to its signature 15 by 7 inch alloy wheels which were designed specifically for this car to improve brake cooling and handling the phase four may have been killed off but the legend will live forever there are only four cars that fit that description that were built forward special vehicles the race team had started work on three race cars and one car went down the production line as a sort of a test run and that was the only car that was fitted with a GD a choke plate so officially there was one production car and three race prototypes built that was it one has survived one of the fully prepared or the only fully prepared race car David Bowden the queensland collector owns that one the production car is held in great secrecy by a collector who we hope one day will liberate that car and we can all get to see it the second race car that was being built for Fred Gibson that was destroyed that car was given to Bruce Hodgson he rallied the car quite successfully in fact but it was eventually written off in a road smash and the third the third of those are three race cars that was being built as a spare that car fortunately survives - so it's been extraordinary that three of those four original cars are still around today it's going to be a battle between these three makes of series production cars the cries the charges the hold makes you ones and the poor GDA chose [Music] now well you could say that common ones got the jumping on the new XQ ones and thrusting up from the second route of the witness second price is a very determined hermocrates will be displaced the white charger of Doug shivers and down this trade I'd say we might see that me out there I started to perhaps make some impression on the little green Tirana and there's contact over on the gauge shutters line on the inside Moffatt ranging up on the outside and having a break by soon it would appear on a silly as lead as they would and integrate for the first time so Vaughn had no choice but to continue racing the phase three however with an arrow 14 inch diameter steel wheels the a chose were starting to suffer some serious tyre trouble in 1972 so some new 15 inch globe alloy wheels which had been developed specially for the phase four were approved for use on the phase threes instead just in time for the Sandown 250 where John Goss led home another GTA choke trifecta we had reliability and we had enough speed to really stamp our mark on that race and that was a major event in the lead up to Bathurst and of course in history it's a major event supporting the baddest race a lot philosophically when we look back at that era so of course I was happy to win that race and I can remember the governor of Victoria presenting me with the award and the wonderful ambiance at Sandown with sometimes up to 40,000 people in the stands giving us a good hour cheerio you know good stuff yeah good memories [Music] so batter 72 saw the 3.3 liter 6-cylinder tirana Xu ones up against them more powerful but aging phase threes Moffatt was once again fastest in the dry qualifying session to claim pole position beside him was John Goss and behind them French and Gibson all in phase three broken thanks to the Tirana meets Gibson of course of stiff neck in their moment however luck was not with for that year heavy rain at the start of the race played havoc with their tire choice most major casualty was Fred Gibson who lost it amid filiming pie and rolled in almost the same spot as a Tirana once again driven by the unlucky Bill Brown the track was been wet he was a drawing line happening and I was in a hurry because I was trying to make catch up once we're on race tighten up with tires I think we're on and was the you're in the groove and I was passing a lap car and ice what I should have done was stayed behind him till I got around the top of the mountain but no no no I'm just sneak past there he was giving me some room but he didn't give me enough for him and I got the outside tires in the width and they got in the wet and just lost it and she rolled over you know and that was bad but the thing was the funny of those days one of the funny stories about that was it's like you talk about Douglas Hughes used to go used to smoke a cigarette for around about this sorting needs to go past the control then please see drip down Swilly and put the secret back and drop the mountain but the thing is ice to carry some oranges in a plastic bag in the center console to have something to eat as you go around because this keep you you know and the thing is I roll this thing over and I'm upside down and all the oranges have come out of the center console and full over everywhere there's I always cut up square oranges which we used to cut the oranges up and they've all fallen everywhere and then I thought what do I do and what a head up there's my first roller sell it the seatbelt going crash on the roof but he'd come down and crests on the roof yeah strange experience really folks were Moffatt winning his third consecutive batters 500 were not to be a spin in the early wet running cost him the lead then he lost more time with pit lane time penalties and later brake problems by Moffitt last time in he was complaining about the Falcons brakes and this could be the reason for him bringing the car in so sir yes it looks as though the mechanics are checking out the system no ever to change tires I was worrying about topping off fuel tanks contain a disk topped with developing 181 and in the end of pockets chances of taking 500 from gray disappointing moment a driver who would go on to become a Holden racing legend Peter Brock won the race in a Tirana xu1 however at least some pride was salvaged for four with the fine second placing by John French in his distinctive dark purple phase 3 it was an extremely good car and and why we went so well there compared with some of the other forwards is it it was a wet Bathurst and we're having trouble with the locker diff giving us too much oversteer so before the race we actually put a different type of definite which is a clutch type diff and it didn't give you the drive that a lock a gave you and that made us as quick and we were quite competitive until I got a puncher early in the race and lost two laps but it was of an extremely good matica it was a very successful meeting for myself and for Brian Byrd forward who who owned and gave me the opportunity to drive it but the the success about this wasn't as important it is today that was Peter Brock's first win and he was over the moon about it because he was just about the starting on his professional career and it was fairly important him it was important to me because well we finished bathers we'd run second and it was a lot of fun and there was a good lot of party and after it but it wasn't the beginning in the end of everything still very close together in Gigan working to try and size off Beachy try to get through and put BG between himself and Bob Jones c'mere oh and here he goes now ranging up inside Beatty and there's nothing that beachy can do about it now he's got another chapter in the DTH o story was written by Ford a couple years earlier when it's built two very special cars that were definitely not for public consumption [Music] in 1970 the Ford Motor Company of Australia decided to build two very special GTHA falcons the Allan Moffat and Pete Gaghan to drive in the Australian Touring Car Championship they were called the super Falcons they were built using lots of lightweight exotic components and immensely powerful fuel-injected v8 engines now although Moffitt chose to stick with his Trans Am Mustang Pete Gaghan persevered with this car and with a whopping 617 brake horsepower this car rates is the most powerful improved production car ever built it also starred in what many fans say was the best touring car race of all time when it narrowly beat Moffitt's Trans Am and mount panoramas Bathurst atcc meeting at Easter 1972 conception of speed the idea was that speech he was doing very well in the manaro in the Australian Touring Car Championship and Ford Motor Company sold Falcons they didn't sell Mustangs so al Turner who is the head of the competition department decided okay we need to build some gdh OS that are going to blow norm beats you off the face of the map so they built two cars one was for Allan Moffat one was for Pete Gagan they weren't known as the super Falcons then but they've become known just through the incredible folklore in the history around the cars but these were extraordinary things like in today's money each one of those cars cost over a million dollars to build 600 horsepower v8 engines custom-made fuel injection systems super-lightweight panels I mean they even went to the extent of putting in magnesium door hinges and titanium wheel nuts like it just went on and on and on and on the expense was was incredible and these cars were supposed to have just dominated the scene but they never really delivered on their promise once the cars were built I think the factory tended to step away from the cars a bit when the development of them was left to Allan Moffat and Pete Gagan because LM off it was running the the Trans Am the boss 302 Mustang which was a proven winner he experimented with his super falcon but he could never get that car anywhere near the pace of the Mustang and as he was running his own business which was effectively Allan Moffat racing he had responsibilities to his sponsor coca-cola there was no way that he could give up the boss 302 to race the super falcon so ultimately that car was put aside Pete Gagan however his Mustang was getting a bit long in the tooth by the end of 71 it was five seasons old and there really wasn't anything more he could get out of it so he decided to dedicate himself to developing that car and he spent an enormous amount of his own money on it turning it into what eventually became a race winner only one championship race win but it was the best one of all and there was that race at Bathurst in Easter 72 changes to the showroom based series production rules in 1973 could have meant the end for the faith 3 is a dominant racing force however more liberal modifications allowed under the new Group C production touring regulations that year actually kept the aging XY falcon racer at the head of the pack the final chapter of the g th o story was fittingly reserved for Allan Moffat who steered Ford's last phase 3 campaign in the 1973 Australian Touring Car Championship the car carrying the number nine actually started life as a test hack used by Ford for brake and suspension tuning it became muffets new race car from the 1972 sand and 250 onwards and in Group C trim went on to win the 1973 80 cc title in a memorable year long battle with Peter Brock's Holden tirana xu1 it was also the first time Moffat had taken the one title that had managed to elude him earlier in his mighty red Trans Am Mustang it was a fitting finale for Ford's mighty GTA Cho after four years of amazing competition success there would be new versions of the GT to follow but the mighty a chose had run their race leaving behind a proud legacy that will forever be a part of Australian motor sport and muscle car folklore at one stage the GTHA Falcon was the fastest mass-produced 4-door sedan in the world in the world now in the early 1970s Australia in the Australian motoring industry was just a backwater you know it was a pinhead on the map no one even knew it existed so for this car built in Australia to be the fastest mass-produced 4-door sedan in the world was an extraordinary achievement so I think all those things are what make the car what it is and I think the phase 3 particularly is so valuable today because of that shaker scoop sticking through the bottom and no other GTHA might have had it and it was an enormous ly successful care of better so you combine those two factors and it really is a it was an instant classic and its value has only increased year by year you

Channel: M Clark

Views: 363,790

Rating: 4.8224301 out of 5

Keywords: Ford Falcon GT (Automobile Model), Ford (Automobile Make), Ford Falcon (Automobile Model), Auto Show (Event), Automobile (TV Genre), Bathurst 1000 (Award-Winning Work), Australian Racing History, Falcon GTHO, Ford, Phase 3 GT, Ford Motor Company (Automobile Company), Hardie Ferrodo 1000, Ford History

Id: sOQd1vT794s

Length: 71min 18sec (4278 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2015