Series Production racing life
Just ve of Ford’s new XY Falcon GT-HO Phase IIIs contested the 1971 Sandown 250, third round of that year’s Manufacturers’ Championship for Series Production Touring Cars. The only example to be classi ed as a nisher was the John Harding Ford-entered car driven to second place by Murray Carter, ve laps down on Colin Bond’s race-winning LC Torana GTR XU-1. The factory cars of Allan Moffat and John French both retired, as did the Byrt Ford example of Phil Barnes/Bob Skelton. Meanwhile, our feature car, the Wright Ford Motors-entered Phase III of Kingsley Hibbard, wearing #63 that day, suffered a blown engine. Exactly when the car received its rollcage is unknown, but it was certainly in place for the 130-lap Sandown race, as it can be clearly seen in the race images shown. It’s likely its tment was one of several tasks Hibbard knocked over in Melbourne on Saturday practice day. Let’s take stock of the car’s eventful life to that point, its rst three days on the road. Day one: owner picks up car from Sydney dealership, sets sail interstate and is involved in a high-speed police pursuit. Day two: owner helps police with their enquiries before taking car to be raceprepped. Day three: car competes in major motor race, blows engine. Yep, even by the standards of Hibbard’s helterskelter lifestyle, this was quite the weekend. Enter Barry Nelson, a former mechanic and engine builder for Allan Moffat during the Canadian-born driver’s time racing in North America and rst couple of seasons running the Coca-Cola Mustang. Nelson was at Sandown that day and remembers being approached by Hibbard after he had retired from the three-hour race.
“I was at Sandown and Kingsley up came to me,” Barry Nelson recalls today. “I got the job of rebuilding the engine and we did that at Ron Harrop’s family engineering workshop at Brunswick. I went out to Ford and got the crank and rods and other bits we needed and did the engine. Then Ron and I drove it to Sydney in time for the next Series Production race.”
That was a round of the Toby Lee Series at Oran Park on September 19, 1971, the yellow machines second and nal outing in Series Production spec.
“I don’t remember where the car nished, but it wasn’t anything to write home about, put it that way,” Nelson continues.
The Oran Park event was held two week before the 1971 Hardie-Ferodo 500, a race you would expect Hibbard to contest, but didn’t.
It’s possible that his entry was rejected by Bathurst 500 organisers, the Australian Racing Drivers Club, headed by ex-policeman Jack Hinxman, who had a history of taking a dim view of those who had brushes with the law. Hibbard’s well-publicised run-in with authorities in Victoria and impending licence suspension would have been noted at the ARDC’s Leichhardt office.
An early Bathurst 1971 entry list obtained by AMC shows the withdrawal of a #68E Falcon GT-HO. Meanwhile, it’s simply a coincidence that another Yellow Glow Phase III ran Hibbard’s
Sandown number, #63E, at Bathurst. This was the ill-fated Bill Brown-driven machine.
Neither Nelson nor Harrop can shed any light on why Hibbard skipped the Mountain classic.
“I do remember that Kingsley decided to make it a full race Falcon, to run in the Australian Touring Car Championship. So Ron and I took it back to Victoria.”
Ron Harrop concurs with Nelson’s recollection of events, ahead of its transformation into an Improved Production car between October 1971 and the 1972 ATCC’s early rounds in March. This period corresponded with the time Hibbard was suspended from driving. That work was undertaken at the Harrop workshop.
Harrop elaborates on the build in the Q&A section that follows, where Nelson explains the task of building the ‘standard’ engine into a powerplant that has gone down in infamy.