Richo’s first tourer
Delving into the history of this roaring Group C ‘Fordie’ reveals that its racing life was largely spent as a fill-in or stop-gap measure for a succession of greats. It’s a Falcon hardtop with a unique story that’s flavoured by a recurring theme.
The story of Jim Richards’ XB Falcon Group C – and the various other stars who raced it.
We can’t say the Falcon hardtop now presented as the #32 Bryan Byrt Falcon XC in Heritage Touring Cars had a particularly successful racing career. In fact, it proved to be something of a op in the late 1970s.
Yet, don’t hold that against it. Because when we sat down and rummaged through the period magazines, old videos and history les, it soon became apparent that this car has quite the tale to tell.
It’s a coupe that passed through the hands of several race teams, often used as a short-term option or substitute; a car called off the bench when a race team’s main weapon was indisposed.
If this car was a footballer it would probably be labeled as a ‘journeyman’. In modern sport parlance this is someone who is technically competent but rarely excels, who plays for a large number of different clubs during their career, often used a stop-gap measure before being moved on.
Perhaps ‘super sub’ is a better description for this blue beast, given the long list of racing legends who drove it in the 1970s.
Its story starts with none other than Jim Richards, Australasian racing legend and, at the time of its build in 1976, looking for a car to race before his Falcon Sports Sedan was ready to come on stream.
“I decided to go touring cars,” Richards told us, “so I went to Ford and saw Peter Gilitzer, who was in charge of the racing programme – that’s even if there was a racing programme at the time – and he said, ‘Yeah, we’d love to help; come in and meet my understudy and he’ll sort you out’.”
Gilitzer’s understudy was Geoff Polites – the man who three decades later at the helm of Ford would lead the Blue Oval’s resurgence both on and off the track.
“I had a meeting with Geoff, and he said they had some leftover cars at Geelong that had been there for some kind of evaluation.
“He said, ‘We’ve got one there with no motor and gearbox, you can have that, and enough parts to build two engines, and we’ll give you one of the special gearboxes we’ve got’.
“It was delivered to us, with the gearbox and all the extra bits, and a guy named Don Harper and Grant Walker, who worked for me, built the car. Mick Webb did the engine, and off we went.”
This Ford’s early racing life was plagued by engine problems, and oil surge especially – although not, Richards stresses, because of anything Mick Webb did.
“The problem was that no one would tell you what they’d done to cure the surge. It was all in the sump, you had to make special sumps with gateways and trapdoors and things. Eventually we got it right and it was really good.”
Richards appeared at Oran Park for the ATCC’s third round aboard his Falcon but, despite qualifying 13th (perhaps an unlucky omen!), the engine wore a lobe off the cam during practice before the expat Kiwi could set a super fast time. Therefore he was a spectactor, just as he was a fortnight later at Amaroo when he lost oil pressure in an early warm-up race prior to the points race later in the day.
There was no time for ‘JR’ to lick his wounds given the next round of the championship was a week later at Sandown but it was a case of third
time unlucky and, again, engine problems in practice, meant he was on the sidelines watching the main ATCC race for the third round in a row.
The litany of engine issues had worn thin on Richards’ patience, but more so on his bank account, and that prompted the expat Kiwi to park his Falcon.
In the meantime John Goss had suffered a brake issue and crash in his own XB GT in the Adelaide round of the ATCC in early June. To ensure he was on the grid for the following weekend’s Rothmans 500 at Oran Park, Goss leased the Richards Falcon and placed his own running gear in it. Goss shared the car with Kiwi Leo Leonard (who would come to drive it later in life, but more on that later) for the standalone 222-lap endurance race that attracted all of the top teams given it paid $18,000 to win out of the $40,000 prize purse on offer.
Goss quali ed the #2 car, with his Citizen Watches backing on its anks, third for the race. Meantime, the car’s owner, Richards, was down to co-drive with Dick Johnson in the Queenslander’s Bryan Byrt Falcon XB GT.
Johnson tried to go around the outside of Goss into the rst corner of the race and ended up in the wall, an accident that prompted his use of the Richards chassis to keep him racing for the next event.
Goss got this car up to second place in the Rothmans race behind Allan Moffat’s Moffat Ford Dealers car, though an oil pump seized and the car was retired after 120 laps. At least the Falcon had nally started a race!
Just as Richards’ Falcon chassis had allowed John Goss to continue his racing program, it also got Johnson back on the track for his home round of the ATCC at Lakeside with his team tting its own running gear to the Ford in order to get him out for the all-important home event in late June.
Johnson didn’t disappoint, clocking a ying 59.2s lap to take his rst-ever ATCC pole position, 0.1sec faster than Peter Brock’s Bill Patterson Racing Torana L34. The blue #17 Falcon in Bryan Byrt Ford colours won the start and Johnson built up a handy buffer out front, looking odds-on to claim his rst ATCC race win. But he was forced to pit to replace a chunking tyre and, just as he was ghting back from the pit stop, a rock went through the radiator and he was forced to retire with six laps left in the 35-lapper. Brock went on to win.
After not appearing in his own Falcon at an ATCC round since back in April and having yet to actually start a race in it, Richards returned to the touring car set for the annual Bathurst warm-up race at Sandown with new backing from Melbourne Ford dealer Melford Motors. In 1977 the Hang Ten 400 was both a round of the ATCC and the Manufacturer’s Championship of endurance races.
Again, engine problems cut down the team and car despite qualifying a very solid sixth on the grid. The early Sunday morning practice session had given the team time to discover a stripped distributor drive and make a last-minute engine swap before the 2pm race start. However, the V8 Falcon only lasted four laps before it blew a head gasket. That meant the car had appeared at six race meetings to that point in ’77, failed to start three times and failed to nish three
times – the engine dramas were a nightmare.
Next was Bathurst and, while Allan Moffat’s team memorably scored its famous 1-2 form finish on the back of both speed and reliability, Richards and Kiwi partner Rod Coppins were done after 53 laps with a broken crankshaft.
The scorecard wasn’t looking good at this point: DNS, DNS, DNS, DNF, DNF, DNF, DNF…
But then came some sunshine, Richards’ first win on Aussie soil in a V8 touring car. It came a fortnight after Bathurst at Calder in the ‘Pioneer Electronic’ touring car supports to the Formula 5000 Gold Star round. Sure, the thin entry wasn’t of the quality seen at Mount Panorama, but wins were wins and Richards and his white Falcon took two from two over Bob Jane’s A9X.
From there Richards saw out the season with a flow of much better results. He was sixth in the Adelaide 250, despite the interior trim and carpets being set alight by a leaking muffler! Then came a poorly-attended 2UW Challenge at Oran Park (where he was second overall), Surfers Paradise 300 (fifth), Phillip Island 500 (third), Jim Pascoe Trophy at Calder (second in a race) and the Winfield 25s at Baskerville (three top six finishes).
Richards only made one more start in the car – at the Hang Ten Challenge at Sandown in February 1978 – before new ownership at sponsor Melford Ford resulted in the loss of his sponsorship deal.
The big Ford was off-loaded to Queensland Ford dealer Bryan Byrt (for the princely sum of $14,800!) for his two-car assault on Bathurst and had a shakedown race at Surfers Paradise in late August in John French’s hands. By this time it was upgraded to XC specification and repainted in Byrt’s familiar blue livery.
The big Ford was due to be driven by French and Warwick Brown in the Hang Ten 400 at Sandown, but Frenchy slipped in the shower on Saturday morning and broke four ribs, leaving Brown to drive solo. It didn’t make much difference given the #32 Falcon was boiling its brains out within the first 10 laps…
The car’s second trip to Bathurst came amid great sadness for the Bryan Byrt Ford team with Byrt stricken with cancer and in the United States for treatment. Sadly, he passed away en route back to Australia and didn’t get to see his two cars line up at Mount Panorama.
The experienced French made his 11th Bathurst 500/1000 start, though first since driving an Alfa with Dick Johnson in 1974. ‘Father French’ was given qualifying duties and qualified ninth to land a spot in the new Hardies Heroes Top 10 Shootout for pole position which had been introduced for the first time to spice up things for the October classic.
French had slicks fitted for the first run in the Shootout (in those days each car was permitted two runs for pole) with rain falling just prior to the veteran running up against the clock. He lapped in 2m30.244s, the slowest of the 10 cars given the track later dried out and he didn’t take his second attempt due to a valve train problem.
French started the race on Sunday and ran seventh after four laps, though ultimately the race didn’t end well, he and Brown bowing out after 57 laps with a broken distributor drive shortly after the latter had climbed aboard.
From there this Falcon found a new owner in Queenslander Ron Wanless. With backing from another Queensland Ford dealer in Denmac, he initially couldn’t race the car given he didn’t have enough signatures on his CAMS licence.
Instead, French drove it for him in the Surfers 300 to round out 1978 before Wanless himself embarked on a multi-event program in 1979 of ATCC and AMSCAR rounds, as well as some local state series hit-outs, before tackling the Sandown, Bathurst and Surfers enduros.
The striking pink-and-purple Ford retired early at Sandown and Wanless was joined by Leo Leonard for Bathurst. It was Wanless’ first time there and Leonard actually qualified in the fastest 10 but missed out on a run in the Hardies Heroes Top 10 run-off for pole as the rules stated the fastest eight cars plus two at the discretion of the organisers (the ARDC) would be included in the Shootout field. They elected to put Allan Moffat and Bob Morris in and moved Leonard and John Harvey out, leaving Wanless/Leonard 12th on the grid with a 2m35.1s lap.
On race day the car’s engine cooked itself and the big Ford was put on the flat tray truck to bring it back to the pits after it had stopped near The Cutting, having completed just 21 laps.
Wanless had one more hit out in the car in the Surfers 300, a misfire delaying him to eventually finish 20th. This was the car’s last appearance at the top level before the Hardtop Falcon era largely ended (though some others, including Bill O’Brien, did press on with them in early 1980) and this car was sold off to Brian Callaghan to compete in Sports Sedans.
The speedway ace ran it at Oran Park and Amaroo over 1980 and ’81, cannibalising it for parts for the completion of a new XD Falcon before the rolling chassis was on-sold.
There had been some thought this bodyshell may have been scrapped at this point. However, the years that followed would in fact prove it lived on as a road car.
Then John Harris, who had been the sales manager and later general manager of Bryan Byrt Ford, went searching for the car as he built
a collection.
“It was complete in body but only had a 302 motor in it and most of the running gear that would have been race gear wasn’t in it,” Harris told AMC back in 2013. The witness marks from where the roll-cage had been were clearly visible. The diff was one of the only racing parts in it. It was registered as a road car and he was driving it around in Melbourne!”
Once restored to its #32 Brown/French Bryan Byrt livery from Bathurst 1978, the Falcon received a Certificate of Description from CAMS and has since competed in Historic Group C competition. The car formed part of the Harris Racing collection of cars in Queensland for more than a decade before a decision was made to sell off the collection. Former touring car privateer Neil Schembri was the successful bidder, for a reported $430,000.
He took the car to the 2017 Muscle Car Masters at Sydney Motorsport Park to sit on display before returning to the same event this year to take part in the Master Blast sessions.
It now sits as part of Schembri’s collection alongside the ex-Bill O’Brien Everlast Falcon XC (another ex-Harris car) and some more modern racers – the Kevin Waldock Komatsu Falcon EF and David ‘Truckie’ Parsons Commodore VR. It journeyed to Bathurst last October for display as part of the Falcon model’s farewell (right).
This big blue beast has had quite the journey, its timeline now having ticked over 40 fabulous years.