Round Oz Odyssey
Early this year a small group of Ford enthusiasts took on the challenge of circumnavigating this wide brown land in a pair of XY GT-HO Phase IIIs.
The dream of driving around Australia is something that for most of us will remain always that: a dream, an unfulfilled item on the bucket list. That’s not the case, however, for a small group of Ford enthusiasts, who earlier this year took on the challenge of circumnavigating this wide brown land in a pair of Falcon XY GT-HO Phase IIIs.
“Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.” These were the words of Henry Ford. We think it’s safe to assume that the carmaker would have approved of the way in which Ford enthusiasts Leo Khouri and David Frake used their Fords early in 2019.
As the Melbourne-based pair prepared for the trip to Adelaide to attend the Falcon GT Nationals event (held over the Easter weekend), an idea to turn it into giant road trip evolved. Rather than simply drive their cars from Melbourne to Adelaide, why not arrive in the City of Churches after completing a full lap of the entire mainland?
Why not indeed? After all, Ford’s Falcon XY GT-HO Phase III was made for exactly this kind of journey (as well as being designed to win the
’71 Bathurst 500, of course): long-range motoring on Australian highways.
Leo Khouri rst got the idea for what would become the ‘Phase III Odyssey’ while attending the previous Falcon GT Nationals held in Perth in 2017.
“Everyone was getting around looking at the cars,” he says, “and I remember thinking that most of these cars aren’t even capable of driving out of this display; a lot of them are trailer queens. I just thought, ‘let’s make some noise. Let’s do something that most people wouldn’t even contemplate doing, let alone do it in a couple of Phase IIIs.’”
A 40-day trek nearly 17,000km around the country is certainly a daunting undertaking and a fair test for any vehicle, let alone a pair of nearpriceless Phase IIIs that aren’t far off celebrating their 50th birthdays.
But that was part of the point of the exercise, as David Frake (owner of the yellow Phase III, which featured on the cover of AMC #56 back in 2011) explains:
“One thing we did want to demonstrate was that the cars are capable of doing a trip like this, and that if something needs to be replaced, there’s nothing you can’t get within a reasonable period of time.”
The cars were given a thorough going over at GT Ford Performance in Melbourne beforehand, just to make sure they were ready to go. But that was all: Frake stresses that the cars were not modi ed at all.
“They are standard Phase IIIs, as they would
A 40-day trek nearly 17,000km around the country is certainly a daunting undertaking and a fair test for any vehicle, let alone a pair of near-priceless Phase IIIs that aren’t far off celebrating their 50th birthdays
have left the factory in 1971. Both are turn-key cars – they might sometimes not get driven for some months and might be parked up for a while, but they are essentially cars that could be driven every day.”
The Odyssey kicked off with the cars leaving Melbourne on March 8. The journey actually began with a total of ve Falcon GTs, with Frake and Khouri being joined by Anthony Andronaco and his Brambles Red XW GT, Phil Corluka and Lee Mamarella in a Yellow Fire XA GT and Mark and Matt Lamb in their Vermillion Fire Phase III. But the latter three were ony there for the trip to Sydney, as work commitments prevented them from doing the entire Odyssey.
A ‘service vehicle’ in the form of a Ford Ranger followed the Phase III eet. The Ranger carried some of the required ‘essentials’ (including the requisite supply of beer and wine), and was crewed by Boxy Rule and photographer/ lmmaker Mark Calleja, who documented the adventure along the way.
Calleja’s teaser lm of the journey can be seen online. It shows rather graphically some of the dramas they encountered in far north Queensland, as the Phase IIIs arrived at the top end just as Cyclone Trevor rocked into town…
The effects of the cyclone restricted how far north they could venture, and in the end forced a detour south of the Daintree River as the
entire surrounding area became ooded. They had to go back to Cairns, and then across the Atherton Tablelands and on to Normanton to continue the trip.
“Mark and Matt Lamb then drove up from Melbourne via Adelaide to meet us at Kununarra,” Khouri says.
Along the way, Mark’s car had an unfortunate encounter with an eagle which left it with a badly cracked the windscreen, but this was able to be repaired at Alice Springs.
Lamb wasn’t the only one to join the fun mid-Odyssey: there were others who ew up from Melbourne at different points to do a small section of the trip in between their work commitments. Leo’s son Jacob Khouri (who operates Muscle Car Sales) ew in to join the Odyssey at Kununarra and Darwin.
“Sometimes that helped us with any problems we had with the cars,” Leo explains. “Not that we had many. But in one instance we needed a new starter motor, so the person that was coming up to join us for one section was able to bring that with him.
“David left his hat at home and he was even able to get that sent up too!”
While the Phase IIIs escaped the north Queensland oods unscathed, they also had to withstand some sustained, punishingly hot conditions.
“Up that part of the country we were driving in 45 degree heat,” Leo says. “No air conditioning,
winding the windows up to stay cool – to keep the hot air out!
“One thing that really hit home to me on the trip was that when they built these cars in 1971, they were built as production racecars. So they had big radiators – we had no problems with overheating.”
Overall, the cars barely missed a beat over the entire journey.
“The only things we needed to change were a starter motor and a wheel bearing,” David Frake says. “The points closed up a couple of times but that was easily xed with a screwdriver adjustment on the distributor.”
So, what was the highlight of the trip of a lifetime?
“Seeing the speedo needle in places I’d never seen it before!” Khouri laughs, adding that there were places along the way where the road had been blocked off for them so they could do a ‘controlled drive.’
“One thing I found was that everywhere we went, we would drive into some place and it was as though two UFOs had landed. Or two things from out of the past had time travelled into the present – you could see it on people’s faces, whether they even knew what the cars were or not. People received us into their homes, they would put us up, feed us. It was an amazing experience and an amazing way to see the country.”
And it wasn’t even nished once they did arrive in Adelaide (bleary-eyed and a little bit dusty) for the Falcon GT Nationals. Apart from the 700km trip home to Melbourne, they still have to detour across Bass Straight to officially complete the Odyssey with a quick lap of the Apple Isle!
The Phase III Odyssey crews ‘set up camp’ at the Adelaide showgrounds at the Falcons GT Nationals after their marathon 17,000km adventure.