1971 FORD FALCON XY GT

FINDING GOLD

Igot the car 10 years ago from a chap out in Pakenham and really didn’t think much about it for a year or so, until I decided to start restoring it.

After a while I got stuck into getting it done and it passed through the hands of people like the legendary Neil Thompson of Grand Tourer (who’s no longer with us) and Jason Horder over at Preston Panels.

There was something a little odd about this car

– it had parts on it that didn’t quite stack up for a GT, such as an X block, special manifold and a 780 four-barrel carburettor.

The conclusion we came to was this one was carrying GT-HO running gear, which suggested an interesting history somewhere along the line. It doesn’t have HO plates, but a lot of the gear is there.

We decided that, as we did it up, we might as well keep going in that vein. So, as we tidied it up, we did things like replace the hydraulic lifters with solids and put Phase III extractors on it. It already had a faily lumpy cam installed.

The really lucky break though was a mate in Queensland rang up and asked if I’d been looking around the online classifieds lately. I hadn’t and asked what he was on about.

He said you have to see it for yourself and gave me the details. Sure enough, there in Adelaide was someone selling a set of service books for a Ford XY. So what? They weren’t just any service books, but the original books for my car! What are the chances of that happening after more than 40 years?

Of course I bought them. But it was pretty lucky since I’d tried to track down the books through the family of the previous owner and had given up.

This is my second XY GT and I’m the fourth owner. I get the car to a fair number of shows. They’re a special thing and finding those books really made it for me.