Goss Phase III
The car that rocketed John Goss to racing stardom has resurfaced in New Zealand after decades hidden away.
This most famous of dealer Phase III racers resurfaces and is reunited with driver John Goss.
The holy grail of all Australian racing Fords is unquestionably the XY Falcon GT-HO Phase III that Allan Moffat drove to victory in the 1971 Hardie-Ferodo 500. Whether that elusive factory-entered machine, known to Blue Oval enthusiasts simply as #65E, the number it wore on October 3, 1971, ever pops back up remains to be seen.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that #65E will return to public view after a long, long period of hibernation. Indeed, rumours abound that an XY model Falcon purported to be the ’71 Bathurst winner will soon appear on the Falcon GT scene, inevitably to close scrutiny as to its authenticity.
It would not shock us if the real #65E nally did reappear, as two genuine Phase IIIs with racing heritage have resurfaced in just the last 12 months. The rst was the ex-Kingsley Hibbard car that graced the cover of AMC #101’s ‘Time Capsule’ issue. The second is the car you see here.
This blue-and-black beauty is the Phase III Falcon raced by John Goss in the Bathurst classic in both 1971 and ’72. It’s the XY GTHO in which he won the ’72 Sandown 250 as well as that year’s South Paci c Touring Car Series. This makes it, in AMC’s estimation at least, the most successful known-surviving privateer or dealer-entered Phase III from Australian motor racing’s storied Series Production era. It’s the only non factoryprepared and entered GT-HO to win a round of the Australian Manufacturers Championship and claim a tin-top series win. No Phase III won more races than this car.
What makes the blue Goss car extra special is that very few of the many Ford dealers to dabble in Series Production with the ready-to-race GTHO Phase III achieved any sort of success. And none anywhere near the level of Goss’s major sponsor, Sydney dealer McLeod Ford.
Given this machine’s credentials, it’s ironic that the chassis you see here was not originally earmarked to be Goss’s Bathurst car.
In total, four XY GT-HOs were ordered by McLeod Ford in 1971, including two optioned to a speci cation that has become known among GT The newly-restored ex-Goss Falcon had its first public appearance at Hampton Down’s New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing meeting earlier this year.
enthusiasts as ‘Bathurst’ spec. These are tted with the 3.25:1 nal drive ratio, 31-spline axle and other heavy-duty parts designed to survive a high-speed ogging.
The rst of these Bathurst spec Phase IIIs delivered to the Rockdale, Sydney dealership was the Nugget Gold-coloured example that featured on the cover of AMC #94. Yet Goss decided not to run the rst ‘built for Bathurst’ Phase III to arrive at McLeods, instead selling it off to business associate and prominent drag racer Noel Ward. Goss rejected this machine because, as Ward recalled, “He didn’t want to race a brown Falcon at Bathurst.” Goss has veri ed Ward’s recollections.
Instead, Goss elected to wait until the second Bathurst Phase III arrived, a car ordered in the same colour, True Blue, as the XW GT-HO he had campaigned to that point.
The upside was building upon the branding he’d quickly become associated with: mid blue car with yellow and black chequered windscreen strip. The downside to waiting for the right coloured car was a tighter preparation period before the big endurance races.
Thus, the McLeod Ford team missed the 1971 Sandown 250, e i rr u where the works team C and other privateers s ri h gave the Phase III its C competition debut. Goss’s squad debuted its XY in the ’71 Bathurst classic, its newness re ected in a lowly 17th fastest time in official practice, 8.3 seconds slower than Moffat’s polesitting time in #65E. The brand new car performed well on raceday though, with Goss sixth overall, just one lap down on Moffat’s works entry.
Goss had a couple of outings in the car in Oran Park’s late-1971 season Toby Lee races, with a best result of second, before embarking on an off-season of development that would pay handsome dividends.
Goss and the Phase III enjoyed a stellar February contesting the South Paci c Touring Car Series, which supported the 1972 Tasman Series over consecutive weekends at Surfers Paradise International Raceway, Warwick Farm, Sandown and Adelaide International Raceway. Impressive speed, reliability and consistency netted results of second, fourth, rst and second for an overall series victory. John Goss had arrived as a force on the local touring car scene and his pro le skyrocketed.
The Phase III’s ne form continued at his local circuit, Oran Park, where he won three races in the Toby Lee Series Production Series that season.
One reason behind the success was a developing relationship with the factory team in Melbourne.
“We were the main back-up for the factory guys and we had a lot of success for them and they always looked after us,” team owner Max McLeod told AMC. “We won a lot of races, especially at Oran Park.”
Occasional outings in the ATCC, held for Improved Production cars but with elds supplemented by Series Production cars, netted a best of third outright in the famous Easter Bathurst ’72 round. Goss was rst driver home behind Pete Geoghegan and Allan Moffat. Fifth in Oran Park’s nale was not to be sniffed at either.
McLeod Ford’s biggest win in the Phase III came on September 10, 1972 when it outlasted and outperformed both the Holden Dealer Team and the factory Ford squad in the traditional Bathurst warm-up at Sandown. This popular victory saw the privateer operation head to Bathurst as the team most likely to cause an upset and topple the works efforts.
The big weekend got off to a promising start when Goss secured a front-row spot alongside Moffat. However, the car lasted just 24 laps in the race due to engine maladies.
Goss only had a couple more outings in it after Bathurst, most notably in the Chester eld 300 at Surfers Paradise in November, where he nished seventh on a day Ford clinched the Manufacturer’s Championship.
With the Series Production era winding down, ahead of the Improved Touring (Group C) category’s reign from 1973, the car was quickly moved on.
“When we nished racing it, it was bought by a bloke in the parts department at McLeod Ford,” Goss explained to us. “He raced it for a while and had an accident in it at Amaroo Park, repaired it and raced on in New Zealand.”
That bloke was Norris Miles. He had originally put a deposit down on a Yellow Glo Phase IV. But when plans for a production run of that model were scuttled in mid 1972, Max McLeod suggested he use the deposit as down payment on the team’s hugely successful Phase III.
Miles moved back to his native New Zealand in 1973 and took the repaired Falcon with him. It was road registered that year, with ‘GM 2798’ number plates, and soon made its motorsport debut in its new homeland. It was ineligible to compete in the Castrol GTX production car series, but was able to run in endurance events.
Its rst race on Kiwi soil was at Baypark in the Glenvale 200, wearing its traditional colours but carrying AC Gill Menswear signage. It was co-driven by Miles and an up-andcoming New Zealand star by the name of Jim Richards. The latter led the eld a merry dance
in the race before a faulty distributor put paid to a rst-up victory.
Miles drove the car in its next outing, at Pukekohe, qualifying on pole and setting the fastest lap before the heavens opened and he got caught out by the tough conditions.
The car then passed through a succession of hands: Ernie Salter, Brian Bowater and fourth private owner, Norm Hewitt. The latter drag raced the well-travelled Ford on occasions. This Hawkes Bay resident would be the last to use it as its maker intended as it was destined for a much quieter life.
Hewitt sold the car in 1981 to a chap who wishes to remain anonymous. Our man intended to restore it back to being a road car, but with no garage of his own, it was stored in a mate’s. Soon he began to strip the car down.
With race history then seen as being detrimental to a car’s value, this owner was keen to hide its motorsport heritage. The car’s roll-cage was removed and the sills replaced to hide any signs of anchor-points. The car’s interior was stripped out, with the engine and transmission removed.
The ex-Goss machine was then trailered to Auckland to receive a fresh coat of True Blue. Following this it was parked up again in another rented shed, as the owner went about collecting replacement parts.
It’s clear that this fth and somewhat reclusive private owner was aiming for a high-standard of presentation. He even went to the trouble of removing and repainting each leaf of the car’s rear suspension.
This owner’s initial enthusiasm gradually waned and eventually stalled. The Falcon would remain in its ramshackle shed un nished and surrounded by the components stripped out of it for the next three decades. At some point it was covered by a dropsheet.
The owner must have hung onto his dream of nishing the project as he refused several offers to buy the car.
One of the GT enthusiasts allowed to view the car in its rickety home was Don Gray. He was among the would-be owners whose enquiries about purchasing it were rebuffed. Gray says he rst became aware of the car in 2001 or 2002.
Two things in particular caught Don’s eye upon viewing it: the car’s authenticity and the fact it was housed in such a poorly secured shed. He suggested to the owner that, in the very least, the car’s ID plate be removed.
“The engine was a big black lump sitting beside the car,” Don recalled of his rst visit. He also noted that the gearbox was lying in another section of the shed and the interior’s headlining was hanging down.
“It was a semi-restored state as a road car. He’d cut everything out to try and hide the fact that it had ever been on a track. In those days, the early eighties, if it had been raced, nobody wanted to know about them.”
Gray kept in touch with the owner via a mutual friend, yet the car remained off the market.
Timing is everything in these situations and when the owner’s circumstances changed in 2014, it coincided with one of Don’s occasional enquiries as to its availability. The elderly lady who owned the shed where it resided had requested the car be moved out as she was selling up her properties and was bound for a retirement home. The car’s owner had nowhere to relocate it and Don’s offer to purchase it was met with a positive response.
“There was no planning involved, it just happened,” Gray explained of his purchase. The next day, trailer in tow, Gray and a friend helped drag the Phase III into the daylight for the rst time in three decades.
Gray, a semi-retired farmer, was a Blue Oval tragic from way back. He still owns the brown XY GT he purchased many years ago, which, as an aside, is his next resto project.
Job number one with the Goss car was verifying which races the car had actually contested.
“I thought originally that Goss may have raced a number of Phase IIIs at the time. So it took me a while to establish that this was the one and only XY that he raced and that the car had contested two Bathursts, ’71 and ’72. The smaller teams like his could only afford to have one car.”
Once its race history was con rmed, Gray began planning the restoration. The rst decision was determining how to present it, given the car raced in a variety of different signage, spoilers and race number con gurations. He elected to restore it to the trim in which it raced in the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500, wearing its NASCAR-style #12D numbers and devoid of front and rear spoilers.
One plus was minimal evidence of body damage from its seven-year competition life. Only the roof appeared to have been replaced, a legacy of Miles’ 1973 Amaroo stack, and the front guards had been cut to t lake pipes. Otherwise a surprising number of the car’s original panels and bodywork had been retained. Very little work was required to get the bodyshell ready for a full repaint, with only the front guards replaced.
When Don Gray began the process of reassembly he found much of the car’s original parts had been retained, with only relatively minor parts having gone MIA in the three decades it had sat idle. The car’s all-important GT-HO components – long-range fuel tank and heavy-duty swaybars – had been preserved.
As to the motor, it was found to be in excellent condition despite being removed from the car and partially pulled apart, with the cylinder heads detached. Even the factory-modi ed Holley carburettor was present and accounted for.
The engine’s rebuild was undertaken by Motor Preparations in Otorohanga. The camshaft and crank were found to be good condition, while a badly scored bore was cleaned up and new valve springs tted. Balancing and blueprinting complete, the engine was run on a dyno for four hours at 4500-5000rpm, with engine guru Ron Chat eld’s tuning delivering gures of 261268kW (350-360bhp).
The gearbox was given a freshen-up which included new seals.
With the restored mechanicals re tted and the interior refurbished, attention switched to the car’s livery and signage. Reproduction sponsors’ decals were sourced, while the main signage was painstakingly hand-painted as per the original. With colour photos from the era in short supply, a Classic Carlectables’ 1:18 scale model of the Goss Falcon as it raced at Bathurst in 1972 was used as the template.
During the three-year project Gray made contact with Goss to, rst, inform him that his former ride was still alive and, later, to get the ball rolling on reuniting star and car.
The newly-restored GT-HO made its rst public appearance at Hampton Down’s New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing meeting in January 2018, where Goss was on hand to demonstrate it. The car proved a magnet for fans and the other legends present, including its onetime driver Jim Richards, as Don Gray explains.
“I couldn’t believe when we went up to Hampton Downs how so many people went mad for it. It was way above anything I expected. I was blown away. I couldn’t walk anywhere or do anything. It had a throng of people around it all weekend.”
The highlight for Don was seeing Goss climb behind the wheel for the rst time in 45 years.
“He had it pretty much wrung out! But it had too-high a diff in it for that track. John had it out well beyond the 100mph mark in third gear. When I got it home there was melted rubber all under the mudguards. He gave it a bloody good workout.
“The only thing that’s different on the car today is that the original roll-cage is missing. So it doesn’t have a roll-cage in it – I’d still like to track down the original one if possible. And I had to put a little bit of a muffling system in to get it on the road. It’s still got its original numberplates that it got when it arrived in New Zealand in 1973. Its registration was on hold, so I went down the local (motor registry) and got a warrant and on the road we went again.
“I’d like to get a set of the original-style racing tyres which I have been unable to track down here in the New Zealand. It’s just on road tyres at the moment.”
Gray plans to retain the car long-term, keeping it in its adopted home country.
As to John Goss himself, he says being reunited with the car at Hampton Downs was like entering a time machine.
“It was fantastic,” JG says. “I’m just amazed with the job Don has done with the car. When
“It was just unbelievable. It was quite emotional really, thinking that I was still able to drive the car in which I won the Sandown 250. If you asked me back in 1972 if I would be driving that car in 2018, I would have laughed at you.” - John Goss
I got in to drive it, it was just the way it was 46 years ago. He’s done a very good job. I drove it in a fairly spirited way on both days at Hampton Downs and we didn’t have any signi cant problems with it. Well, we had a little bit of drama getting it back to second gear. And I made some suggestions – wheel alignment, ride height, that sort of stuff – and Don has since done all of that. I’m heading to New Zealand again soon and will drive it again, to assist Don in getting it exactly as it was.
“Driving that car again, it gave exactly the same feedback as when we developed the car as a Series Production car all those decades ago. It was just unbelievable. It was quite emotional really, thinking that I was still able to drive the car in which I won the Sandown 250. If you asked me back in 1972 if I would be driving that car in 2018, I would have laughed at you.
“It was off the road a long time. It took Don the best part of four years to get it back to the point where it could return to the track. I spoke to him a couple of times to give him a bit of guidance. It’s a credit to him the way in which he presented that car, just the same as it was. Just amazing!
“Allan Moffat, Jim Richards and others were there at Hampton Downs. There was some real fellowship between us all. Everywhere we went with it there would be a bloody great entourage following it – fans, photographers, you name it.”
John can be excused for getting a little emotional. After all, this car played a major part in his rise to stardom and was an important stepping stone on his journey to winning the 1974 Bathurst classic.