Mini Muscle

It wasn’t the rst GT Ford. It wasn’t even the rst GT Falcon. But the adding of the letters ‘H’ and ‘O’ to the designation created something wonderful and, ultimately, iconic. I had a quick look at some XW GT and GT-HO Falcons online and, seeing as I’m about $109,000 short of buying the cheapest one I found, I’m going to have to be content with scale models. And that’s the point of this column: to consider what might be available of the 1969 GTHOs made in miniature.

In terms of the ‘Phase I’ GT-HO, the good news is that there are a few around. The bad news is that it’s only a few, and not many of them are in the shops right now. The rst one is a limited edition, only available at the Die Cast Convention in 2006. It’s a Classic Carlectables model in 1:43 scale in Surfer Orange and there were 1000 made. The one I found online was advertised for $50, which seems pretty reasonable.

Classics sent me details of a few other Phase Is they’ve produced in years gone by. The most

recent of them was the 2010 release of the 1969 Bathurst pole position car, the works number 59D. Big Pete Geoghegan put the Falcon on pole but in the race it all turned somewhat pear shaped, with multiple tyre failures leaving Holden and its new Holden Dealer Team (led, of course, by Ford’s former racing team manager Harry Firth) to take the win.

The model featured the usual high level of detail and accuracy, with opening parts and a cast metal body.

Classic Carlectables have two more 1:18 scale Phase I GT-HOs, road cars in Candy Apple Red (2007 release) and Silver Fox (2010). There are also a couple of smaller 1:43 models, in Diamond White (2006) and Candy Apple Red again in 2007. I found one of the latter on eBay for south of $50.

Then there’s Classics’ Bill Bourke Special. This was a specially built car for the boss of Ford Australia at the time. The story of the 1:1 Bill Bourke Special featured in an earlier edition

of AMC (issue #14), but for those who missed it, the car had Ford’s massive 428 cubic-inc (7.0-litre) Cobra Jet V8. The extra bulk of the big-block necessitated uprated front-suspension; inside, the car had then-rare air-conditioning and a sunroof.

Heard of Aussie Road Ragers? A smallvolume maker of 1:64 scale cars, they’ve done a couple of Phase I GT-HOs in this scale – at least a couple. I found a silver-and-gold one on eBay for around the $30 mark. They made a few other muscle cars, too. Road Ragers have done a couple of non-HO XWs, a street machine called ‘HELRZR,’ a Mobilgas panel van and a Surferoo Ute.

While the Fords failed at Bathurst in ’69, they starred at the pipe-opener at Sandown’s Datsun 3 Hour. Allan Moffat and John French took the win in what was a one-two-three for Ford, with the Murray Carter/Tom Roddy XW Phase I nishing second ahead of the other factory car of Fred Gibson and Barry Seton.

Biante will be bringing us a model of winning Moffat/French car in 1:18 scale hopefully in the next few months. It’s going to be a die-cast model with full opening parts, so expect to pay $250 or so.

I found an AutoArt Phase I liveried as the Klosters Newcastle entry from the ‘69 race. This was a Biante release a while back and almost uniquely featured sponsorship from a movie, in this case Paul Newman’s very good

lm Winning. Another one you’ll have to go looking for. This was the Bruce McPhee/Barry Mulholland car in which they hoped to repeat their 1968 success.

Biante used their Falcon mould to make an XW street machine, featuring a very nice gold colour and a great deal of the engine poking out of the bonnet. Not something I’d get for myself but they sold out of them anyway, so there’s really a bum for every seat, right?

So, scale model XW Phase I GT-HOs look to be rather thin on the ground. See what happens when you don’t win even just one Bathurst 500/1000? The two later Phases are everywhere, but if you want a Phase I for the collection, it looks like you’ll have to work for it.

Getting hold of a Phase II is a much more straightforward exercise. Both Biante and Classics made several each – Moffat Bathurst winners, Bruce McPhee’s second-placed car from 1970 and others. Not to mention the road cars – so many road cars.

Trax never made a Phase I model – well, not yet anyway. They still have the moulds, so there’s always hope. But they did make a few Phase IIs, three road cars and a Bruce McPhee 1970 works car. Wonder what Barry Mulholland did that year? The road cars were Diamond White, Silver Fox and Vermillion Fire. All these were in 1:43 scale. Trax also did a couple of XW utes – one brown, one white.

Given that the folk at TRAX seem to like lling gaps in the Australian car story, there may yet be other XWs to come – here’s hoping.