Falcon class act
A lone 351 V8 Falcon XY in a eld of six-cylinder Toranas and Chargers sounded like a potential class D-winning proposition at Bathurst 1971 to Gerry Lister and David Seldon. It
was a good plan, but sadly the pair just didn’t get the right breaks – or the right brakes.
A lone 351 V8 Falcon XY in a field mostly comprised of sixcylinder Toranas and Chargers sounded like a potential class D-winning proposition in the 1971 Bathurst 500 to Gerry Lister and David Seldon. It was a good plan, but sadly that year the pair just didn’t get the right breaks – or the right brakes.
There is always someone thinking outside the square. Someone on their ‘Pat Malone,’ eager to take the road less travelled and to do things another way. With 14 Falcon GTHOs in the 1971 Bathurst 500, it would be easy for a privateer team to get lost in the crowd. To be obliterated by the factory Ford team. Why not then look at racing a lesser Falcon? It had been done before.
In 1968 Mike Champion and Barry Arantz almost won their class (and finished 11th outright) in an XT Falcon 500 V8 (see AMC #102). A year later Charlie Smith and Bill Ford went two places better in finishing ninth outright, but still missed a class victory in an XW Falcon GT. A V8 Falcon in a different class from the mighty GT-HO certainly had merit. And so we came to 1971.
Like all great plans, it sounded like a good idea on paper. Take one XY Falcon, option it up with a 351ci Cleveland and a GS Pack and take on the hordes of Holden Torana GTR-XU-1s and E38 Valiant Chargers in Class D and get on top of them with brute horsepower! So thought
experienced Bathurst campaigners Gerry Lister and David Seldon. What could possibly go wrong?
Lister and Seldon had first teamed together at Bathurst in a Volvo 122S in 1966. It was a natural choice given that they both worked at British and Continental Motors in William Street Sydney, which sold Volvo and other European marques. However, the Volvo was no longer competitive in its class and so the duo accepted rides in class cars with other drivers in following years.
In 1970 Seldon shared a new Holden LC Torana GTR XU-1 with Digby Cooke. Like many XU-1 privateers, they were significantly delayed by a dropped valve, but struggled on to be classified at the end. Having been burnt by the unreliability of the XU-1 and wary of the new E38 Charger, Seldon thought going Ford was the answer – especially as a friend of a friend was John McNicol of John McNicol Ford in Cooma, NSW, the gateway to the Snowy Mountains.
“John wanted to get involved,” remembers Seldon. “I thought it was a waste of time going with the Falcon GT-HOs against the factory. We thought we might have a chance with a 351 Falcon 500, so he went ahead and ordered one, specced up as best we could and that was what we got.”
What they got was a white Falcon with a GS Pack, which amounted to a GT dash and steering wheel, plus bucket seats, remote exterior mirror (two in fact) and obligatory GS stripes. Mechanically there was the all-important 2V 351 Cleveland with a twin throat carburettor (most GS models were 302s), four-on-the-floor gear shift, dual exhausts and a limited slip differential. As a V8 it was optioned with the same Kelsey Hayes ventilated front disc brakes as the GT-HOs. With less power (substantially less, in fact: 250hp vs 350hp-plus for the GT-HO) and a lower terminal speed on Conrod Straight, it was thought the brakes wouldn’t work as hard as in the GTHOs. Well, that was the theory…
Whilst the Falcon may have been delivered to Cooma it was actually prepared at British and Continental Motors in Sydney. Ace engine builder Peter Molloy built the twin-barrel 351 Cleveland, and Gold Star and F5000 ace Kevin Bartlett set up the chassis and brakes – although he didn’t track test the car.
Ace engine builder Peter Molloy built the twin-barrel 351 Cleveland, and Gold Star and F5000 ace Kevin Bartlett set up the chassis and brakes.
Lister and Seldon did test the Falcon at Oran Park where it handled beautifully, though the short straight didn’t tax the brakes – the big Falcon’s Achilles Heel.
Yes, the brakes. The Falcon was equipped with smaller rear drum brakes as seen on the cooking 500 model, but all 351 equipped Falcons had ventilated front discs just like the GT-HOs. It may well be that the duo’s GS 351 were tted with the older type Kelsey Hayes calipers and the not newer more effective PBR calipers.
“No one told us that we were using the wrong front discs,” remembers Lister. “You were supposed to use the discs that they got in from America but ours weren’t. After ve laps they were shot!
Seldon remembers the Falcon’s brakes during Saturday practice.
“They were diabolical! The front discs warped so badly that when you hit the brakes over the hump (on Conrod) everything disappeared into a haze as the thing vibrated and shook. I asked Fred Gibson after practice about the warped discs. Should we replace them? He said just machine them but it made no difference in the race. The brakes didn’t get much use. We would just ease on the brakes coming onto the last hump.”
Gibson also gave the duo a tip with respect to the Dunlop racing tyres they were running. Seldon again explains:
“The bigger bag of the Dunlops was causing
the tyre to rub on full droop. Gibson’s solution appalled us. He just got an angle grinder and chopped the end off the top wishbone!”
Of course, these baggy Dunlop tyres fouling the front guards and suspension arms is what bought Bill Brown’s GT-HO undone, spectacularly barrelrolling along the wooden fence at McPhillamy Park after blowing a front tyre in the early stages of the race.
Apart from the brakes the GS 351 performed faultlessly during the race. A limiting factor was the standard-sized Falcon fuel tank, which limited stints to about 20 laps. In the end, the Falcon was no match for its Torana or Charger competition; it completed 122 laps to nish 13th in class and 21st overall. Seldon remembers getting a letter from Henry Ford II thanking them for their efforts.
An interesting statistic and an indication of how far times had advanced in a single year was that the GS 351’s fastest lap was a 2:50.0, which was three seconds faster than the previous year’s lap record set by John Goss but still over three seconds slower than the quickest Toranas and Chargers in their class.
As was usual practice in those days, the Falcon GS 351 was loaded up with tools and parts and driven by one of the dealer mechanics back to John McNicol Ford in Cooma straight after the race. Only it never got there, Seldon takes up the story.
“The mechanic wrote off the car on the way back to Cooma,” he chuckled. “He came around a corner near the Snowy Mountains and some guy had a at tyre on his caravan and had left
“They were diabolical! The front discs warped so badly that when you hit the brakes over the hump (on Conrod) everything disappeared into a haze as the thing vibrated and shook.” – David Seldon
the out t in the middle of the road. The driver had taken the wheel and gone off into town to get it xed and left his mate asleep in the caravan. McNicol’s mechanic came around the corner pretending he was coming over Skyline. Next thing it was raining plywood! The GS 351 went off the road and was pretty much totalled. And old mate in the caravan woke up on his arse in a eld wondering what had happened!”
The GS 351 was meant to be displayed in the dealer’s showroom in Cooma in all its racing glory and no doubt sold on at a later date to an unsuspecting customer.
Lister remembers the demise of the GS Falcon all too well. “They did display the crumpled wreck on the dealership oor, but you wouldn’t know what it was. It was a real shame. That Falcon was very enjoyable to drive and it was quick, too.”
This would be the last Falcon GS to grace the Mountain until 1977 when the XC Falcon GS 500 Hardtop, to give the car its correct name, took Ford to that infamous 1-2 with Allan Moffat and Colin Bond aboard, but as they say, that is a different story entirely.