Whaddayaknow?
Back in the day, entering last year’s model in The Great Race was more often than not a recipe for… failure or disappointment. Sure, there were exceptions in the classic era, such as John Goss taking his XA Falcon GT to victory in 1974 when the XB was current, and our recent nd; the Ken Stacey XR Falcon GT showing up the current XTs in 1968. However, 1971 was not the time to take a year-old XW Falcon GT-HO Phase II to the Mountain. Not when the recently released Phase III was thirteen seconds per lap faster in race trim. Better not tell Bert Fenton then…
Bert Fenton was one of those guys that had been around the Sydney tracks for a few years.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with Mount Panorama either, elding small fry production cars sponsored by Sydney service stations on a number of occasions. However, he upped his game in 1971 by entering an XW Phase II at the Bathurst Easter meeting in the rst round of the Australian Manufacturers Championship. The feature race, the Rothmans 3 Hour, was like half a Bathurst 500. Indeed, the top three
nishers – Allan Moffat and John French in factory GT-HO Phase IIs and Peter Brock in his LC Torana XU-1 – covered 65 laps, exactly half the distance of the October classic.
Fenton and his BP Muir eld (nee North Rocks) sponsored Phase II nished the race in 15th, covering 57 laps. The Falcon wasn’t seen at any other Manufacturers Championship rounds but did front for the Bathurst 500 – a lone Phase II in a sea of 13 Phase IIIs. With Holden sports sedan racer Frank Ure as co-driver and sponsorship from Willex Products, a company that specialised in towing accessories, Fenton’s Phase II practised on the Saturday but as race reserve number eight not surprisingly didn’t make the cut for Sunday’s race.
The game had moved on and it was clear that Fenton’s XW Falcon GTHO Phase II was past its Series Production use-by date. Still he gave the Falcon one last hurrah at Warwick Farm barely two weeks after Bathurst.
What happened to the Brambles Red XW Falcon GTHO Phase II after its last race is not publically known. We have heard a few unsubstantiated whispers over the years but nothing more. Is this Phase II with unique Bathurst racing history still around?