IT’S MY GT-HO

David Frake

I GOT INTO GTs when I was 21, so over 40 years ago. A friend of mine had bought one, but he’d lost his licence at the time and still wanted to use the car – so I ended up driving it. I wasn’t that interested in cars at the time, until I drove his.

There was a bit of a story behind buying it. He asked me to go with him to look at the car, which he’d found in the Trading Post. We turn up at this place and it was a bikie hang-out. We go through the house to the back yard, and there’s an XT GT sitting there in among the Harleys and the dope smoke. That was my intro to GTs!

I just wanted to get out of there. He asks the bloke, “Does it go?” and the response is, “Of course it f****** goes!”

And no, my mate couldn’t have a test drive, but the seller would take us for a spin. It was a hell ride – my life was flashing before my eyes. He ended up buying it and I ended up driving it. I owned a four-cylinder Cortina at the time and the GT got me hooked.

I ended up buying another XT GT of my own and in the first week I got pulled over four times and got booked twice! That was a reality check – if you’re driving around in a red Falcon GT, you’re a target.

I still own it.

Over time, I started working on them and ended up making a living out of them. (David is the gent behind GT Ford Performance in Niddrie, Vic – see falcongt. com.au)

My Phase III was bought decades ago by my then business partner as a project car in pieces. We put it back together and then sold it. The new owner used to bring it to us for a service and I mentioned it to him that, if ever he wanted to sell, to let me know.

I think we sold it to him (this was a long time ago) for around $28,000 and he wanted, a few years later, $35,000. It seemed a bit rich. I offered him 30k and we agreed on 32.

It’s had plenty of use. Two years ago we drove it and a couple of other HOs around Australia. We went as far north as the Daintree River, which was flooded, across to Normanton, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and back to Melbourne. It was a great trip.

One thing about them: if you’re doing big distances day after day in a lot of cars, you get sick of it. Not in the GT. You fire it into life in the morning and think, great, here we go again!