RACE READY
Like its competitors, Australia’s most famous muscle car, the Falcon GT-HO Phase III, earned its reverence on the racetracks of Australia.
Of the three GT-HO phases it was the XY-based Phase III that enjoyed the most distinguished racing career, starting inauspicously with a double retirement and ending with the 1973 Australian Touring Car Championship.
In between were major and minor race wins, horrifying crashes, miraculous escapes and even a clandestine theft.
Sandown Park September 12, 1971, and the 250-mile Bathurst curtain raiser was where the Phase III GT-HO’s racing life began.
Ford Australia had entered Allan Moffat and John French in two of the new cars backed by an armada of privateers in their Phase III GT-HOs all with high hopes of victory.
But Colin Bond in his Holden
