1970 Ford XW Falcon GT-HO Phase II
Photos: Autopics.com.au and Muscle Car Warehouse
A Holden is a Holden and a Ford is a Ford and never the twain shall meet, right? Err, not quite.
Fords have been fitted with Holden running gear and vice versa over the years, with some clever builders melding Ford and Holden sheetmetal in the past, too. But go back further and you find what’s arguably the first true combination of ‘Holden’ and ‘Ford’, but not in the way you might think.
Bob’s Story
Bob Holden is a name that should be familiar to most JUST CARS readers, but for those who aren’t, understand from the start that the man is a bona fide racing legend.
Holden’s best-known track performance was at the 1966 Gallaher 500, where he drove a Morris Cooper S to victory with Rauno Altonen. That Bathurst win meant Holden was already in rare company and the fact he did it with disabilities carried from childhood made his achievements all the more impressive.
Born in 1932, Holden suffered numerous ailments as a child, especially with his legs, requiring multiple surgeries and years spent in plaster. The result was a right leg shorter than the other and fused ankles that, later, made the sort of heel-and-toe driving practised by most drivers impossible to do.
Despite his setbacks, the young Holden proved to be adept at cycling, but a serious accident cut short a promising career on two wheels and led the young Holden into four wheels.
Starting out racing with an MG TC that he built up himself, Holden competed in hillclimbs and sprints, doing most of his own mechanical work and funding his amateur racing by servicing and repairing cars in his spare time.
From MGs, Holden graduated to Peugeots, drawn to the Peugeot by its success in the first Redex Trial of 1953 and a colleague who raced one. Running a 203 in hillclimbs and circuit racing, Holden got his first taste of the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst behind the wheel of a Peugeot and would later campaign a Peugeot 403 in the 1958 Mobilgas Around Australia Trial.
That same year, Holden joined Repco Research, where performance parts for Holden engines were being developed under the guidance of genius engineer, Phil Irving.
Being in the Repco inner circle, Holden had access to these parts and, appropriately, ran them in an FE Holden sedan to great success, but he continued to race Peugeots into the 1960s.
By 1965, Holden was running his own service workshop – the Killara Motor Garage – in NSW and still racing, but the Peugeots were getting less and less competitive.
The Mini Cooper was now the hot shoe car to have, so Holden bought himself an Austin Mini and upgraded it with Cooper parts to race in Improved Production.
At the 1965 Armstrong 500 at Bathurst, Holden entered a new 1275cc Mini Cooper S under his own Killara Motor Garage banner, with Greg Cusack sharing the driving duties. Finishing ninth overall and sixth in class, it was only inexperience that prevented the team from achieving a better result.
Of course, 1966 was the big one. BMC Australia went all out to win the annual Bathurst enduro that year, fielding a fleet of Cooper S racers and pairing fast Aussies like Holden with experienced international drivers.
Minis filled the first nine places that year, but Holden finished ahead of them all; a lap up on second placed Fred Gibson and Bill Stanley, with Bruce McPhee and Barry Mullholland on the final step of the podium.
Holden campaigned a Mini again at Bathurst in 1967, finishing fifth, but when he returned to Mount Panorama in 1969, it was behind the wheel of a Datsun!
At the same time, Holden was also racing a MkI Escort in Improved Production with the backing of George Altomonte of Sydney-based Ford dealership Alto Ford. Holden was overseeing the dealership’s performance division at the time, which gave him his first taste of the legendary GT-HO Falcon.
Rebuilding a damaged GT-HO Phase I, Holden raced that car a handful of times before Alto Ford decided to run an entry in the 1970 Hardie-Ferodo 500, which is where the feature car comes into the picture.
Red and Hot
With Ford achieving their first V8-engined Bathurst victory in 1968 and Holden counterpunching a year later to win with the Monaro GTS 350, the scene was set for the first true ‘Holden vs Ford’ battle at Mount Panorama in 1970, where each manufacturer wanted not only to win, but also to beat the other.
The GT-HO Falcon had proven its worth in 1969, with second-, fourth- and fifth-place finishes, but for 1970, Ford upped the ante to create the GT-HO Phase II.
Updating the Windsor V8 to Cleveland spec, with stronger conrods, solid cam and valve lifters, twin ignition points and a larger 750cfm Holley carburettor in place of the 600cfm version, Ford upgraded the rest of the driveline to match, with improved gear ratios, a thicker tailshaft, larger universal joints and 31-spline “Daytona” diff – all aimed at making the Falcon bulletproof at Mount Panorama.
A test for the uprated drivetrain was the Sandown Three Hour 250; a 130-lap, 247-mile ‘mini-enduro’ held three weeks before Bathurst. Ford Australia entered three GT-HO Phase IIs, with Allan Moffat the lead driver, backed by Bruce McPhee and Fred Gibson in the other two factory cars. Seven other Phase IIs joined them at Sandown, but without the factory support that Moffat, McPhee and Gibson enjoyed, they were always going to be at a disadvantage. Indeed, the podium at Sandown that year was something of a factory benefit, with Moffat winning from Colin Bond in the factory-backed HDT LC Torana GR XU-1, while the third-placed Valiant VG Pacer of Norm Beechey was also factory supported. For the record, Holden failed to finish at Sandown, due to an unidentified mechanical issue.
Ford’s factory lineup was unchanged for Bathurst three weeks later, but they’d be joined by thirteen other GT-HOs Phase IIs, including entries from McLeod Ford (John Goss), Byrt Ford (Garry Rush), Southern Motors (Bruce Hodgson) and the Candy Apple Red Alto Ford entry driven by Holden.
For his co-driver at Bathurst, Holden chose Bill Fanning - a capable steerer of Lotus Cortinas and Ford Escorts in ATCC competition, but with no previous experience in the Mount Panorama enduro.
In practice, Fanning allegedly overused the Phase II’s brakes, leaving an unwitting Holden to start the race in a car that had little to no stopping power.
The lack of brakes forced Holden to drive around the problem for almost the entire race, but to his credit, Holden kept the car off the barriers despite the red-hot brakes, managed to finish the race - fifth in class and fourteenth overall, but seven laps down on the winning Moffat GT-HO Phase II.
Holden would return to Mount Panorama for many years after 1970, but never again in a big Ford: Escorts were his weapon of choice for the next decade, followed by time in Toyota Celicas before his last Bathurst – in 1998! – in a BMW.
While Holden continued racing long after 1970, his Alto Ford GT-HO Phase II (with the dealer-centric licence places of ALT-077) didn’t. Shortly after Bathurst, Alto Ford sold the car, according to research compiled by its current owner, Parry Bitsikas of Muscle Car Warehouse (MCW) in Kogarah, NSW.
Across the Water
Anecdotal evidence acquired by Parry suggests the Phase II featured did some racing in the next owner’s hands, but not at a high level, nor with any notable results.
By 1974, the Phase II had reverted to roadgoing spec and relocated across the Tasman to New Zealand.
Registration documents from New Zealand indicate the car was first registered there in November, 1974, with an odometer reading of 52,000 miles: not huge numbers, but certainly an indication it covered some territory in its handful of years in Australia.
Despite its competition pedigree, there’s no indication the Phase II was ever raced in New Zealand, according to additional research by Parry and Natasha from MCW. It seems it lived a fairly unnoteworthy “normal” life as a family car for several years, before such machines became pampered, big dollar collectables.
What is noteworthy is that one of the car’s subsequent owners in New Zealand was Robert van Gisbergen, father of Shane and a successful rally driver in his home country. In something of a neat tie-in to Holden’s post-1970 racing exploits, most of van Gisbergen senior’s best work was done in a Ford Escort!
By the time van Gisbergen owned the car in 1992, GT-HO values were on the up, but this car evaded the lure of deep-pocketed Aussies for another 25 years.
Changing hands through several more Kiwis, this car’s most recent owner, Murray, has also been its longest custodian in New Zealand.
Parry advised that Murray knew of the car’s brief racing history across the water, but it had been a road car for a long time when he acquired it, so when it was restored around a decade ago, no thought was given to returning it to competition spec.
Murray’s passions are very much with Ford, but later models, specifically the Cosworth Sierras that shook up the Aussie racing establishment in the late 1980s. This collection of ‘Cossies’ made the GT-HO – the sole example in Murray’s possession – something of an orphan, so it was eventually offered for sale in early 2017.
Natasha from MCW remembers Parry’s excitement at seeing the car on a NZ auction site, despite no inkling of its connection to Bob Holden and Bathurst at the time. But take a look at the MCW website – musclecarwarehouse.com.au – and you’ll see Parry’s a big fan of classic Ford muscle, so it’s little wonder the Phase II had him salivating!
Contact with Murray provided more information about the car, but Parry wasn’t entirely convinced of its provenance. So, with GT guru Dean Hampton in tow, Parry flew to New Zealand to inspect the car personally. Hampton’s opinion of the car’s bona fides was backed by Mark Barraclough of the ACCHS report history service for Australian classic cars, but what sealed the deal for Parry was a briefcase full of documents Murray presented that fully documented the car’s history.
Checking this information against both the car and CAMS records from 1970 showed the chassis numbers all matched, proving to Parry the car was not only a genuine GT-HO Phase II, but also the actual Alto Ford Bathurst entry from 1970.
Back to Bathurst
Parry was pretty coy about what he paid for the car, but that amount would almost have been equalled by what he spent on a rebuild when he got it back to Australia.
Given its 1970 Bathurst history, returning the Phase II to its specification and appearance from that year seemed a natural choice. Easier said then done, though, as a full bare-metal strip was required.
To ensure the car’s accuracy to a GT-HO racer of the period, Parry used the ex-Brian Byrt Ford car that was raced by Garry Rush and Martin Chenery in 1970 (and now in the possession of Michael Rosenberg) for reference.
Those race-authentic features included the re-installation of a period-correct rollbar - using mounting holes still in place on the Falcon’s body - with the engine, driveline, brakes and wheels also fastidiously returned to 1970 specification.
No stone was left unturned, with even little details - like the wire-fastened sump and diff plugs - recreated and a small fortune spent acquiring New Old Stock seat upholstery and interior trim parts.
The Candy Apple Red paintwork and reproduction of the racing livery was also fastidiously done, with the entire project taking close to a year to reach the result seen on this article’s opening pages.
Given he invested so much time – and money - in it, Parry says he’s unlikely to sell this car, but never say never...
What can be said is that this car is an important piece of Aussie motorsport history, so it’s great to see it back in Australia and back in the form that Holden raced it almost fifty years ago.
Muscle Car Warehouse
While this particular car isn’t for sale, Parry has plenty of Aussie muscle that is for sale at Muscle Car Warehouse.
European classic and modern cars, American classics and modern Aussie performance cars are also amongst the current offerings, but stock changes regularly, so call in to Muscle Car Warehouse, at 110 Rocky Point Road, Kogarah, to see what’s available, or view the current stock list at musclecarwarehouse.com.au
For more details on individual cars, or to consign your own car, call (02) 9553 8965, 0419 351 111 or 0421 717 171. Who knows, you may be able to convince Parry to part with his Phase II!
