Unless you are from Australia (”down-undha”), you are probably wondering what sort of gibberish is the title of this article. Well here is a bit of an education on some Fords that exceed the historic Boss’s and Shelby’s in rarity and value.
The Phase III’s were built by Ford of Australia in 1971 for use in the Australian Touring Car championships (aka V8 Supercars) - a form of auto racing that is equivalent to NASCAR in terms of local popularity (and quite frankly a heck of a lot more interesting to watch.) The driver to beat back then was Allan Moffat - a Canadian born racer who earned his fame racing the ATCC, winning over 100 races in a 3 season span. While he started out driving a Boss Mustang, his dominance came after moving to the GTHO cars. The most memorable race was the 1971 Bathhurst 500 where he drove the GTHO Phase III to victory, having lead the entire race.
The GTHO Phase III featured an 11.5:1 compression, 370 horsepower 351 Cleveland, a Toploader transmission, 9″ differential with Detroit Locker and a 36 gallon fuel tank. Of course the steering wheel is on the ‘wrong’ side. An estimated 300 Phase III’s were built, but some collectors speculate the GTHO’s sold to the public made around 300 horsepower. Around 100 cars are known to exist, and the pricing has skyrocketed in the past several years. One sold in June 2007 for a record $750,000 - the seller is reported to have paid a little over $100,000 just five years prior.
This month another Phase III will be auctioned by Shannon’s auction house (like our Barret-Jackson), but this car has Moffat’s signature on the glove box. Who knows, perhaps a million is possible.
Learn more about these awesome Aussie muscle cars.
In order to be eligible to race in the Australian Touring Car Championship, manufacturers were required to sell a minimum of 250 vehicles to the public. Although the car was advertised as producing 300 BHP this figure was only quoted to satisfy the insurance companies, most of these vehicles actually produced 350 BHP or better and the race version was producing around 380 BHP depending on who had prepared the car.
By Australian Ford Fan. May 18th, 2008 at 2:18 am[…] You might recall our story on the 1971 Australian Falcon GTHO Phase 3. These rare race cars are a huge hit amongst deep pocketed collectors. There was speculation last year that of three hundred that were built, only a handful remain in pristine condition, and that a one-million dollar auction was not too far away. […]
By » Aussie rejects $730K bid for Falcon fordmuscle.com. February 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pmHi, yep the Ho’s are top cars - but the GT’s spanned a few more years than those, too - my personal favourites were the XA and XB GT’s cos they’re a little nicer in the handling - mine is an XB coupe (the 2 door version as seen in mad max/road warrior but without the stuck on stuff)
By John Tearle. October 29th, 2007 at 10:07 pmNice…..
By dfree383. October 25th, 2007 at 9:06 amI dig them downundah Fords!!!!
By ga289stocker. October 24th, 2007 at 12:43 pm