THE SEVENTIES Options

[wonkipop]

out for my saturday morning long distance grocery walk.

........lo and behold.



1973 ford falcon XA.
pepper red. GT. 351 cleveland.
(aussie ford that is).
however ......styled in detroit. last of the aussie fords styled in the USA.
put me in a good mood all day.
owner was standing nearby and i had a quick chat.
freshly restored by him.
cracked a joke about it having its nose up like a 914.
......he knew what a 914 was and asked me why i said that.
told him i had one that was one shade of orange off his pepper red.
or was that pepper orange?
ie phoenix red. or is that phoenix orange. he knew what phoenix red was.

car blokes. top blokes.



70s. top era. go fast stripes. wild colors. emotionally crippled cars suffering from epa strangulation pillow suffocation.
sure beats the 21st century. what shade of grey is that again. oh yeah. mirage grey.
ah i thought it was saharan grey. nice polar silver SUV there mate. its not silver. its uber unsaturated black. tops. beaudiful touch screen you got there where the gear lever used to be. yeah. gear levers are for pensioners. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[wonkipop]

@Maltese Falcon

yeah the two door hard top (mad max car) is an absolute classic.
possibly one of the most beautiful fords anywhere, any market?
big swollen rear guards to take the rubber for mount panorama bathurst 500.
literally designed to win that race and then sold on the street.
and ford surprised themselves. sold more than they ever expected.




if you knew how to fill out the options order book the right way you could basically get ford to build you one off the production line to bathurst spec. apart from the specially welded bodies the team cars had.

prior to that you could pretty much walk into the show room and buy what was called a GTHO with the earlier model cars. the HO was the bathurst car. the supercar scare put an end to that around 1971. similar to the death of the muscle car in the USA with insurance and epa standards.
the 4 door GTHO phase 4 looked pretty much like the red falcon i posted photo of.
only 4 ever built before the program was cancelled due to the threatened government legislation. i believe 3 of the 4 survive and are all held tightly by collectors here in aus.
thats the one to have. absolutely brutal car dressed in 4 door family car sheep clothing (sort of sheep clothing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

so the hardtops kind of became the secret GTHO. strictly speaking ford made it appear you could no longer buy the bathurst car in the showroom to appease the govt. legislators.