Friday, September 21, 2007

Dash it

Well, the dash changeovers lesson was relatively straight forward.

Except.



This a dash from an XA GT RPO83 car.

The RPO83 was a special model produced by Ford as a means of homologating parts so that they could be used in the ATCC race cars. Originally, there was supposed to have been a Phase4 version of the XA model that Ford would have sold to the public and used as the basis for its race cars, but the Phase4 was cancelled, and the RPO - Regular Production Option - 83 was offered instead, almost as quiet method of slipping some of the ‘race’ car parts out of the factory door.

What interests us is that the RPOs were all produced at the end of the XA model run. Production was started in May but was then delayed by ten weeks of strikes so the vast majority of RPO83’s were built in August, 1973, the month before XB production was due to start. As a result, while the early - May - cars had the standard \ / \ / XA auxilliary gauge dash, quite a few of the later - August - ones came with the strange combination shown above, \ / / / with the fuel and temperature gauges from the XB model.

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