Thorn Red

As the inventors of the Australian muscle car with the GT Falcon, Ford were very keen to use the GT as its weapon of choice in the hard fought battles of the Australian Touring Car Championship and Series Production racing. Visible success in these motorsports boosted sales and marketability of GTs and Fords in general. While it can be argued that the Phase cars, in all their forms, were perhaps the most successful at this, the later racing hardtops of the seventies were perhaps equally as visible.

The stillborn XA Phase4 was developed as a four door homologation racing car, and it was to be followed by the Phase5 which was to be based on the hardtop chassis. There were several good reasons for progressing to the hardtop, most notably that its was over an inch lower in windscreen height than the four door, and the rear wings were bulged - adding three inch extra width to a hardtops - to accomodate much wider racing rubber.


The hardtops then fought Ford’s racing battles through the decade of the seventies, from 1973 to 1979. The teams racing them received factory support for 1973 only and then they were basically on their own, and facing fierce competition from the V8 powered Holden Toranas, which were smaller, lighter and more nimble. It is great credit to the teams that the hardtops triumphed in 1973, 1974 and 1977 at Bathurst, and brought us the driving excitement of Allan Moffat, John Goss, Kevin Bartlett, Murray Carter and Dick Johnson.