Biante Model Cars are very pleased to present the 1:18 Scale Ford XA Falcon GT Hardtop driven by Allan Moffat in round 1 of the 1973 Australian Manufacturer’s Championship, the Chesterfield 250 at Adelaide International Raceway.
The 1973 Ford Falcon XA GT Hardtop led a short but glorious life in the hands of Australian racing legend Allan Moffat. After four years of having the Falcon GTHO form the basis of its motorsport competition program, Ford changed direction in 1973 and introduced the new XA model two-door hardtop GT to race tracks around the country. Ford was forced to cancel plans for the Phase Four GTHO after the ‘Supercar Scare’ of 1972, but 12 months later they were still able to introduce a range of performance items originally destined for the doomed supercar on its XA GT Falcons.
In 1973 the rules changed in Australian touring car racing. The previously separate rule books that governed ‘Series Production’ and ‘Improved Production’ were merged into what ultimately became known as ‘Group C’. Ford prepared two blue and white-liveried factory XA GT hardtops for the Australian Manufacturer’s Championship, the #9 car for Allan Moffat and the #6 version for Fred Gibson.
The new ‘Superbirds’ debuted at round one of the 1973 Manufacturer’s Championship – the Chesterfield 250, held at a wet Adelaide International Raceway. The torrential rain caught many competitors out. A shortage of wet weather tyres saw the paddock become a flurry of activity. Moffat split both the Holden Dealer Team Torana XU-1’s in qualifying, setting the second fastest time behind pole-sitter with Peter Brock with Colin Bond in third.
The brand new Falcon won the jump but was soon passed by Bond on Adelaide’s banked final turn. Moffat followed Bond for many laps, applying pressure to the race leader. Soon that pressure paid off. Bond aquaplaned off the track on lap 25, damaging his car and passing the lead back to Moffat. Ford’s new cars then occupied the first three places with Moffat followed by Gibson and Kevin Bartlett in the McLeod Ford entry of John Goss. But trouble soon struck Moffat’s machine, losing five minutes in the pits tracing a faulty alternator. He managed to re-join the race, but it wasn’t all bad news for the factory Ford team led by Howard Marsden as Gibson took the #6 car to a one-lap victory over Bartlett with Moffat a further lap behind in third place. It was a triumphant 1-2-3 finish for the new Fords with Ian Diffen’s Charger fourth and the HDT Toranas of Brock and Bond both failing to finish the race.
Moffat only raced his #9 ‘Superbird’ Falcon XA GT four more times in the remainder of the 1973 Australian Manufacturer’s Championship. A blown engine took the Ford hero out of the Sandown 250 but he bounced back in style to win the Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Bathurst with Ian Geoghegan co-driving. But there were no more highlights for the sleek blue and white factory Ford – Moffat failed to finish the Surfers Paradise 300 and then was lucky to escape a nasty crash at the Phillip Island 500 where a tyre blew and sent him off the road into a roll when he hit an embankment.
He suffered a fractured sternum and bruising but the car was destroyed and, sadly, a piece of Australian motorsport history was gone forever.
