John Goss was a loyal Ford driver in Australian Touring Car racing from 1968 onwards. In particular, he was very competitive in the 4 door Falcon GTHO, which he used up to 1972. For 1973, Goss decided to develop Fords new XA GT Falcon Coupe into a racing car. An engineer himself, he recognised the potential this new car had over the older 4 door XY Phase III GTHO Falcon with it's lower centre of gravity, wider track and superior aerodynamics (less drag, more speed!). He obtained sponsorship from Shell and Max McLeod (an Australian Ford dealer), and persuaded Keith Horner, the Director of Marketing at Ford Australia to provide factory assistance to the project.
As a result, this car was purpose built as a racing chassis at Ford's Broadmeadows assembly plant in December 1972 and supplied to Sydney based Goss Racing in January 1973. Goss was the first to use the new Falcon Coupe as a racecar, others including Alan Moffat preferring to stick with the tried and tested XY GTHO 4 door Falcon.
The potential of the car was realised at the September 30th 1973 Bathurst 1000km race when John Goss (partnered by Kevin Bartlett) put the car on pole position and led right from the start, pulling out a huge lead on Alan Moffat down the famous Conrod Straight. The car continued to lead right up until 3 1/2 hours into the race when it came across another accident involving an overturned Holden Torana, resulting in substantial frontal damage forcing the car to retire. So 1973 proved not to be the new Falcon Coupe's year, but subsequent Bathurst 1000km races were won by later developments of the Falcon Coupe.
AUTOart make this model of what is a superb looking racing car for Biante, who specialise in models of Australian cars. The paint and tampoed markings on this model are very good indeed, and in general it is a high quality model. One possible area of weakness however is the rear brake discs which don't appear to have callipers, unlike the fronts which are nicely done on this model. It doesn't look like a drum brake on the rear, but I may be mistaken. Either way the lowest mark given for this model is 6/10 for the brakes. Overall it gets a rating of 73.75%.
73.75%
