The Phase III "The Biggest Stick"...by far

[thunderoo]

Holden Monaro HG 350; Charger R/T E38; Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase III





Holden Monaro HG 350; Charger R/T E38; Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase III (June 2007)
words - Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson recalls three epic road trips in the bred-for-Bathurst supercar

Back in the day

Wheels Magazine
June, 2007

HOLDEN MONARO HG 350
It was, if I remember correctly, a pig-shooting trip that took Mel Nichols and a mate to Bourke in the HG Monaro GTS 350. I joined Wheels a few months later, and Mel's story of averaging 120mph (193km/h) over the 210km of near dead-straight road between Nyngan and Bourke was already the stuff of office legend. I simply did not believe maintaining such speed over such a distance was possible. Nichols just smiled and stuck to his story.

In April 1971, desperate to obtain photos of the still-secret HQ Holden, we decided I should drive to Elizabeth, where we knew the first pre-production cars were due to come off the line. Ironically, my transport was the same HG 350. I swear I didn't set out to match Mel's average. But by the time the GTS hit the Hay Plain - remember, in those days there was no overall speed limit in NSW - I realised the blazing-yellow Monaro, complete with 'sidewinder stripes', bonnet scoops and booming 5.7-litre V8, was utterly at home at 200km/h.

Only once did I push the 350 to the 210km/h V-max, the crank spinning at 5500rpm, the four-barrel Rochester carby drinking fuel at the rate of 28.0L/100km. The best Australian muscle cars, bred for Bathurst, always served up a decent tank capacity. The Monaro's 114 litres normally provided a respectable range, but not at 200km/h. Still, between refills, the monster Monaro averaged 120-point-something mph, tracking straight even in strong corsswinds.

I spent time composing a suitably eloquent telegram to Nichols recanting my scepticism: "Remember disbelief re-120mph average. I apologise," it read. For years, that faded telegram was pinned to Wheels' notice-board as mute testimony to the speed of the 350.

Holden's first attempts at a muscle car were never as refined as the rival Falcon GT. The brakes were mediocre, but fade and a lack of directional stability were the norm then. The American four-speed manual 'box growled in the indirects, the steering wheel rim was so thin and the spokes so sharp-edged that driving gloves were mandatory, and the ride was lumpy, sharp. Holden happily acknowledged the fact. Manual 350s came with tauter suspension than the less powerful - 205kW versus 224kW - auto.

By late 1970 the Monaro was no longer competitive in touring car racing or rallying. To young motoring journalists it didn't seem possible for a 3.3-litre XU-1 Torana to outpoint the 5.7-litre Monaro, but the engineering lesson of the power-to-weight ratio and greater agility was quietly absorbed.

I never did scoop the HQ, but the memories of that 5000km journey won't go away.

CHARGER R/T E38
Try, if you will, to imagine a sports coupe with three-speed manual gearbox, brakes that lack any form of servo-assistance, and non-power-assisted steering with four turns lock-to-lock. Hardly the recipe for one of Australia's great - and still largely underrated - muscle cars.

For all its flaws, we loved Chrysler's Charger E38. The later E49 corrected most of these failings and was a superior car, easier to drive, more refined. The wider ratios of the E49's standard four-speed 'box allowed hotter cam timing for a dramatic improvement in acceleration, while power brakes reduced pedal pressures (even if the brakes still faded).

Yet the E38's raw appeal, the responses, the induction howl generated by three twin-choke Weber carbies, the ability of the 4.3-litre 'Hemi' to rev (gearshift vibrating in sympathy) to 6000rpm - even in top - still shines through, transcending objectivity. We compared the sound of the E38 to a Ferrari V12 and, do you know, the Aussie's richly varied multi-symphonic exhaust bettered the Italian?

Chrysler launched the undisguised Bathurst special at Sydney's Amaroo Park race track. Only those few motoring writers with full CAMS licences were allowed a couple of laps. We blued, and a few weeks later Mel Nichols and I flew to Adelaide to collect 'our' E38.

We ran it as a long-termer for six glorious months - does the statute of limitations allow me to own up, 35 years on, to cracking 200km/h down the Wakehurst Parkway late on evening? - and then gave it away to a much blessed reader in a competition.

I'm still not sure which comes first: do great drives make great cars, or is it the opposite? Either way, that overnight Adelaide to Sydney blast in the E38 ranks with the best drives of my life. It was a 2225km long-distance sprint, the E38's huge 159-litre fuel tank allowing a decent range even when consumption rose to 20.0L/100km at our 180km/h cruise.

Chrysler employed the hugely talented racing driver Leo Geoghegan to help set up the E38's suspension, primarily for Bathurst. By offering two tunings - one for the road and the other, more oversteery, for the track - and the less peaky E37 engine (recommended for towing in the excellent little 'Hemi/Weber Six Pack' booklet that came with each car, wonder what they're worth today?), customers could truly personalise the mechanicals. Our E38 sat on the ROH seven-inch 'mag' (that's what we called them) wheels with skinny ER70/14 rubber.

At dawn, between Cowra and Bathurst, the E38 came alive, the mightly engine sang as we upped the pace, went in harder, clipped apexes, grabbing second, revs soaring, engine quivering. If the back end stepped out over bumps you could steer the E38 on the throttle, adjusting the car's attitude, feeding in the power to cancel any tendency to understeer.

We didn't care that it was crude. To drive the Charger was to understand how an inert mechanical object can connect with a human.

FORD FALCON GT-HO PHASE III
We called it 'The Biggest Stick' and I doubt any Wheels article has ever carried a more appropriate title. The XY GT-HO Phase III was, and remains, Australia's peerless muscle car. Was it Allan Moffat's brilliant, single-handed drive to win at Bathurst in 1971 in a Phase III, or the many Wheels stories that grabbed the reader's attention by putting them behind the wheel?

Both, of course, plus Uwe Kuessner's famous photograph, taken over Mel Nichols' shoulder, of the HO's speedo needle at over 140mph, the tacho pointing way beyond the 6150rpm engine cutout? This snap has illegally adorned posters and T-shrits for decades.

What dramas that photograph created. When Nichols and Kuessner returned from testing the HO and we first saw the speedo shot, we knew there could be problems in getting it through management. So we didn't show them. Unfourtunately, at proof stage, the then executive editor absorbed the content of the photograph.

After much argument he ordered the art department to doctor the shot. We were forced to pretend the speedo was at peak revs in third, not top gear. A few years later, under more enlightened management we told the story and ran the real photograph. Mel has written the now famous story of his drive down the Hume Highway, when the shot was taken, so many times he can probably recite it by rote.

Wheels was the first magazine to drive the Phase III and once our story appeared in the August 1971 issue other motoring writers demanded access. A second test car eventually arrived in Sydney and we tested it again to verify Nichols' original figures that boasted of a 14.7sec standing quarter mile time and zero to 200km/h in 15.2sec.

At the old Castlereagh drag strip, where we tested all new models, the thundering thing put down a best of 14.4sec quarter. In 1972 that was fast, faster, we reckoned, than any four-door sedan in the world. A few weeks later the test car, in the hands of The Financial Review's Peter Burden, was stolen from the Fairfax car park. We believed KYK 711 probably eneded up as spares for a race car.

We moaned about wind noise, complained that 35.0L/100km was excessive even for a supercar, and that the wipers lifted off the screen at exactly 202km/h. We whinged that even Australia's fastest car still didn't have headlight flashers - remember floor-mounted dippers? - but most of all, we worried about the brakes. Two decent stops from 160km/h and they went away. No, the fluid didn't boil like the first XR GT, but the soft road disc pads just weren't up to the car's performance.

For all our bitching, the HO deserves its place at the pinnacle. At 200km/h through a sweeper, power down, the HO rock-steady and balanced on the throttle, it felt tame, but you also knew no other sedan in the world could do what it did so effortlessly.

MUSCLE CAR MISCELLANY

Bill Bourke's Cobra Jet Falcon GT
In late 1969, Bill Bourke - Ford Australia MD during the Falcon GT's glory years and the motivation behind the original GT - asked engineers to build him a factory hotrod. For the flamboyant Bourke, the GT's 351 cubic-inch V8 was "inadequate". Instead, for this one-off special, he insisted on fitting a 428 (7.0 litre) Cobra Jet V8, from the Mustang, that pumped around 250kW through a three-speed auto gearbox.

Bourke's XW previewed the XY GT's shaker bonnet and, amazing as it now seems, rode on F70/14 Plyglass rubber on six-inch wide wheels. For many years I wondered where the car had ended up. It was rediscovered by Unique Cars magazine in 2005, in the hands of a colletor, its seventh owner.

Did you know?
Ford offered buyers the choice of three final drive ratios on the Falcon GT-Ho Phase III: 3.25, 3.5 and a stump pulling 3.9, that was surely only for hill climbs. Allan Moffat's Bathurst-winning car ran the 3.25 ratio with a racing V8 capable of 7000rpm. Even so, a 3.25-equipped road car would run to the 6150rpm cut-out.

Ford Falcon XA GT Phase IV
Mystery still surrounds the infamous Phase IV HO, effectively a mild modification of XY Phase III mechanicals under the all-new XA Body. What we do know is that Ford Australia's Special Vehicles Development Centre, then managed by the late Howard Marsden, built two XA prototypes intended to be Allan Moffat and Fred Gibson's Bathurst cars. It is believed at least one other race car was built, together with a Calypso Green sedan for a private buyer. Plus, there was a version based on the two-door hardtop, for dealer Bib Stillwell. One Phase IV was destroyed rallying, while the remainder are believed to be in private collections, including David Bowden's.

Holden Torana A9X
Fishermans Bend likes to remember the 1977 A9X as the first Holden to get four-wheel disc brakes.

It was far more, of course, as two Bathurst wins prove. The designation indicated a pure production option race car for the road, and it set out to rectify the problems of the L34 Torana. Road cars retained Holden's M21 gearbox, but the race cars (and a few road cars) came with Borg Warner's T10 'box from the Corvette. By then, Radial Tuned Suspension (RTS) had arrived which meant much improved handling dynamics.

Secret Charger E49/E55
For a few years after the 1972 supercar scare, the locals were loath to admit to building muscle cars. In 1973, Chrysler didn't even send out a press release for the E55, the automatic version of the V8 it had intended to run at Bathurst. The E55, powered by a 5.6-litre V8, was so unexpected it rather overshadowed the E49 evolution of the six-cylinder E38.

Testing the Falcon RPO 83 GT Coupe
Ford only built 250 examples of the RPO 83 (for Regular Production Option 83) Falcon hardtops. This was as close as Broadmeadows got to building a production Phase IV HO. Ford's press department ignored the car under instructions from above, but thanks to racing driver John Goss, Wheels tested the car and discovered it was capable of 15.2sec over 400 metres.