A Piece Of The Auction

Buddy, Can You Afford This Ford?

I was intrigued by the recent post ``StangNet's Glassback GT500 project'' at Autoblog. The best Ford story I've come across was about three months ago. On 27 March, the Herald Sun newspaper in my home city, Melbourne, ran a wonderful display on a forward news page. The main photograph on the page was a five-column shot of a humble 1971 Ford Falcon GTHO alongside a Rolls-Royce – and the headline said: ``Guess which car sold for $683,000’’.

Yep, that's right, the 36-year-old Ford fetched the highest price ever paid for an Australian muscle car at auction. And the car didn't even have current registration (``rego'' to us Aussies - and culturally considered vital to a successful sale!).

The 1971 GTHO Phase III cars were originally developed for racing at Bathurst in new South Wales and only 300 were ever made. When asked why he paid such a hefty price, Darryl Mattingley, 56, quipped: ``I don't know, I must be silly.'' Will he be driving the car? Er. no. Even though it has just over 25,000 miles (40,000km) on the clock, he's keeping it as an investment and he reckons it could be worth a million dollars one day.

Ah, the classic lines of a Phase III. Definitely the phase that launched a thousand pay slips.