DAVE AND HARIETA CHASE’S
XACELLENT GT! This here is the definition of “dream big, and it will happen!”
trip being from Whakatane to Nelson for the GT Falcon Club Nationals weekend.
winged sump to keep the oil where it should be.
Built to be driven has always been the moto and that’s the way it has stayed!
Dave’s vision to rebuild his dream car back to the show room factory specs of 1973 have certainly been achieved with this build here.
Dave always had the goal of the full restoration, collecting bits along the way to get the car back to matching it’s build sheet, which isn’t an easy task when the build sheet dates back to 1973 and Ford only built 891 of them!
The Hardtops were a full make-over for the Falcons, based very closely on the American Mach 1 Mustangs and designed to hit the track and get the Ford name back up the leaders board.
Entering the 2023 Ellerslie Concours de ‘Elegance show in the Master Class category for the first time, with the cars first outing, and bouncing away with the first-place trophy, shows the effort and determination to achieve this goal for sure! I first bumped into Dave at the local petrol station around twelve or so years back. I was pouring more petrol into my Coupe when Dave rocked up and said I’ve got one of these in my shed. Now how often have we had that happen and a conversation starts up. Not long after we had a Ford gathering in town and along rocked up Dave with this Blue GT Falcon Hardtop to come along for a cruise. Ever since then, the two coupes have clocked up a heap of miles, tiki touring around the country together. The first big
A fair number of that 891 were turned into race cars as well, making items even more scarce than usual. Their iconic shape is one that has lasted the decades! Fifty years ago the XA GT Falcon Hardtop won the famous Bathurst race with the coupes holding that trophy for a fair few years after with the XB and XC models. Their advantage over the previous square shaped Falcons was the big rear guards and the ability to run wider tyres plus the aerodynamics of the sleek laid-back design. Straight off the factory floor, the Hardtops were cornering at 10mph faster than the previous models which subsequently resulted in the requirement of a special
Like most of us and how our project gets a kick start, the poor ole Coupe failed a WOF due to rust and we all know what that means! For Dave, it was “game on” time! With boxes of bits waiting in the garage and a plan in his head, the Coupe was stripped and off to get dipped to see just how rusty and damaged the body actually was. For anyone who does the dipping process, it’s the point of no-return and you just have to cringe and get on with the resto after that. It’s never better than what you think it will be, so the goal has to be strong to start that process for sure! Dave’s was no different, throwing a few extra surprises in for the panel beater to deal with. Matamata Panel Works had the mission in hand to get the body back to better than factory standard and lay the original
