Mopar Muscle Association UK

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 12:38 pm

I dare say Sandies site would tell you. There was one at Brooklands and a yellowy orange one at Nats04. There is a met purple one over here and at least one Mad Max Interceptor clone over here.
Im talking fairly loosly about XA & XB Coupes here cos I dont know enough on them of course.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 12:42 pm

That XB surfsider van looks well cool, a camper muscle car!
Would love to own an XA or XB Ute though.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 2:22 pm

Cool site Sandy

My Dad still has an XE - I think its a 4.1 litre 6 pot, and my brother used to have an XA I think. (They live in Oz by the way - A place called Castlemaine)

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 5:57 pm

Clivey wrote:Never really bee a fan of Aussie cars - until I saw THAT! Thats a real nice car. Can see more than juust a bit of Mustang in there.

Cant remember ever having seen one of those before but I could DEFINATELY see myself buying one if I was in the market for another car. Do you know how many of them are there in the UK Sandy?

Did a quick total up on the website and 26 in total, but that includes some later ones and some earlier ones, including the MMA's very own Matt Snowball's XY wagon, which was our first 'member'.

Ford UK sold 23 XB GT hardtop's brand new out of dealerships back in 1974.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 5:58 pm

And let's not forget Mustang Mike in all this either ...

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 6:24 pm

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 7:21 pm

Would have been a different story at Bathurst in 73 if Chrysler had carried on with the E55 race program

Holly · Post by **Holly** » Wed Sep 14, 05 8:35 pm

Thanks for the extra pics, the front is looking good

That dash is something else! I like it, very Nightrider ...

Cannonball · Post by **Cannonball** » Wed Sep 14, 05 9:11 pm

hey sandy.... do you think that car i told you about could have been one off them brand new xbs from 74, the car i saw everyday at lunch from school circa 77 was a bright rad car it had rear deck spoiler front bib spoiler rear widow slats some sort off fancy hood fancy factory wheels buckets console etc in black it really was an aus equiv off a fully loaded bread van mach one musi, i would love to know what happened to that car it was owned by a greek guy who owned the local chippie then after i left school 81 the trans place i worked at we rebuilt the box prob 83 so the guy owned it a fair while, remember going the local flix and watching the original gone in 60 secs when it was first released and after having chips off hoim a drooling over his car, if you know any reg no,s off red cars in your club i would know it, it is in my memory bank somewhere

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 9:28 pm

Bratfink wrote:Would have been a different story at Bathurst in 73 if Chrysler had carried on with the E55 race program

Gasp !

Coulda, woulda, shoulda

Tsk,tsk.

Two words.

Phase4 and XU2.

The E55 and XU2 may have been good over the top, but the Phase4 would have run away down Conrod and pulled away up the mountain too, plus, they had the Phase5 sitting in the wings, just in case.

Chrysler also had no-one as good as Howard Marsden or Harry Firth to run their team either.

However, Ford pulled out of racing and it became a bit of a struggle for the privateers until the Moffat-Bond steamroller of 1977. Credit to Holden for backing their guys, and the A9X was probably the best of the 'first Generation' mountain cars.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 10:02 pm

Cannonball wrote:hey sandy.... do you think that car i told you about could have been one off them brand new xbs from 74, the car i saw everyday at lunch from school circa 77 was a bright rad car it had rear deck spoiler front bib spoiler rear widow slats some sort off fancy hood fancy factory wheels buckets console etc in black it really was an aus equiv off a fully loaded bread van mach one musi, i would love to know what happened to that car it was owned by a greek guy who owned the local chippie then after i left school 81 the trans place i worked at we rebuilt the box prob 83 so the guy owned it a fair while, remember going the local flix and watching the original gone in 60 secs when it was first released and after having chips off hoim a drooling over his car, if you know any reg no,s off red cars in your club i would know it, it is in my memory bank somewhere

Hi Duncan,

Where was this ? Which area ?

There were 23 XB GT's (hardtops) exported new to the UK. I don't have a colour breakdown of the 23 ... as yet.

However, take a look at this page on the website;

http://www.aus-ford-uk.co.uk/html/where ... now__.html

And go down to near the bottom and you will find pictures of Steve Case's old car, which is/was a Red Pepper XA GT (although, strangely, it does not have XA GT front wings with the vents behind the indicators).
Steve's car does appear to have had at some time the rear spoiler (you can just see where the feet were on the bootlid).

Go down to the next car. This 'black' XA GT has just gone back to Australia. It was originally Red Pepper too. It has the rear spoiler, and it did at one time have the front spoiler. However, not sure about the slatback, and, the killer is, this car had a parchment interior (tan), not black like you remember.

This brings us to the next car, which is another 'black' XA GT, and this one is in Finland. Again it has the spoiler, but difficult to tell what colour interior, and I can guarantee that the car was not black to start with.

So, there are three choices. Check out the number plates on the three cars and see if they ring a bell, plus, check with Steve Case and find out if his car had a black interior.

Interesingly, both Steve's and the now in Aus car have the Triumph Dolomite tail-lights, but the Finnish car has the correct XA tail-lights.

Next thing to ask is, did the car you knew about have a vinyl roof, as all the three XA's do ?

And, check the front ends, and the difference between XA's and XB's. XB's look very much like breadvan Mustangs from the front, whereas XA's look like 68-69 Fairlanes.

Most of the XB GT's that came here seem to have had vinyl roofs too, and quite a few were Burnt Orange like my old one.

I will try again to find out what colours the 23 XB GT's were.

Interesting, I was speaking to Terry (A100) at the Nats, and he recalls a light blue (Sky View Blue) XB GT around the Warwick area away back then too.

Of interest is this page:

http://www.aus-ford-uk.co.uk/html/literature.html

Go to the bottom and see the Custom Car article about the 'new' XB GT.

Plus, check this page (at the bottom as well) and see how the photos posed on ebay of the 'black' XA GT that went to Australia kind of present a slightly different image as to what it was really like;

http://www.aus-ford-uk.co.uk/html/rust.html

As you can tell, I can waffle on for ages about these cars

Oh, and originally, my car, before I had it repainted, was Lime Glaze, which is (I have found out) a pretty rare colour.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Sep 14, 05 10:08 pm

PS Duncan,

The spec of my car is 351C (2V Aus heads, 4V carb), TopLoader four speed, 9inch axle, 3,25 or 3,55 ratio, Traction Lok, four wheel disk brakes, white interior, sunroof, GT bonnet, GT front wings, Globe look-a-like wheels, True Blue over Snow White over Bold Blue.

I would be really nice to see it alongside your Torino some time. Bring that Torino to the Nats next year

P.P.S. Send me a link to your website for me to put on the page with your old Landau

P.P.P.S. How good are you at rebuilding Top Loaders ?

All the best

Cannonball · Post by **Cannonball** » Wed Sep 14, 05 11:36 pm

hopefully, this will tag on to my website for you,http://www.dwatts80.fsnet.co.uk/Home%20page.htm top loader not a problem just get it to me,,,,,, now what you have to realise is i did see quite a lot off the fairmont/falcon rhd cars in our area was there poss a dealers in stoke on trent?? anyway all the other cars i saw rusted like hell, now the red car back in 83ish was really mint i mean brand new mint it had been really looked after by the greek guy, i think it was a short no ending in L but i dont recognise it on your web site, i think it did have a vinyll top but not 100%,

Cannonball · Post by **Cannonball** » Wed Sep 14, 05 11:51 pm

i reckon the car i knew was a fairmont gt i seem to remember it had the dolomite back lights, also if you look at that old car of steve cases the back lights look like capri mk 2 so they were poss fitted a bit later on by a private man, funny thing this my old man had a 71 pinto he was always worried someone might hit him up the arse cause off his red flashing indicators he fitted dolomite rear lights in that i thought it totaly ruined the car not realising back then that the pinto was fords attempt at a beetle/scirrocco type car i thought it was a cool fast machine

Cannonball · Post by **Cannonball** » Wed Sep 14, 05 11:52 pm

yep still got the torino