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.
