beforeheblewthemotor.It wasrebuiltbefore
being sold to a Brisbane-based owner, who
drove the car for a few years before parking and
stripping it ahead of a planned restoration project
that never happened.
We know all this post-Bathurst ’69 history
due to the detective work in recent years of
Queensland Ford GT enthusiast and identity
Terry Oldman.
“It sat for many years until I purchased it in
about 1984 in unrestored, stripped down but
complete (form) and I have been slowly piecing
most of its history together because when I
purchased the car I did not know it had been
raced or drag raced,” Oldman explained to AMC.
Oldman says there was no evidence of bolt
holes in the oor, the usual sign that a roll-cage
had been tted, to tip him off to a competition
history. While the works XW had basic rollover
protection in 1969, McPhee’s Falcon did not.
“Bruce never tted a roll-cage and Graham
Cromarty never tted a roll-cage to it either.
“In about the early 1990s David Bowden did
a bit of investigation for me about the car I had
and put me in contact with Bruce McPhee and
told me a few things about the car. I then visited
Klosters Newcastle dealership and asked if
they remembered the car or had any photos or
information about the car and gave them the
original rego number AOL-257 which it had when
the car was re-rego’ed in Queensland and rst
came to Brisbane.”
Not long after his visit, Klosters got back in
The car was raced and hillclimbed (King Edward Park
pictured here) by its next owner, Graham Cromarty.
The car retained its original AOL-257 numberplates for
many years after its Sandown and Bathurst starts.