W
hatever you have, you must either use
or lose.”
These were the words of Henry
Ford. We think it’s safe to assume that
the carmaker would have approved
of the way in which Ford enthusiasts Leo Khouri
and David Frake used their Fords early in 2019.
As the Melbourne-based pair prepared for the
trip to Adelaide to attend the Falcon GT Nationals
event (held over the Easter weekend), an idea
to turn it into giant road trip evolved. Rather
than simply drive their cars from Melbourne to
Adelaide, why not arrive in the City of Churches
after completing a full lap of the entire mainland?
Why not indeed? After all, Ford’s Falcon XY
GT-HO Phase III was made for exactly this kind
of journey (as well as being designed to win the’71 Bathurst 500, of course): long-range motoring
on Australian highways.
Leo Khouri rst got the idea for what would
become the ‘Phase III Odyssey’ while attending
the previous Falcon GT Nationals held in Perth
in 2017.
“Everyone was getting around looking at
the cars,” he says, “and I remember thinking
that most of these cars aren’t even capable of
driving out of this display; a lot of them are trailer
queens. I just thought, ‘let’s make some noise.
Let’s do something that most people wouldn’t
even contemplate doing, let alone do it in a
couple of Phase IIIs’.”
A 40-day trek nearly 17,000km around the
country is certainly a daunting undertaking and
a fair test for any vehicle, let alone a pair of near-priceless Phase IIIs that aren’t far off celebrating
their 50th birthdays.
But that was part of the point of the exercise,
as David Frake (owner of the yellow Phase III,
which featured on the cover of AMC #56 back in
2011) explains:
“One thing we did want to demonstrate was
that the cars are capable of doing a trip like this,
and that if something needs to be replaced,
there’s nothing you can’t get within a reasonable
period of time.”
The cars were given a thorough going over at
GT Ford Performance in Melbourne beforehand,
just to make sure they were ready to go. But that
was all: Frake stresses that the cars were not
modi ed at all.
“They are standard Phase IIIs, as they would“
A 40-day trek nearly 17,000km around the count
undertaking and a fair test for any vehicle, let alone a pair of near-priceless
Phase IIIs that aren’t far off celebrating their 50th birthdays