First published in Street Machine’s Australia’s Toughest Fords #3, 2005

Braced chassis. Mini tubs. Roll cage. Stroker engine. Power in the mid-600s. Bigs-and-littles wheel combo. Attilio Labbozetta’s Falcon GT replica is a full-on Pro Street weapon. But don’t ask him what it’ll do on the quarter – not yet, anyway. He’s spent the first few months of its life punting the beast around town whenever he’s got half an excuse, too busy having a ball to get too serious yet.

He never orders home-delivered pizzas, just so he can jump in the Falcon and go for a drive. He loves it when his wife, Lina, tells him they’ve run out of bread or milk because he can go for another drive. As long as he’s behind the wheel, Attilio’s in heaven.

Street driving was his first priority from the outset. Attilio’s taken some aspects of the brawny Ford right up to the borderline between race bred and street cred, but he’s been very careful not to cross it.

And that’s exactly why you’ll find a CD stacker sitting above the beautifully crafted aluminium fuel cell in the race-inspired boot. “It belongs in there,” says Attilio. “All street cars should at least have a radio.”

But if you suspect this is a show pony, prepare to be dusted. It’s a weapon. Steve Toth at RPM Motorsport screwed together a mean Clevo-C4 combo with just one imposed limit: it had to run on pump petrol.

“The engine makes power to 8500rpm,” says Attilio with obvious delight. “That type of rpm is an experience you’ve got to feel to know what it’s like. It’s really radical. You’ve got to be real careful with the right hoof. It can step out quite easily. You can bake the back tyres in top gear at 100km/h, no problem.”

The converter doesn’t even think about hooking up at low revs – it’s set at 6000rpm! When you get serious in this car, it gets serious right back at you. And yet it runs sweet in traffic and never overheats.

Steve used a 3.75-inch stroker crank to add grunt to the 351. The JE pistons squeeze gas to 11.7:1 compression, but the engine can get away with this because of its very lumpy cam, as long as you use Mobil 8000 PULP.

“It’s a race engine without compression, basically,” says Attilio. “It is borderline.”

Steve insisted the C4 would be immune to the engine’s bullying. Attilio was dubious at first. “I left it to him and it’s survived. It’s doing really well,” he says.

The driveline was a relatively painless production – valve springs were the only headache, but new Isky springs seem to have sorted that – and the running gear wasn’t too big a worry, either. Six-cylinder Falcon springs (and 90/10 shocks when at the track) help transfer weight to the rear, where Attilio has a set of 10-inch Cragars with 29×12 tyres filling the guards like muscles in a tight shirt. If he had fatter front tyres he’d probably get value from the four DBA drilled and slotted discs with XF front calipers and EA rears. Red at Craft Differentials fabricated the rear brake system when he built the diff, which is a 35-spline, 4.57:1 Strange nine-inch set-up.

The body, though, turned out to be a nightmare sometimes. Six panelbeaters proved unworthy before Alex Slatinsek entered the scene. But by then the project had been slowed by a couple of years.
“I couldn’t get anyone who could get the job done,” says Attilio. “Quality was a big issue. I’m sure I outlined what I wanted but they weren’t coming up with the goods.”

Attilio loves the Falcon’s shape and therefore didn’t really want to mess with it too much. He found a factory wind-back sunroof that Darren Warboy fitted. The other mods are performance-based. Chassis connectors and the roll cage stiffen it up, and the seam-welded engine bay both looks good and adds rigidity.

And then there’s the rear guards. They’ve been flared by 40mm to fit around the tyres, and the diff’s come back 25mm inside the mini tubs. “You don’t get a tyre that big under the car and get the car sitting that low without that type of modification,” says Attilio. Pete at Pro Racing did the tubs and chassis connectors, and the workmanship is excellent.

Attilio thanks a bloke at one of the earlier panel shops for the Yellow Glow. The guy didn’t like Attilio’s choice and “flat refused to do work on it unless I picked a good factory colour”, laughs Attilio. “He showed me a sheet of factory colours and said pick one. I thought yellow looks sporty, it catches the eye and it’s got a clean look about it.”

The interior is stock but was fully retrimmed, just as Attilio wanted, and the addition of the cage, gauges and shifter give it a toughened Pro Street feel.

Six years of hard work brought immediate rewards. Attilio’s Falcon won Judges’ Choice at the Sydney Car Festival, the only show he’s entered so far.

“I noticed Owen Webb, who’s a bit of an XY guru and a Summernats judge, came back and had a couple of looks at the car,” says Attilio with pride. “It really made me happy, that I grabbed Owen’s attention.”

You don’t get better proof that you’ve achieved your goal. “I wanted to take a GT and make it look like a Pro Street car,” explains Attilio. “That was the plan and I think that’s the way it’s turned out.”
Too right, mate.

ATTILIO LABBOZETTA
XY FALCON GT REPLICA

THANKS
Alex Slatinsek for body, paint & help with assembly Steve Toth, RPM Motorsports Morris Marasco, Uncle Mick D’Agostino, Sam Xenos, Black Arthur Lina, Mum, Dad and my sister, Francesca.