First published in the June 1988 issue of Street Machine

The secret’s out – there’s a street machine mole lurking in the depths of the NSW Department of Transport! Either that or the people at the motor registry got awfully lucky when processing George Anthony’s application for a set of personalised number plates for this hot XB Falcon.

Our George, you see, is a Ford man from way back. He’d decided that HOT 351 plates would be just the thing to add the finishing touch to his street machine masterpiece.

So George winged it down to the local motor registry and ticked the boxes he hoped would put the muscle plates on his Falcon. HOT 429 was an alternative choice. Someone had beaten him to the punch – and the plate, which is on another tough Ford somewhere in the Premier State. The consolation prize was a big-block bonus in the shape of HOT 427! Did the pen-pushers just get lucky, or did someone realise that George would be just as happy with these plates as a reminder of what might’ve been?

“I actually thought about putting a big-block in the car for a while, until I found out what it would cost,” says George. “Then I decided to settle for a really worked small-block.” Actually, the current fuel-injected bent-eight is the third powerhouse to reside in this ’75 Falcon, for George had been working on his pride and joy since he first hit P-plate street.

“It was a standard 302 Fairmont, with power steering and electric windows. I’ve had it since I was in high school,” George recalls. He also mentioned – but only in passing – that it was your basic beige with cream vinyl roof … hardly an ideal street cruising mount. But being a high-school lad in the small NSW snowfields town of Cooma – where he’s local store manager for Retravision – it was good enough.

But with some regular folding stuff coming in through the Retravision connection, George was ready for his first upgrade: a respray in the standard colour scheme and a 351 to provide some serious motorvation. George ran it in that guise at the drags in Canberra a couple of times and the Falcon pulled 12 flat on street tyres. But then car and owner ran head-on into street machine heaven at the ’84 and ’86 Nats in Canberra. George soon realised he wanted his XB to be something special. The idea was to strip the car and then to completely revitalise the bodywork, while a second-hand Cleveland 351 was on the water from the United States.

“Then we went crazy and stripped the whole thing,” George says with a smirk. “I saw some guys at the Nats with tubs and decided I had to have them.” The full strip-down meant taking everything apart and removing every single piece of that beige paintwork.

The bodywork rebuild started with a trip to Melbourne, where the bare shell was fitted with tubs for those big rear rollers by the McDonald Brothers. At about the same time, Kookaburra Panel Shop in Cooma straightened out the bodywork. Ready for another long haul, the Broadmeadow metal headed this time to Paul Bennett’s shop in Sydney for many coats of Spartan’s Lemon Yellow gloss. “He was the one who suggested graphics, which we designed to suit the look of the car,” says George.

This wasn’t a half-baked bodywork build-up. George and the boys even went to the extent of replacing all panels inside the engine bay to rid the acne scars of old rippled and holed tinwork. There was also a full roll-cage and a stainless-steel fuel tank to be grafted into place. But it’s the little details that take up most time – and make a top-class street machine. All the door handles, bumpers, wipers and the grille were glass-bead-blasted and painted yellow. All the details of the car are yellow, chrome or black. Georgy-boy knows what judges like…

With the body coming along nicely, George hauled Canberra’s ace engine builder, Peter Pulford, into the project. His brief? Screw together a top-class Cleveland to top the old 351. The heart of the system is the Yankee Algon fuel-injection system, complete with a matched set of eight chromed trumpets. That meant more radical surgery on the bonnet. The injection isn’t just for pose value, either, as George explains. “The best thing about it is that you can adjust the volume of fuel coming through the metering box, so you can actually get it to idle.”

But horsepower was just as important as idling. With a target in the 500-horse range, George decided on a stock Boss crank and rods, topped by TRW 12.5:1 pistons circled by Speed Pro rings. There’s also a Sig Erson 1900x camshaft. The Rams cylinder heads from Sydney sit on top of Manley 3/8in pushrods and are home to Crane roller rockers, Crane blue-stripe triple valve springs and Manley one-piece steel valves.

Gases are fired by an Accel racing ignition and escape via two-inch mandrel-bent headers. Earl’s braided lines set off the under-bonnet wiring work by George himself. To get the horsepower to the road, this XB has a full-manual auto ’box with a B&M Megashift and a TCI eight-inch converter. The street-machine-standard Ford nine-inch rear end is wrapped around a set of 4.11 Zoom gears.

The suspension received George’s personal detailing, boasting Lovell’s coils with Pedders shocks at the nose, and a tricky four-link with ladder bars and Spax coil-over shocks at the rear. There’s even fancy-lookin’ wheelie bars but George concedes their use is restricted to good looks. Stopping is by XB discs up front, XC platters on the back. The car rolls on 15×5 Center Lines with Firestones for the steering and monster 15×14 Center Lines with Mickey Thompson 33×18½ under those rear tubs.

Custom Motor Trimmings of Canberra did the internal retrimming. Gunmetal grey dominates, but woven inserts on the standard seats provide a beaut contrast. George got into action again with his own design for the dash, extra VDO instruments and a centre console. All this work takes time – bulk time. George ran out of hours in the lead up to Summernats, the car being finally screwed together for a brief appearance on the Sunday after official judging.

“I think we probably would’ve got something if we’d got there in time. Everybody who saw the car loved it,” George says. We liked it enough to put the big yellow Ford into our own Summernats Top Ten, and that was reward enough for George. But now, like so many other street machiners, George says the Falcon is up on the block, under pressure from his wife. He’ll soon have to resort to the standard XE ESP and domestic life while he rebuilds his finances. A couple of years from now, he intends building the car he really wants. “An XE, with a big-block, tubbed, full chassis, the whole lot,” George says with a knowing smile. Then, finally, he’ll really have the car to match those HOT 427 plates.

George Anthony
1975 XB Falcon