Opinion
Gallery 1
The text from my sister made me gasp. It was a photo of a muddied badge, “351 GT”, on a burgundy-coloured background. But even after nearly four decades, the recognition was so immediate that I said out loud: “Nev’s car.”
Many will have guessed that my late stepfather’s car was a Falcon GT. In fact, it was an XA GT hardtop, one of only 120 with the RPO 83 equipment from the stillborn Phase IV, and the sole XA GT delivered in Sogo Port Wine, a Fairlane colour.
The image linked to an online story about this barn find GT that had been wheeled out of a shed in rural Queensland for the first time since 1991 and was now, in May 2021, the subject of an online auction.
The car even made the television news, mainly because less than 12 months earlier, a rattier XA GT RPO 83 barn find dubbed the “Chicken Coupe” (pictured), had fetched just over $300,000 at auction.
What was news to me, as I started to read more online about it, were the gushing phrases like “one-owner”, “time capsule”, “purchased new by our seller …”
There was even an interview with the very elderly owner, whose name I recognised at once, recounting the day he bought the car from a Sydney dealer. None of which was how I or my sisters remember it.
In the early 1970s, my step-dad, Nev Harlow, was the NSW distributor for the SA-based Magnum and Globe alloy wheel brands. He would soon start an even more successful 4WD wheel and accessory business, Sunraysia.
It’s part of family lore how, in late 1973, Nev was driving along Sydney’s Canterbury Road when this brand new GT hardtop outside Nuford Motors caught his eye. Nev knew his GTs and the non-Falcon colour got his attention.
A look under the bonnet revealed it as an RPO 83. Best of all, the salesman had no idea how special this GT was. Nev bought it on the spot.
He always said there could be no better touring car in the world for his regular trips between Sydney and Adelaide, the big 5.8-litre V8 galloping across the grasslands at an effortless 120mph. Nev died in 1999, but I still like to imagine him, focused and smiling, out on the Hay Plain in the glow of the
dashboard lights.
Modern Motor even did a story on Nev and his GT in 1976, a one-pager about an owner who’d found his perfect car. It detailed his mods of a high-rise inlet manifold, new Holley 780 carb, Mallory ignition, front and rear sway bars, Magnum alloys and, perhaps uniquely, a custom bullbar. Inside he’d added Recaro seats and a Mk.IV under-dash air conditioner.
All up, the GT owed him around $5500.
In the article, Nev said there was no way he’d get rid of the “old car” (it was only two years old) for a new one.
I suppose never saying never also applies to “no way”, because towards the end of the 1970s he did let it go. Recollections as to what prompted this decision again vary between my family and the seller’s. But what’s certain is that Alan, Nev’s loyal general manager at Sunraysia, had always loved and wanted the GT.
Sunraysia was going gangbusters, with a fl eet of decked-out 4WDs, and Nev had just imported a 400ci Chevrolet K5 Blazer for himself. By selling the GT to Alan, he got to keep it close.
Alan was just as proud an owner, right up until he parked it in that Queensland shed in 1991.
All of which left me, 30 years later, with a quandary. I’m compelled to learn the histories of old cars and motorcycles when I buy them. But do I contact the guy who’d just paid $276,000 for his “one owner, time capsule” and tell him my story?
Yeah, well, I did – and fittingly, he’s as decent a bloke as the previous two owners. He’d already figured there was more to it, a non-issue had the manuals not gone missing. He was just stoked to have the car. And I believe Alan would have been delighted that it moved on; he passed away only 10 months after the sale.
I have an open invitation to drive the car, which I never did in period. I reckon it ended up as a good-news story.
This article originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of Wheels magazine. Subscribe here.
