Falcon XY Phase 3 Passed in at Shannons Melbourne Auction

By: Steve Nally, Photography by: Guy Allen

Date: 03.05.2016

All eyes were on lot number 38 at the Shannons Melbourne auction on May 2 - an immaculate Electric Blue Ford Falcon XY GT-HO Phase 3. The iconic Aussie muscle car failed to sell, being passed in at $480,000

2016 Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic Auction

The days of sky-high auction prices for a XY Falcon GT-HO Phase 3s are well and truly over, after an immaculate Electric Blue version was passed in at Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic Auction on May 2. Bidding started at $450,000 but stuttered to a stop a few minutes later at $480,000, well short of the record money paid in the past.

Shannons’ Christophe Boribon said he was "a little disappointed" that the car failed to sell, adding that it was "a special and correct car with good provenance" and that he believed it was worth half a million dollars. Negotiations are continuing between the vendor and potential buyers.

The rare XY Phase 3, which cost $5300 in 1971,was once predicted to become the first ‘million dollar’ Australian-made classic car, but its value has waxed and waned spectacularly over the last decade. After reaching a jaw-dropping auction peak of $750,000 in 2007, the price of Phase 3 ownership had more than halved to $331,000 by 2010. No doubt affected by fiscal belt tightening associated with the Global Financial Crisis, this reduced figure was considered at the time to be a more realistic value for the most famous Australian muscle car ever.

The Phase 3 that went under the hammer at Shannons was an impeccably restored, matching-numbers car that was delivered to its first owner by Murray Ford of Ipswich, Qld, on June 17, 1971. Since then it has changed hands only four times. The vendor bought the car in 1991 and had it restored in 1998 and it duly won the 1999 and 2003 GT Nationals.

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