The Australian Muscle Car comparison that never was.

A 1973 comparison test that Australian magazines dreamed up but never actually ran finally happens decades late, pairing Fords Falcon XA GT Hardtop, Chryslers Charger E55, Holdens Monaro 350, and the doomed Leyland Force 7V in one frame. Three of these cars fought it out on Australian roads and racetracks for real; the fourth never got the chance, killed by British Leylands 1974 collapse before a single customer could buy one. Shannons Insurance staged the recreation the industry never managed in period. Which of these four legends finally comes out on top?

Something happened in 1973 that Australian car magazines dreamed about for years but never actually printed. Four of the countrys most feared factory muscle cars were supposed to share the same stretch of tarmac, and one of them wore a badge that almost nobody alive had ever seen on a real license plate. The showdown enthusiasts still argue about was planned, photographed, and picked apart in theory, then it vanished before a single lap time was recorded. Decades later, an insurer that spends its days protecting Australias rarest classics decided somebody finally had to answer the question properly. What actually happens when you put these four legends in the same frame at last?

The Comparison Test Australia Never Actually Got

Shannons Insurance built its business around understanding exactly what makes a classic car worth protecting, so it makes sense that the company would be the one to finally stage this fabled 1973 shootout. In period, the Australian motoring press never managed to gather a Falcon XA GT Hardtop, a Charger E55, a Monaro 350, and the doomed Leyland Force 7V in one place, the closest the country came to its own version of the American muscle car magazine wars stayed a rumor passed between enthusiasts for fifty years. This recreation isnt a fantasy garage mashup; its deliberate automotive archaeology, tracking down four genuinely significant survivors and letting them finally share a driveway, a backdrop, and a conversation that should have happened decades ago.

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Fords Falcon XA GT Hardtop Carries the Weight of Bathurst

The Falcon XA GT Hardtop represented Ford Australias most confident swing of the early 1970s, a two-door interpretation of the GT formula built to look as aggressive as it drove. Riding on the reworked XA platform with its wider track and more purposeful stance, the GT Hardtop paired big-inch V8 power with the kind of Bathurst-bred credibility Ford Australia had spent a decade building through its GT and GTHO programs. Where the earlier XY GTHO chased outright victory, the XA generation had to carry Fords flag through a period when factory racing itself was under threat, making every Hardtop that left the showroom a rolling advertisement for the brands endurance racing pedigree. Collectors prize surviving examples today because they capture Ford Australia at its most aggressive, right before industry-wide pressures forced a pullback.

The Charger E55 Was the Six-Cylinder That Out-Muscled V8s

Chrysler Australias Valiant Charger did something no other car in this comparison could claim, it built its muscle car reputation on a straight-six rather than a V8. The E55 R/T variant paired the famous Hemi-six architecture with a triple-Weber carburetor setup that turned a configuration most manufacturers treated as economy hardware into a genuine street brawler. That approach made the Charger the underdog of Australias muscle car scene and also its most charismatic entry, a car whose Hey Charger advertising campaign became as famous as its performance. On the racetrack, the Chargers light weight and six-cylinder torque made it a real threat to V8 opposition from Ford and Holden, and that giant-killer reputation is exactly why the E55 earns its place in this lineup.

Holdens Monaro 350 Answered With GM Muscle

Holden entered this fight carrying the weight of back-to-back Bathurst victories from the late 1960s, and the Monaro 350 was GMHs way of keeping that momentum alive into the new decade. Fitted with a Chevrolet-sourced 350 cubic-inch V8, the Monaro traded some of the homologation-special edge of its GTS predecessors for broader, more usable muscle car performance, but never lost the aggressive stance that made the nameplate famous. The 350 badge told buyers exactly what they were getting: American displacement wrapped in an Australian body built for local roads and racing. Where the Falcon leaned on racing bravado and the Charger leaned on six-cylinder cleverness, the Monaro simply leaned on cubic inches, and that straightforward approach is part of why GMH-badged muscle cars remain so sought-after today.

The Force 7V – Australias Most Famous Car That Never Sold

Of the four cars in this recreation, the Leyland Force 7V is the true ghost, a coupe built on the Leyland P76 platform that Australian buyers were promised but almost never got to purchase. British Leyland Australias operations collapsed financially in 1974, and the Force 7V was killed before it could reach dealers through a proper factory launch, Leyland had already built around 56 of them by then, but the company crushed most of the run and only quietly sold a handful of survivors off at a 1975 fire-sale auction, leaving behind a mountain of speculation about what might have been. That unresolved status is precisely what makes the Force 7V such an obsession for Australian car historians, a muscle car whose entire reputation rests on promise rather than sales figures, judged forever on potential rather than performance in period. Including it alongside three cars that actually raced each other is what makes this recreation feel like a long-overdue correction.

Ford, Holden, and Chrysler Fought Their Own Muscle Car War

While American manufacturers were locked in a horsepower arms race through Detroit, Australia was running its own version of the same fight, scaled to local conditions and a much smaller market. Ford, Holden, and Chrysler Australia treated Bathursts endurance races as their proving ground the way Detroit treated NASCAR, homologating road cars specifically to qualify racing versions for competition. That relationship between showroom and racetrack meant every model here, the GT Hardtop, the E55, and the 350, existed because a manufacturer needed a legal, sellable car to back a racing program. The stakes were existential for each companys local reputation, and the marketing built around these rivalries shaped Australian car culture for a generation, turning pub arguments into brand loyalties some enthusiasts still carry today.

Why Collectors Chase These Cars Decades Later

Survivor counts for genuine, numbers-matching examples of the Falcon XA GT Hardtop, Charger E55, and Monaro 350 have shrunk dramatically, and Shannons, a company whose specialty is insuring exactly this kind of vehicle, understands better than most how thin that surviving population has become. Values for documented, factory-correct examples of all three have climbed as Australian collectors increasingly recognize what American collectors figured out decades ago: homologation history and racing pedigree translate directly into long-term desirability. The Force 7V complicates that equation entirely, since so few genuine examples exist that pricing one is almost an academic exercise. Bringing all four together in one place gives collectors and historians a rare chance to see these cars compared on equal footing rather than debated in old magazine clippings.

A What Could Have Been Story That Still Haunts Australian Car Culture

The Force 7Vs cancellation remains one of the most cited what could have been stories in Australian automotive history, a cautionary tale about how quickly corporate collapse can erase a car before the public gets a real verdict. Every generation of Australian enthusiasts rediscovers the story and asks the same question this recreation finally answers: how would it have stacked up against the established Big Three? That lingering uncertainty is why Shannons staging this shootout carries more weight than a simple nostalgia piece, its closing a fifty-year-old loop Australian car culture never got to close in period. Watching these four machines share the same space says something about how seriously the country still takes its own muscle car war.

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