The Australian Muscle Car comparison that never was.

Four of Australia’s most powerful 1970s road cars were meant to settle their rivalry in one magazine comparison test — and then the test never happened. Decades later, Shannons Insurance reunited the Falcon XA GT Hardtop, Valiant Charger E55 and Holden Monaro GTS 350 with the rarest survivor of them all: a Leyland Force 7V that was never allowed to reach showrooms. Watch to see the shootout Australian muscle car fans have argued about for fifty years.

In 1973, four of Australia’s most powerful road cars were supposed to line up for a shootout that would settle an argument once and for all — and then it never happened. The magazine folded, the paperwork got lost, and one of the cars at the center of it all was never even allowed to go on sale. Decades later, Shannons Insurance tracked down the survivors and did what nobody managed to pull off the first time around. Three of the four are exactly what you would expect from Australia’s muscle car wars. The fourth is the strangest of the bunch, a car so rare that most enthusiasts have never seen one in person, let alone watched it run against its rivals. What happens when you finally stage the comparison test history owes you?

The Comparison That Never Ran

In 1973, Australia’s Big Three — Ford, Holden and Chrysler — were locked in a horsepower and marketing war that produced some of the most collectible cars of the era. The Falcon XA GT Hardtop, Valiant Charger E55 and Holden Monaro GTS 350 represented the peak of that fight, each one built to win bragging rights on the street and the sales floor. A planned magazine comparison test was meant to put all three head to head, plus a fourth outsider that few people even remember existed. That test never happened, and for nearly fifty years it remained one of those what-if moments Australian car enthusiasts argued about instead of settled.

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The Car Nobody Was Allowed to Buy

The wildcard in this lineup is the Leyland Force 7V, a locally designed coupe that Leyland Australia built to take on the GT Falcons and Chargers directly. Only a small number of prototypes were ever completed before the company pulled the plug on the entire project in 1974, and the Force 7V never reached a single dealership. That makes surviving examples something closer to automotive folklore than production cars, and getting one back on the road next to its old rivals is the kind of thing that simply does not happen. Seeing it line up against the cars it was actually designed to beat is the closest anyone will get to watching that 1973 test unfold as intended.

Homegrown Horsepower, Homegrown Rules

What made this era of Australian muscle cars different from their American counterparts was the environment they were built for. Roads, racing regulations and fuel all differed from Detroit, which pushed local engineers toward different solutions even when the basic formula — big engine, tough suspension, aggressive styling — stayed the same. The Falcon GT, Charger and Monaro each carried a specific factory pedigree tied to touring car racing and street credibility that Australian buyers cared about intensely. That context is part of why this recreation matters: it is not just four old cars driving in a line, it is a rematch of a rivalry that shaped an entire national car culture.

What These Cars Are Worth Chasing Today

Original, numbers-matching examples of the Falcon XA GT Hardtop and Valiant Charger E55 now command serious money at Australian auctions, with the rarest variants pushing well into six figures. Monaro GTS 350s occupy similar territory, prized for their V8 punch and increasingly scarce in unmolested condition. The Force 7V sits outside normal market logic entirely, since so few survive that a fair valuation is almost impossible to establish. Shannons, as an insurance specialist built around collector vehicles, has a front-row view of exactly how much interest — and money — chases cars like these whenever one surfaces.

A Rivalry Worth Finishing

Fifty years on, the appeal of finally running this comparison is not really about crowning a winner. It is about honoring a piece of unfinished business from the golden age of Australian performance cars, and letting four machines that defined an era share the same stretch of road at the same time. For collectors and fans alike, that kind of closure is rare, and it is exactly why this recreation has resonated well beyond Australia’s borders.

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