A crane was needed to remove rare Ford Falcon XA muscle car
- This rare 1972 Ford Falcon XA GT spent more than 30 years parked
- A swimming pool, garden, and other buildings meant it was trapped inside
- It had to be rescued with a crane
Published on Dec 28, 2024 at 12:00 AM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Dec 09, 2024 at 3:03 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
A rare vintage 1972 Red Pepper Ford Falcon XA GT had to be rescued by a crane after it became entombed at a property in Australia.
The XA series was the first Falcon to be designed and manufactured in Australia.
It had a limited production run from March 1972 to September 1973.
This short but sweet production period meant that just 129,473 XAs were built – making them quite a rare car to find these days.
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The rare Ford Falcon XA had been parked since the 1980s
So when one was discovered tucked away at a property in Boronia, Melbourne, it was a pretty exciting find – but rescuing it turned out to be a much bigger mission than it looked.
The Ford Falcon XA had been bought by a man called Neil Wilkinson in the late 1970s.
The muscle car, which Wilkinson nicknamed Mothball, had an expired registration so its new owner didn’t get a chance to do much driving in it.
“Dad said put your car into the garage before it turns into a rust bucket,” Wilkinson told 9News in 2018.
So, he did as he was told – and drove the car into a garage.
This was in 1987 and for the next three decades, poor old Mothball would remain in the garage gathering dust.
The vintage vehicle was completely trapped
Now, under normal circumstances, it’s easy enough to get a vintage vehicle out of a garage, barn or, shed – a fellow Aussie motorist was even able to dig out his super rare 1970 Ford Falcon XY after half a century parked beneath his home.
But when it came to this particular Ford Falcon it was completely trapped.
In the years since he first stowed Mothball away in the garage, a garden, pool, fences and more had all been built around the garage since the car was first parked up.
Thankfully, Glenn Everitt, from the Master of Machines YouTube channel, joined forces with Survivor Car Australia Magazine to rescue the vintage Ford Falcon.
They enlisted the help of a crane to get the classic car out of its grave – sorry garage – and safely on the street below.
With the car finally freed, Wilkinson said he was hoping to get the all-original vehicle back on the road.
Best of luck with that.
Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Across her career she's covered a wide variety of topics, including celebrity, cryptocurrency, politics, true crime and just about everything in between.
