A rare Ford Falcon known as the "Chicken Coupe" made headlines recently when it sold for more than $300,000 after sitting in a dusty shed in Queensland for 30 years.
There are only two of these 1973 XA GT RPO 83 hardtops in Australia originally issued in the colour "McRobertson's Old Gold Orange".
The other lies in a much tidier garage in the regional South Australian city of Port Lincoln.
Owner Hagen Zerk said he found his collector's item just down the road from the Chicken Coupe Car in 2003 but only paid $8,000 for it at the time.
"It needed restoring but we trucked it back to Port Lincoln and brought it home," Mr Zerk said.
Muscle car revived
Mr Zerk, an experienced mechanic, originally bought the Australian muscle car to race it.
"We could restore the car for a lot less," he said.
"If a collector bought it and paid someone to restore it, it'd probably cost them about $150,000 to get it to showroom quality."
The mechanic's experience with restorations meant he and his friends could easily restore the 1973 model with relative ease and proceeded to drive it from one side of Australia to the other to compete in different events.
But part of the way through the competitions, Mr Zerk noticed an increased interest in the car.
"The price of it went through the roof," he said.
"So we had to pull out of the idea of racing it and keep it as an original car, and find something else to race."
Chocolate orange
The bright orange came about when Ford were asked to make transit vans for historic Melbourne company McRobertson's Steam Confectionery Works in the same colour as their Old Gold chocolate boxes.
"The dealership saw that the orange vans looked really cool," Mr Zerk said.
"When the GT specials came out in '73, they ordered two in that colour, ours being the black trim car the Chicken Coupe having the white trim."
'Bullets on wheels'
Mr Zerk said only 120 of these GT RPOs were made in Australia during the early '70s.
In 1972 the "supercar scare" became a national controversy after news was shared that three major car manufacturers were about to produce new models with top speeds of up to 257 kilometres per hour.
The Transport Minister at the time, Milton Morris, was reportedly horrified by the idea of "bullets on wheels" shooting down public roads.
"Some say the GT specials are left-over bits from the Phase IV Falcon that was never built because of the muscle car scare," Mr Zerk said.
Not for love or 'silly money'
Mr Zerk said he's had a lot of interest in his GT since its restoration.
"We were over in Perth 10 years ago and we were offered silly money for our car then," he said.
"I think everyone's trying to relive their youth and get that car back that their dad may've had, or the car they had as a teenager.
"I was keen to move it on a while ago and I thought I could get out of debt and go on a little bit of a holiday for a while.
"But my wife said, 'No, we've got to keep it — it's part of the family and it's part of our retirement fund.'
"So, no — it's staying."
