Unearthed GT Race Car

Leo Di Natale’s Starlight Blue 1969 XW GT is the only such example that raced in the Bathurst 500 with an automatic transmission, and it finished that ’69 race 2nd in its class.

Production race cars from the Aussie muscle period met with a variety of fates at the end of, or that ended, their racing careers. Some were crashed and written off, others were converted for another category or discipline once they’d been replaced with the newer, faster production model, and a specific handful were preserved as they were, but since these were essentially road cars with some stickers a noteworthy number were returned to their unassuming roadworthy condition and sold, often to unsuspecting used car buyers.

This was the case for Leo Di Natale’s Starlight Blue 1969 XW GT. It had passed through a number of owners who all knew they were buying a genuine GT, but none had any clue that it also had an interesting motorsport history. Even Leo was one of these people, buying the car in 2001 to restore it before discovering its true past.

What prompted Leo to start digging was curiosity about the meaning behind the extra three numbers that had been stamped into the top corner of the compliance plate by someone other than Ford. He eventually found out that some people would stamp their race car’s log book number in that spot, and so this led to unearthing the car’s real history.

This eventually resulted in Leo contacting Charlie Smith, the car’s original owner, and Bill Ford, who co-drove it with Charlie in the 1969 Bathurst 500. After checking the numbers on the original sales paperwork, which he amazingly still had, Charlie confirmed that this was the same vehicle that he and Bill had driven to 2nd place in Class E for that year’s big race.

The reason that Charlie had chosen to buy an auto was in that era of the Bathurst 500 the classes were separated by retail price, and by entering a GT with the additional cost of an optional auto trans’ rather than a snorting GTHO they bumped themselves up to Class E and wouldn’t have to compete against any of them or the HT Monaro GTS 350s in Class D. They instead faced a challenge from the Alfas and surprised many by beating all but one of them.

Leo always intended to restore his GT but having discovered its rich history he made sure it was done thoroughly and accurately. It was stripped and put on a rotisserie for a bare-metal job and the original engine was given a standard rebuilt by Leo’s brother Domenic. Reassembly was equally fanatical, and to acknowledge the racing origins Nippy Signs made authentic-looking decals based on photos of the car in action.

There’s a complete and thorough story on Leo Di Natale’s unearthed Bathurst racer XW GT auto in a special compilation magazine called Ford Street Racers, available in print now.

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