Curators at the National Museum may well be gnashing their teeth at having missed one of the motoring finds of the year, which this week fell fortuitously into the hands of a private Canberra car collector.
The extraordinary, priceless part of Australia's motoring heritage is one of the original London-Sydney marathon vehicles, a 1968 5-litre V8 Ford Falcon GT, taken off the assembly line at Broadmeadows and custom-built to compete in one of the world's last great transcontinental motor races.
Still with its battered Victorian black-and-white number plate, KAG-003, the Falcon remains in its completely authentic condition from that infamous 16,674-kilometre race, and still runs strongly. The powerful engine was capable of well over 220kmh.
KAG-003 is the only one of the trio which bears all the battle scars, flayed paintwork and original signwriting and stickers from the big race 57 years ago in which Ford took out the teams prize against a huge field of multi-national competitors.
The cream of the world's rally drivers at the time including Paddy Hopkirk, Roger Clark, Rauno Aaltonen and Andrew Cowan, competed in the event.
The history-soaked Ford had been in the hands of a private collector in Alice Springs for more than two decades and arrived in the ACT a few days ago after a deal was struck between Mr Oliver and the owner, who took one of Canberra property investor's pristine Falcon GTHOs as a part payment.
"I'm not a rally guy but I love high performance Falcons and this car is an original survivor; it truly is one of a kind," Mr Oliver said.
"That rich history and the fact that has been kept completely original, in the dry desert air with no restoration, really appealed to me.
"I reached out to the owner last year and he wanted a huge amount of money for it at the time. I walked away but he came back to me some time later and we started some back and forth discussions about how we could make it work."
KAG-003, entered for rally legend the late Bruce Hodgson, was one of three factory entries by Ford Australia, all with sequential number plates and carefully modified to the exact specifications demanded by engineering guru, the late Harry "The Fox" Firth, one of Peter Brock's mentors and race team managers.
Firth, who drove one of the entries, knew that such a long, tough race would break any car that hadn't been purpose-designed for the task.
Some of the modifications included a twin 95-litre fuel tanks which took up the entire boot space, water-cooled (from inside the cabin) front disc brakes, a huge aluminium bash plate, twin spare tyres strapped where the back seat would usually be, a massive array of driving lights which could be turned and dipped by the co-driver, and even a cabin switch to turn off the tail-lights so rival competitors couldn't follow them.
"The V8 engine was blueprinted then de-tuned so it could cope with the dodgy fuel they knew they would encounter on the sub-continent," Mr Oliver said.
KAG-003 will join a selection of collectibles which Mr Oliver intends to put into a private museum he will open in Fyshwick next year.
"Canberra doesn't have a car museum but this is a car town so it's about time we had one," he said.
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