Update: John has collected his car to run at Eatern Creek for Australian Muscle Car Masters 3-4th September 2011. The Car will return soon and we will post when this is confirmed. All the best to John over the weekend.
John Goss
Born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania, Goss began racing in his home state in Holden FJ’s and Ford Customlines. He then built his own sports car, the Tornado Ford, which he took to the mainland with some success, scoring points in the Australian Sports Car Championship in both 1969 and 1970. He also raced Ford Falcon GTHOs in production car racing from 1969 and stayed loyal to Ford for much of his career.
Goss debuted at the Bathurst 500 in 1969 driving a McLeod Ford (with its distinctive yellow/black chequer windscreen strip) sponsored Ford Falcon GTHO, but Goss’s co-driver Dennis Cribbin crashed the Falcon at Forrest Elbow. In 1970 John Goss posted the fastest lap during the Bathurst 500 in his Falcon. The following year Goss won two rounds of the Toby Lee Series at Oran Park against such opposition as Colin Bond and Fred Gibson.
Goss won the 1972 South Pacific Touring Car Series and the 1972 Sandown 250 endurance race, both in Series Production Ford Falcon GTHOs. He also put his Falcon on the front row of the grid at the Bathurst 500, qualifying second fastest.
With the Series Production class being replaced by the new Group C Touring Car class in 1973, Goss was the first driver to develop and race the new Ford Falcon XA GT Hardtop. Unlike Series Production, the new Group C rules allowed considerable modifications. Goss obtained sponsorship from Shell and Max McLeod, a prominent Ford dealer in Rockdale, New South Wales – known for his “Horn cars” – as well as obtaining factory assistance from Ford Australia, who provided Goss with purpose-built XA racing chassis. Goss and Kevin Bartlett teamed up for the 1973 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Bathurst and qualified on pole position, but failed to finish despite leading for much of the race.
John Goss’s reproduction of the 1974 Bathurst winner
In 1974, the pair returned to Bathurst in the same car – repainted from yellow to blue after losing Shell as their major sponsor – and proved to have the reliability needed to last through a race marred by driving rain, finishing first. To celebrate the victory, Ford Australia released a limited edition XB Falcon Hardtop in 1975 called the John Goss Special. Actual production numbers of these cars were never released by Ford, but estimates range anywhere between 260 and 800 – they are now considered collectible
