The reason Ford were allowed to race the Sierras was that the organisers at the time were pushing towards the failed international rule category, so maybe you want to get your facts straight. The Sierras and later the Nissans were allowed to race under these conditions and di not have to meet the same criteria as the Commodores. The Sierras that generally won had to also cheat with doccumented illegal fuel, panels and engine management. These cars were never on par with the Commodores costing many times more than the existing Touring Car Commodores. With the extra technology they should have won and won easy but they didnt.
The XY GTHO was actually more like around 500 hp, do a bit of research. So what about the XU1 the same car could be bought on road, the category was open to all cars. Holden went down the handling path and Ford went down the horsepower, evened itself out a bit in the category.
Ford innovators, are you on drugs? Nothing came out of Australia it was all US designed, just adapted to Australia. At least the XU1 used an Australian designed and built engine, drive train, suspension etc. The Falcon used all US designed car and parts. Most teams even sourced their Ford parts from the US. Do a bit of history on these cars.
The HQ was never designed as a race car and was never going to be a competitive race car, period. The GTHO was specifically designed to go fast and race. We can ask the same question of Ford, why they went Sierras and later Mustangs? This was due to the international rules. The XD/XE were far superior cars putting out around 560hp, but the rule changes occurred meaning change. At least Holden stayed with an Australian built car.
See you have not mentioned the A9X??? You may need to go back and actually look at history and check the ratio of wins Holden to Ford and the Falcon loses out big time.
Seems to be a matter of sour grapes tat a small 6 cylinder beat a GTHO on the track.
Also do some research on the Commodore, yes it had Opel origins, but was redesigned from the ground up to meet Australian conditions, with only some of the body panels and interior parts being the same, there are a couple of good books on this that will show you the differences.
Read some history full stop.
This of course does not mean that I do not like GTHOs either I like them all but am basically a Holden person.
The big thing that will come up over and over again is the so called Super Roo was actually Super Rooted by a liitle Lion Cub.



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