Every car circle has their holy grail. The Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda. The Chevrolet Chevelle LS-6. The AMX/3. Ferrari 250 GTO. Lamborghini Miura. They are the cars that have made the transition from transportation to treasure, and the prices reflect as such. Million-dollar Plymouths that brand-new were seen as throwaway cars. You get the idea. Only a few have held their legacy from the moment they came into being, and recently one broke the record and a milestone when it sold at auction. The car is a 1971 Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III, the kind of car that would send politicians running with soiled undergarments for fear that a fast car would be the ultimate downfall of current society. It’s quintessentially Australian, a four-door sedan packing a romping V8 and enough attitude to make you wonder what kind of family would use this as daily transportation. It’s a beast, one of 300 built, and it’s fresh with just over 13,000 miles on the clock.

And it’s damn expensive. Recently sold at a Lloyds auction, this Track Red Falcon hammered out for AUD $1.3 million dollars (appx. $760,000 in U.S. dollars), making it the first Australian car to hammer for over a million and making this example the most expensive Australian-built car to date. It didn’t hurt that a famous Aussie cricket player owned the car for some time, but what gets us is it’s showroom fresh look. 13,000 miles over nearly fifty years? Seems like a tragedy to us. Rare or not, valuable or not, this car needs to be exercised every now and then, and a bit more than 277 miles a year.