Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 från Street Machine

THE first-ever Rare Spares Rockynats is set to light up Central Queensland for a long June weekend of horsepower-fuelled action. A joint effort by the Summernats team and Rockhampton Regional Council, Rockynats will offer a plethora of automotive delights, 26-28 June. Like its big-brother event in Canberra, the Street Machine Summernats, Rockynats’ drawcards will include burnouts, cruising and show cars. Drifting and eighth-mile street drags are also set to feature all weekend, making for some intense no-prep racing along Quay Street in the Rockhampton CBD. Drags will be divided into two categories: those with quicker cars who want to race competitively, and less formal grudge racing that will be open to anybody willing to give it a shot in a controlled environment. The event will be split over three precincts,…

TOUCHING down in Christchurch on a warm Friday afternoon, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Muscle Car Madness. Though I’d been given a vague rundown of the Kiwi car scene, I was a first-timer to the Land of the Long White Cloud, let alone its automotive culture. As a complete newcomer, I figured there’d be an abundance of Australian muscle cars with the odd American machine thrown in for good measure. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found when I walked through the gates of the Rangiora Showground, about half an hour north of Christchurch. A bonanza of Yank metal stretched as far as the eye could see, interspersed with an assortment of Aussie Holdens, Fords and Chryslers. Al, my guide and photographer for the…

LAST month, we farewelled the Holden Commodore for a second time, trawling the fast, the rare and the practical steeds that peppered the Aussie car’s legacy. We also canvassed our colleagues and friends to get their stories, recollections, likes and dislikes about the General’s local hero accumulated over four decades of manufacturing history. But those reminiscences were limited to the receiving end of the process; even when new, these cars were delivered unto us fully formed. But for every Commodore that exists, there was a moment when it was born. So we sat down with a bunch of blokes for whom the Commodore was not merely a car, but a career. People like Shane Dale, who took the doors off after painting, and ‘Gumpy’ Willoughby who put them back on.…

I WAS 18 years old when I started at Elizabeth in May 1995. I was on the main line doing ‘doors on’ in Final Assembly, and during my time with the factory, I never moved too far from that area. I worked with a great group of guys, so I didn’t really want to leave. I enjoyed building V6 and V8 Holdens all day, although we would regularly get weird stuff come down the line. The Opel Calais went to Malaysia and Singapore, and ran a Commodore body, 2.5-litre Opel V6 and a Caprice bonnet and grille. The grille bracket was a bit fiddly to fit, with three nuts either side that had to be quickly tightened by rattle gun. That was fine when Statesman/Caprices were coming down the line…

SLICK paint over an arrow-straight body, fat deep-dish wheels, a blown V8 screaming up front and show-quality trim. Brendyn Wardell has used this recipe on a slew of Commodore builds, and who can blame him when the results are as beaut as some of his greatest hits, including STR8AZ (SM, Jul ’03), 2ANGRY (SM, Mar ’13), ANGRYR (SM, Apr ’14) and now his new VL; 2NGRY2. You may have noticed a bit of a theme with the number plates on these cars all sporting a fair amount of anger, and wonder how a bloke could possibly be enraged when he owns and builds such killer streeters. Well, it goes all the way back to 2003, when some lowlife flops decided they needed Brendyn’s amazing, groundbreaking blown VK. “All these cars…

THE ’67 WAS COMPLETELY DISASSEMBLED TO REVEAL A SHELL WITH MORE HOLES THAN A COLANDER YOU know when your project car’s in the shed with its major organs scattered around the place and all you want to do is just take it for a spin? Joel Smith spent so many years in this very situation with his ’67 Mustang that he built an XC hardtop in just a few months to scratch the cruising itch. Joel’s no stranger to crafting cars; he even runs his own business, Joel’s Garage Gear, which sells hoists and workshop equipment. “When I was 20 I built an XF with a turbo 250 crossflow, and later I had a 60-series Land Cruiser with a 350 Chev in it,” he says. With those cars out of…

WHEN you radically modify your ride, chances are that your engineer/certifier will have to verify how strong your ‘new’ vehicle is by doing a torsion and beaming test. As usual, this requirement can vary by jurisdiction, as each state interprets the National Code of Practice for the Modification of Light Vehicles differently. There are several situations where a torsion and beaming test might be needed. Examples include when the chassis has been modified to fit new rear wheel tubs; the front subframe or chassis has been modified to fit a bigger engine or a new suspension design; the entire floorpan of a unitary-constructed vehicle has been zipped out to make way for a completely revised fabricated chassis; a convertible has been made from a sedan by cutting the roof off;…

PACKING stout 15x10 Auto Drags tucked beneath a mini-tubbed rear, the menacing black XP sedan of Yvette Gluyas is one tough-looking machine. And that’s exactly the way Yvette envisioned it. Beautiful XP you have there, Yvette! Tell us about it. I always was an XW and XY person, but when I spotted our neighbour Anthony’s XP in factory black with factory red interior 20 years ago, I fell in love with the combo. Anthony eventually pulled it off the road, and that’s when my husband Shane and I began asking to buy it. Four-and-a-half years ago I wanted a car of my own, as Shane kept selling off his cars, which would devastate me every time. So, I needed a car that I could get attached to and keep. I…

STEVE RYAN 1975 HOLDEN LH TORANA “I HAVE owned my Torana since I was 16 years old – 23 years now! When I bought the car it was Candy Apple Red with a 202 and Aussie four-speed. I rebuilt it with a 253 and flare kit ready for my P-plates; it only required painting. Then I decided to go to a 427ci big-block Chev with a 6/71 blower, Dart Pro 1 heads, 9.8:1 comp, solid-roller cam, SRP pistons, Total Seal rings, Scat rods and a steel crank. It runs on pump 98 and makes 900hp at the flywheel. Behind the mill is a Powerglide and a sheet-metal nine-inch with a 4.11:1 full-spool Strange centre. It’s mini-tubbed with coil-over shocks. Brakes are VT Commodore on the front and VN discs on…

AFTER two successful events in South East Queensland, we’re moving the three-day Drag Challenge Weekend event to Sydney Dragway for 2020, 3-5 April. And, while we’ll be racing all three days at Sydney, that doesn’t mean the entrants will be getting out of some big drives! There will be a minimum of 600km to cover, and you can expect some of those roads to be quite tough. That’s why we call it Drag Challenge. If you have never entered the event before, read the rules carefully before you commit. You can read them all at dragchallenge.com.au, but the very crux of the event is that once racing starts for the weekend, competitors cannot use car trailers or access support vehicles without disqualification. Other biggies are to observe all road rules…

THE original Mad Max Pursuit Special ‘Interceptor’ has been put up for sale by current owners, the Orlando Auto Museum in Florida, USA. This is huge news for Mad Max fans and Falcon GT enthusiasts alike, with Max Rockatansky’s menacing black XB coupe arguably the most famous Aussie car of all time. The coupe’s transformation from secondhand car to film star started in 1977, when the genuine JG66 XB Falcon GT was sent to Ray Beckerley at Graf-X International with a brief from Mad Max art director Jon Dowding. Ray subcontracted some of the work, with Ford designer Peter Arcadipane fitting one of his Concorde noses and Errol Platt of Purvis Eureka fame installing the roof and tail spoilers after ripping them off Bob Jane’s Monaro. Truck painter Rod Smythe…

COOL FLICK FACT: This would be Ron Howard’s last credited role in a theatrically released movie. MAKING a sequel flick is always a tough gig, but not many have had to live up to such a legendary forerunner as American Graffiti. Hailed as an instant classic shortly after its release in 1973, the George Lucas-helmed original continues to be lauded – especially by us car nuts – nearly five decades later. So it was quite a bold move for Lucasfilm to take a punt with a sequel, More American Graffiti, in 1979. This time around, Lucas chose to pass the writer/director hat to Bill L Norton, who wrote the script for Convoy and has since amassed some pretty decent TV director credits, such as The Twilight Zone, Tour of Duty,…

HAVING the loose fruit in your pocket to buy your dad the car he’s always wanted is something many street machiners would love to do, and Heath Madgwick actually got to do this for his father, Jack. However, the big reveal didn’t quite follow the Hollywood script many might expect. “My mother and I bought it for my dad as a birthday present surprise, as he’d always dreamed of owning an EH but could never afford one,” Heath says. “We gave him the car on his birthday, and he was over the moon when he laid eyes on it. But he had a bit of a poke around it, took it for a drive and came back a few minutes later and told us he didn’t think much of the…

I DIDN’T WANT TO PUT ANY GTS STUFF INTO IT; I JUST WANTED TO KEEP IT STANDARD WITH SOME IMPROVEMENT THE phrase ‘the build snowballed’ is one that gets thrown around by car tragics on the regular, but let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment: There’s no such thing as a simple project. For Mat Bone, what was supposed to be just an engine swap on a tidy HK wagon quickly turned into an all-out job, but I’m sure you’d agree the end result was worth it. “I bought the car when it popped up in Melbourne because it was a together and driveable Kingswood wagon, running a 307,” Mat says. “So I picked it up and I was going to put a stroked small-block Chevy in it.” Mat…

I STARTED my mechanical fitter’s apprenticeship through Holden in 2004, working on the Family II four-cylinder line at Fishermans Bend. My job was to ensure that the engine plant machinery kept running; I handled preventative maintenance and addressed any breakdowns. Sometimes it would be an easy fix such as replacing a part that had worn out of spec. Sometimes you’d be rebuilding half the machine. As my career progressed, I did some work in the foundry where we cast engine blocks, disc brakes, steering knuckles and exhaust manifolds. I briefly shifted to Experimental where I machined up some spacers at the boss’s request, but he wouldn’t tell me what they were for. Turns out they went into the Efijy concept car. From 2008 I worked maintenance in Plant 18 where…

I STARTED with Holden in March 1965 as a graduate designer from RMIT; in fact, I was the first design graduate Holden ever hired. In 1969, I became head of the Torana studio, penning the GTR-X concept and overseeing all models from the LC to the UC of 1978. When looking back at the decision to base the Kingswood replacement on the German Opel, you need to engage a degree of perspective. The VB, with its tall glasshouse, was leading-edge in terms of styling and came with a bunch of new technology packaged within. Plus, it was rightly perceived to be European, which was highly desirable at the time; there was also a pretty major fuel crisis underway and it was seen as a benefit that the Commodore was smaller.…

LAND-yacht. Barge. Boat. All cheeky nicknames for gigantic 70s-built American cars, predominantly from the GM stable. Not content with sheer size, manufacturers at the time also added unusual body styling to the mix, with Buick’s early-70s boat-tail design perhaps the most distinctive. And it’s this pointy-ended feature that lured in Dan and Monika Appleby while they were on the hunt for a tidy weekend cruiser. Monika was keen on a muscle car, while Dan preferred a custom, and the locally sourced, big block-powered 1972 Buick Riviera coupe they found neatly ticked both boxes. As the Rivi arrived in project form, it toured the local shops for paint, panel, airbags, diff and donk before returning home for assembly. “That’s when I discovered the limitations of my tools and abilities,” Dan shrugs.…

PAUL Burnet is a Kiwi racer with a career in touring cars that goes back to the early 70s. In conjunction with Phil Pagan at Track Sport Engines and Craig Hyland from Engine Dynamics, he’s been developing a billet 202 block for a number of years. That development is now complete, and the block – topped with a J.ZED head – is now in Paul’s LJ Torana GTR XU-1 race car. The new combination has punched out 422hp to the rear tyres naturally aspirated, which is pretty impressive from a six-pot. The most power they could reliably produce with an OEM block was 390hp – at the crank – so this is a serious step up. Paul races his Torry in the Northern Muscle Cars Club series. The club was…

WE HAD OUR GOALS PLANNED EARLY; WE WANTED TO HAVE THE FASTEST RB30-POWERED STREETER THE boys from JW Automotive in Ormiston, Queensland, have been turning out some killer cars for some years now, particularly those rocking RB power. Their latest creation, an RB30-powered VL owned by George Josevski, recently ran 7.44@193.88mph on a 255 radial at Willowbank. The 3.2-litre engine has the best of the best when it comes to RB power, with a custom billet block and crank, GRP rods and an original head ported in-house – not to mention a massive Garrett GTX50 turbo pumping 65psi of boost into the little six-banger. On the dyno, all of that equates to 1700hp at the wheels, with more to come. “The car has been with us for some time,” said…

GEELONG ALL HOLDEN DAY 14 MARCH, GEELONG, VIC 28-29 FEB, BALLARAT, VIC Ballarat Swap Meet, Ballarat Airport. Visit ballaratswapmeet.com.au. 28 FEB, KEILOR DOWNS, VIC Melbourne Muscle Cars 2020 Classic Car Show, Keilor Central Shopping Centre, 80 Taylors Road. Visit the Melbourne Muscle Cars Facebook page for more info. 29 FEB, COLAC, VIC Colac Show & Shine, Colac Memorial Square. Call Marlene on 0412 493 124 or email gamarketing@optusnet.com.au. 29 FEB, DANDENONG, VIC Penrite Auto Fest 2020, 110-116 Greens Road. Search ‘Penrite Auto Fest 2020’ on Facebook for more info. 29 FEB, LARA, VIC Avalon 5K Burnout & Wet T-Shirt Competition, Avalon Raceway, Old Melbourne Road. Visit the Avalon Burnout Events Facebook page for more info. 29 FEB, LOGAN, VIC Logan Car Show, Logan Pub, 6742 Wimmera Highway. Call Keith on…

Part 1 JON Williams has had an absolute blinder of a car career. From dabbling with all manner of build challenges in the back shed to being part of the design team at HSV, Jon has tried his hand at a variety of makes and models over the years, refining virtually every skill needed along the way. Here are some of his favourites, with more to come next month! 01: MICK Dascoli’s 1940 Ford coupe has been on the scene for decades, and Jon worked with Mick as young blokes. “I’ve known Mick and his brother John for 40 years, which is pretty scary in itself,” he says. “Mick was getting to the tail-end of this project when we met, and I’ve seen the ’40 evolve from blown small-block Chev…

IT LOOKS LIKE A BATTLE-WEARY VETERAN THAT’S BEEN DRAGGED OUT OF THE JUNGLE, WITH FLAKING AND FADED OLIVE-DRAB PAINT AND WEATHERED MARKINGS ONE of the biggest hits at Street Machine Summernats 33 was Kevin and Jo Mantach’s army-themed ’50 Chevy coupe – partially because it was completely different to anything else at the event, but also because it is an exceedingly cool build with a tonne of clever touches and design features. While the prevailing trend of burnout car builds over the past few years has been turning the newest car you can find into a tyre-destroyer, Kev has flipped that on its head with one of the earliest cars built to this level. While all manner of cars have been built over the years with an army theme, more…

CAN you remember what you got for your 13th birthday? If you were Justin Gauci, you’d never forget, because the lucky so-and-so was gifted a ’67 XR Falcon sedan from his dad! Now, before you go stomping off to yell at your old boy for not getting you a sweet ride for your first teenage birthday, Justin’s XR didn’t look anything like the beautiful gold machine you here. “Dad bought it for $600,” Justin says. “It was a bare Falcon 500 shell with no wiring or anything, so we had to put it together piece by piece over the years.” In fact, it took nearly a decade of hard work and toil to build this 700rwhp turbocharged weapon! “The body needed a bit of work,” Justin says. “We had the…

IT HAD been a bit of a dream of mine to get work in the Holden factory; I’d always been a Holden enthusiast after all, so the opportunity to help build the things was alluring. I ended up getting a gig at Holden By Design, albeit briefly, in the late 1990s. The HBD area handled a variety of offline tasks, including fitting the chrome sports bars to a batch of VSIII SS utes. I’d never really wielded the tools in anger before, so when I started fitting the bars I wasn’t the slickest gun. I wasn’t much good at percussively persuading the tabs to line up and I was constantly in trouble for standing on swarf in the rear tub. That being said, whenever I see a rare VSIII SS…

AFTER the near-apocalyptic conditions in Canberra during Street Machine Summernats, it was nice to return to the clear blue skies and relatively mild temperatures of Perth for Motorvation 34 – the longest-running event of its type in Australia. Yep, it’s been going a full year longer than Summernats, but unfortunately has been in a holding pattern over the past few years. For a long time, Motorvation was a three-day extravaganza that attracted rave reviews from interstate visitors and locals alike. Things changed in 2016, when the long-term management team of Perth Motorplex – led by the Miocevich family and Kevin Prendergast – called it a day. Since then, the Motorplex has been run by VenuesWest, a government statutory authority that reports to the State Minister for Sport & Recreation. VenuesWest…

A LOT of fabrication goes into creating the smoothed-out engine bays you’ve seen in Street Machine over the years. In this two-part article, we’ll give you a little insight into what’s involved, starting this month with how to fabricate a flat firewall. STEP 01 This 60s Galaxie’s firewall is a bit messy, so instead of trying to weld up holes and even things out from side to side for a symmetrical look, we decide to just remove the whole lot and start from scratch. STEP 02 Working neatly along the edges with a 1mm cutting disc on a five-inch grinder and an air hacksaw, the whole firewall is quickly removed in one piece. The vehicle’s front panels are then refitted to work out the alignment and clearances for the new…

WITH the 1980s well and truly behind us, the odds of seeing a crispy, clean VK Commodore out and about are slim, with most either locked in sheds or gone the way of the dodo. That’s not the case for young buck Dean Grima and his time-warp VK SL though, which is in great nick despite being anything but a shed queen. The Commodore is in impressive condition; how did you come to own it? I’ve had it for roughly three or four years and I got it off the original owners. They daily-drove it for a little while and then it was really only used to go to church and back before I got it. It’s all pretty much in original condition, and I’ve always had a thing for…