Innehållsförteckning för May 2020 från Street Machine

AS COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the globe and government regulation changes day by day, we’re living in a time of unknowns. As more and more businesses are forced to drop their shutters, the Carnage garage isn’t immune from closure. Though we’re still in the clear at time of writing, there’s a very real possibility that access could one day be halted without much notice. With this in mind, our host decided to enact his contingency plan by getting the Rust-Oleum Motospray Valiant wagon out of the workshop and back to where it all began: Scotty’s garage. The old girl needs a heap of rust repair and bodywork, enough to keep Scotty occupied for months if necessary. To get it home, the hoisted Valiant required some semblance of mobility,…

LETTER OF THE MONTH CRAZY TIMES REGARDING your Legend yarn on John ‘Crazyman’ Taylor (SM, Jan ’20), the photo of John next to his Topolino brought back a flood of memories, as John was my neighbour for a while in the inner west of Sydney. There always seemed to be drag and muscle cars in his yard to gawk at. For a youngster, the sight, sound and smell was a massive shock to the senses, and so very different to everything else we knew at that time. We were just getting into mini-bikes and go-karts, so the bug with motorised ‘stuff’ had started, but John and his group were in a totally different universe that made no sense at all at the time. The drag world was something totally alien…

THE Australian radial drag racing scene has grown rapidly in the past five years, evolving from relative obscurity into the spiritual home of street-car racing. Inspired by the scene in the USA, where flamboyant promotion has bred fanatical fans and teams alike, the number of Australian radial series and events has continued to increase, welcoming both street cars and budget-conscious heads-up racers. Radial drag racing is based on what are ostensibly street tyres, though Mickey Thompson and other radial manufacturers specifically note that their drag radials are not for street use. The tread pattern, restricted to a pair of intermittent lines in the middle of the tyre, is there simply for US Department of Transport approval. You’d frankly be a lunatic to do any kind of wet-weather driving on the…

I THINK WE WERE THE ONLY CAR IN THE TOP 10 AT SUMMERNATS THAT WAS DRIVEN TO JUDGING. THAT’S WHY I WAS REALLY SURPRISED IT DID SO WELL TALK about shattering stereotypes. Who says the top show cars never get driven? “I wanted as many people as possible to see it was a real driver,” says master craftsman Todd Sorensen of his Summernats 33 Grand Champion-winning 1967 Chevy Impala. “So, we decided to do a lap of Summernats on the way to the Meguiar’s Judging Pavilion. It took us nearly an hour, out in the screaming heat, through Skid Row. It was intense and equally awesome, as heaps of people came running up to say how great it was to see a car of this calibre doing laps. At no…

WIN! WIN a Mothers gift pack, containing a bunch of awesome gear to make your ride looks its best. See www.mothers.com for details; contents may vary.…

THE world is not the same place it was just a few short months ago. The coronavirus pandemic has taken an incredible toll on people, families, businesses and economies right around the globe, and the Aussie car scene about which we are so passionate has not been immune. Perhaps the most obvious sector of the industry to be affected is events. Street Machine was left with no choice but to place our inaugural Sydney Drag Challenge Weekend event on hold, shortly before new legislation introduced in NSW would have taken the decision out of our hands anyway. The Summernats crew had a bumper 12 months planned, and have had to think on their feet and reschedule some of their suite of events. “We’ve moved MotorEx to November this year and…

OUR mates at Wheels magazine recently looked back at the legendary Holden Hurricane concept car, more than 50 years after its debut. Packing a mid-mounted 253 and plenty of space-age gear, it stunned the world when unveiled in 1969. Today, the design is no less head-turning, and you guys took to the comments section on our Facebook page to share your thoughts - then and now - on the Hurricane. Michael Durk - One time it could've been the champion of the world. Craig MacDonald - Supercar with a red motor! Mark Williams - Australia's first 'drive by itself' car - ran on tracks at the Holden plant at Acacia Ridge. Peter Dunlop - Wasn't self-driving; it had an early navigation system - magnets in the road at Lang Lang…

AS SOON AS I SAW IT, I RECOGNISED IT AS GEORGE ANTHONY’S OLD BUILD. ITS LIFE AS A DRAG CAR HAD TAKEN A TOLL, BUT IT WAS STILL A GOOD BASIS FOR A NEW BUILD WHEN a young George Anthony spent his late teens and early 20s building up a once-beige XB Fairmont sedan into a lemon-yellow showstopper, little did he know the legacy he would create and how much of an impact this build would have on more than three decades of hot-car fans. Its look was unmistakable – the Paul Bennett-applied bright yellow paint and graphics were highlighted by eight chrome injection stacks slicing through the bonnet and 14-inch-wide Center Lines stuffed under the McDonald Brothers tubbed and clipped rear. We featured the XB as Hot Property back…

I’M A bit of a sucker for HQs, so I’ll always stroll up to one to check it out, especially if it’s in the Elite lane for judging at Summernats. That’s where I initially spied this stunning HQ ute. One of the first things I noticed was the beautifully detailed engine bay, chock-a-block full of 615 cubic inches of big-block Chevy. Most likely, the first thing your eyes will be drawn to are the engraved rocker covers advertising Shields Garage, but don’t go looking for it in your local directory, because Shields Garage is basically a really well-equipped shed created by West Aussie Nigel Warr. “When I built the workshop, the intention was just to build some cars for me or my son, and an HQ ute was on top…

THERE was an era when the Toyota Corona was more common than Winfield billboards and any virus this side of the Spanish flu, but it’s funny how time patches over your memory. ‘Outta sight, outta mind’, they say, because you never see Coronas of this vintage anymore. But you’ll only need a moment in the presence of this traffic-stopping ’73 Toyota rebuild to make you start chanting ‘Corona’ in the streets like a lunatic. And then possibly the police cells soon after. The 1970-74 RT80/81 Corona transitioned from bowls-club regular to underrated classic long ago, though it was always Toyota’s high point for Corona cred. Solid, refined and kinda stylish, all it was really crying out for was a serious spruce-up and an engine. Any engine. Just not a pushrod…

YOU know, trying to sell a car these days has got to be the automotive equivalent of flopping your old fella out onto a bench and hammering nails through it. Actually, that might even be less painful. We’re an eight-car family, with another on the way, so I figured the time had come to thin the herd – we do live on a normal house block, after all. First, I unloaded an ex-daily ‘nothing’ car for cheap to a mate, then made the tough decision to sell my VF Valiant hardtop, ‘Old Daze’, in the hope of both regaining our patio space and making room for the new project. Now I’ve owned Old Daze for 20 years, after saving it as a run-down 770 that was languishing in a front…

THIS is the big-block Chev that trumped the AC Delco Pro Slammer in the Turbo vs Blower battle at Summernats 32. Housed in the Castle Hill Performance VT Commodore, it spat out 3076rwhp on the hub dyno, besting the ’Slammer’s 2992rwhp. With new 98mm Garrett turbos, it then made 3470rwhp at ’Nats 33 earlier this year. What might be surprising is how ‘ordinary’ the combo is compared to some of the other billet-laden deals floating around the radial scene in Oz. “The core is a 540ci Dart Big M cast-iron Chev block, with a forged Crower crank, JE pistons and GRP alloy rods,” says CHP’s Dale Heiler, the driver and tuner of the car. The combo runs a fairly tame 11.5:1 compression ratio, with a solid-roller cam and Crower lifters…

WITH only six months left to serve of a minimum-security prison sentence, model inmate Frank Leone (Stallone) is happy to see out his time and settle back into life with girlfriend Melissa (Fluegel), with plans to reopen a mechanical workshop left to him by his childhood mentor. Frank ended up in the slammer after exacting revenge on a group of thugs who assaulted his mentor – the man who gave a young Frank the life guidance and direction he desperately needed – and by all accounts his remaining prison time should be trouble free. But without warning, he is whisked away on a late-night transfer to the maximum-security Gateway Prison, at the mercy of the disgruntled Warden Drumgoole (Sutherland). It seems that Leone and Drumgoole have a chequered past; the…

RETIRED Holden engineer Warwick Bryce masterminded plenty of GM-H’s engine tech and made its V8s go. We caught up with him to get the lowdown on his career – and the truth about those ‘cop chips’. How did your tenure at Holden begin? I started there in 1973 in what was called Experimental Engineering. There were body and wheels and shock absorbers and latches [departments], but my interest was in engines. I got my foot in the door, and once you’ve done that you look around and see where you can go. You follow your interest, and mine was in engines. When did you begin on engines? After about a year. We worked in areas known as ‘downstairs’ and ‘upstairs’. The design blokes were upstairs and they designed the parts…

ONE of the most common lies we street machiners tell ourselves boils down to one simple sentence: “I’ll just give it a quick tidy-up.” While it looks a million bucks now, Robert Guljas’s epic blown 2004 HSV GTO started off as a low-kay, but tatty, stocker. “The guy I bought it off used it every day, so it had a few scratches here and there,” Robert says. “It was just well-used, but it only had 120,000km, and I love these Monaros.” Holden’s third-generation Monaro, coded CV8, was a hit from the time the top-secret VT Commodore Coupe concept broke cover at the 1998 Sydney Motor Show. The bodykit-clad HSV GTO and GTS coupes ramped the horn-meter up and were pegged as future classics almost from the time they were new,…

PETER Sidoti isn’t sure how long he’s owned his multiple Summernats street class-winning Mustang. But I reckon it’s at least 15 years, as that’s about how long I’ve been chasing Peter down at the ’Nats each year to poke a pen and notebook under his nose and scribble some quotable quotes about his latest trophy haul. On the other end of the phone line, I hear Peter ask his wife Marlene: “Honey, how long have I owned that car for?” He returns to our chat: “Let’s say 22 years!” Any way you slice it, Peter is one of those staunch street machiners who have owned their toy for a long time, and he’s built his Mustang again and again to keep it exactly how he wants it as trends and…

THE popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) continues to increase, with a variety of manufacturers presenting electric cars to a market still learning how to choose one. You can also build an EV and, sure enough, I’ve now been asked by a client to engineer my first one: an ICV (Individually Constructed Vehicle) trike. So I had to deal with three engineering aspects at the same time: an ICV, a trike and an EV all in the one project. The only part that I was not experienced in was the EV aspect, so I had to learn the current regulations. Luckily I had a good client who knew his stuff, and the result of our cooperative efforts is an EV trike called T-Rev, registered and on the road. For my part,…

I BOUGHT MY 225CI AP6 WHEN I WAS 16 YEARS OLD FROM A DECEASED ESTATE; THE OLD GUY WAS THE FIRST OWNER TINA Wright is part of a rare breed that still owns their first car after 30 years. What’s even cooler is that it’s an AP6 Valiant, something that has maintained its cred as a sweet cruiser throughout the decades. Tina chats with us about the AP6’s journey from daily family hauler to cruiser and everything in between. How did you end up with an AP6 Valiant? We were a Chrysler family. My father had a red and black ’70 VG Pacer, then later a CL Chrysler ute, which he used as his milk truck. But the silver CM GLX that he called ‘Silverbird’ was his pride and joy,…

BEN SCHRAMM 1970 XW FORD FAIRMONT “I BOUGHT my XW in 2013, pretty much as it looks now. The paint was done by the previous owner about 12 years ago. I have changed the stripe and wheels a few times, and the car has had three engine combos over the years, with all the work done by me and my brothers. It currently runs an E85-fuelled 451ci Dart V8 built by my younger brother, with JE pistons, Molnar rods, a Camtech cam, T&D rocker gear and Higgins Race heads and manifold. A Quick Fuel carb and a 250-shot nitrous plate system live up top. Behind the donk is an Al’s Race Glides Powerglide with a 5500rpm Dominator and transbrake, and a nine-inch with 35-spline axles, 3.7:1 gears and Truetrac. The…