Innehållsförteckning för December 2023 från Street Machine

AS YOU may have read in this month’s Broadcast column, this will be the last issue of Street Machine under the Wheels Media banner. From next issue, we’ll be a part of the Out There Group, who are the folks behind Street Machine Summernats, Meguiar’s MotorEx, Red CentreNATS, the National Drag Racing Championship and more. Street Machine has had a few different owners over 40+ years (including media titan Kerry Packer for over 20 of those), but for the most part, that hasn’t mattered much to the folks who read our mags, watch our videos or attend our events. What has mattered is the relationship between the brand and the incredible tribe that makes up our sport. What is a little different this time around is that we are now…

BASED on real events, Gran Turismo tells the story of young English lad Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), in the midst of a gap year but torn between his own dreams for the future and the expectations of his family. He carves out a meagre existence in retail sales to fund his true passion: spending hours strapped into his sim rig, racing – and beating – all manner of international competitors in the video game Gran Turismo. Jann is a dab hand behind the virtual wheel, but it’s a pastime that doesn’t sit well with his soccer-loving dad, Steve (Djimon Hounsou), and his concerned-yet-supportive mum, Lesley (Geri ‘Ginger Spice’ Halliwell), who fear that playing video games at this critical point in Jann’s life will result in a menial future. In the…

SURVIVING Street Machine Drag Challenge can be a pretty tough ordeal, especially when you’re running single-digit ETs, and the typical racer might spend years building their car to handle the drag-and-drive torture test. Danny Howe and the Riot Lab crew did things a bit differently, putting together what we’re pretty sure is Australia’s first turbo Godzilla-powered streeter on an incredible 10-week turnaround. Danny’s last feature car was his epic VN SV89 tribute (SM, Jun ’23), but before that, his Barra turbo XE ute appeared in our May ’21 mag. That unassuming, 1000hp S-Pack inspired Danny to hunt down a matching sedan, so he started scouring the web, but it turned out neat S-Packs are a bit harder to find now than when he bought the ute in 2017. “Gumtree had…

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DON’T be fooled by the fancy badge. This stunning, garage-built BMW E30 from Lincoln Stevens combines lots of the stuff we love: a punchy aspo V8 with induction noise for days, three pedals, and a trophy-winning finish – all wrapped in a compact, street-driven package! Lincoln, who’s 62 but admits to thinking and acting like a 30-year-old, has a long back-catalogue of cool Aussie stuff, from a succession of 351-powered Falcons to One Tonners and hot panel vans. By the 90s, he’d found his jollies in BMW coupes. THE 4.0L M60B40 V8 IS VERY SNAPPY, WITH THE POWER COMING ON INSTANTLY AT THE TOUCH OF THE THROTTLE “I’d liked the little boxy shape of the E30 for a long time and had thought, ‘I’ll end up getting one of these…

PASSIONATE drag racer Leanne Bernhard has mentored countless people through racing workshops at Calder Park Raceway and actively encouraged female motoring enthusiasts as Victorian director of Girls Torque, formerly known as the Australian Women’s Motorsport Network (AWMN). If that’s not enough, Leanne has piloted several stout drag cars in her spare time. Unfortunately, an on-track accident 11 years ago saw her racing pursuits come to a screaming halt, but that is set to change when Leanne’s drag-and-drive 1980 VC Commodore SL/E hits the track. What led you to straight-line racing, Leanne? I had wanted to drag race since I was 12 years old, but I only started when I was 30, in my now ex-husband’s 355ci-powered, two-door LJ Torana. When I began racing, there was only one other female racer,…

A USSIE brands like Turbosmart and Haltech always do us proud at the annual SEMA Show in Las Vegas, but this year both companies outdid themselves with a flood of ambitious new products. The headline from Turbosmart was that after decades of leading the blow-off valve and wastegate market, the company is now entering the turbocharger game proper. Turbosmart also released its first-ever intercooler, for 2.7- and 3.5-litre V6 F150s. It’s the beginning of the company’s intercooler range, one we reckon will get bolstered pretty quickly now the first one is on the market. Another biggie for Turbosmart was the BoostGate50, which is not a traditional wastegate. The BoostGate50 uses the electronic e-Gate tech that Turbosmart has already pioneered, but for the cold side of the system. It’s a new…

CHALLENGE SPIRIT G’DAY guys, couldn’t quite get the car ready for Drag Challenge this year, so I followed along as an observer. What an awesome event – well done to you blokes. I feel the guy in this black, SA-registered HK Monaro (pictured left) deserves a mention. Don’t know who he is, but I saw him all week quietly going about his business with his daughter as his pit crew. I eventually caught up with him when he was packing up at The Bend on Saturday and told him that we saw him on the side of the road on the Portland run and apologised that we couldn’t stop to help him. He said he had tyre/rim issues and was going to pull the pin, but his daughter encouraged him…

WHEN you first lay eyes on Richard Collins’s beautifully presented 1968 HK Premier, you might assume it’s a highly prized, rarely used show car. But, as we learned, Richard doesn’t really see it like that. “To me, it’s just a fun street car; I built it to use it!” he says. This particular Prem has actually been featured in these pages before, way back in our October-November 1989 issue of SM (see sidebar, p.39). Richard bought the car from Queensland sight-unseen in 2015 and had it shipped down to his home in Central Victoria. Amazingly, the HK was pretty much still as it was when it was featured all those years ago – just a bit worse for wear. “I was basically looking for a weekend cruiser to share with…

THERE’S no denying that cars like these are dream machines. For Rob Grbavac, the dream was ingrained in him the first time he saw a VK Director at the ripe age of 14. “A black VK Calais Director drove past me and a friend on a day off from school in the Melbourne CBD, and I was gobsmacked,” Rob recalls. “From that day on, I told myself I would own one some day.” This 1985 VK Director is the fulfilment of that vow. It’s a genuine HDT machine that Rob’s added his own personal touch to. “I wanted to keep the core HDT part of the car but with a modern twist,” he says. Rob reckons the VK was in pretty good nick when he got it. “I originally just…

WHEN we featured Ron Ziessler’s HQ Holden way back in the August 2000 issue of Street Machine, we said that “DIY streeters don’t get much better than this”. Boasting flawless red paint and slung low over a set of Weld Draglites, powered by a thumping Iron Lion V8 packed with Group A goodies, and detailed to within an inch of its life, the car was a bona fide shed-built stunner that claimed quite a bit of tinware during its 12 months on the scene. Soon after he finished the car, Ron’s family began to grow and his priorities shifted, so he mothballed the Quey for two-and-a-bit decades. “After its second show, I parked it up,” he says. “Life ebbs and flows; when I showed it the first time, my wife…

STREET Machine of the Year 1993; back-to-back Summernats Top Judged Street Machine awards; two-time Street Machine cover car – yep, Frank Rejtano’s incredible 1964 Corvette Stingray has been there and done it all. In the early 90s, street machining royalty like Owen Webb and Ron Barclay declared Frank’s ’Vette the best build they’d ever seen – and they oughta know. Happily, this now 30-year-old build is still in Frank’s care and as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as ever, so we thought it was high time to catch up with him about the history of his legendary Corvette. The car still looks fantastic! What’s your secret, Frank? I’m pretty much retired now, so I have plenty of time to look after it. Because I don’t like using car covers, I’ve gone to a…

THE brief from the customer to ProFlo Performance for this boosted LS combo was “a basic, reliable and streetable turbo engine”. With that in mind, the team built this 403ci mill using factory GM block and cylinder head castings, a hydraulic camshaft and compact 66mm Garrett turbochargers, but none of that should get in the way of it making around the 1000hp mark on pump fuel. With such impressive potential from a relatively simple, street-friendly combo, it’s little wonder that the LS is such a popular platform. To an LQ9 block, ProFlo added a Compstar crank, BoostLine conrods and JE pistons, while Crow Cams applied a ProFlo-specified grind to the hydraulic-roller camshaft. Up top, a set of ported LS3 heads feature Manley valves and springs, with a set of factory…

FOR some of us, a love of cars is something that forms gradually over time. But for others, it is smashed into us almost from birth, thanks to a parent or sibling exposing us to the joys and trials of working with cars. Peter Fleetwood is definitely from the latter category, born into a family of gearheads with his late father Brian at the helm. Here are some of the cars that have shaped Peter’s journey. 1: PETER’S dad Brian was a mechanic, so petrol was already flowing through Peter’s veins as an infant. “When it came time to get my first car, Dad was all over it and saddled me up with a Morris 1100. On my first drive, Dad said that I’d never be able to roll it…

TOP Gear Australia is being rebooted by BBC Studios Australia & New Zealand and will appear on the Paramount+ streaming service next year. Headlining the new show will be Blair Joscelyne, better known as Moog from the mega-popular Mighty Car Mods YouTube channel, who’ll be joined by former NRL player and current The Amazing Race host Beau Ryan and Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia. We posted the news to our Facebook page and asked for your thoughts on TGA’s return and its new hosts. Here’s what you had to say. Vaughan Lynch – Demographically, I can see why they selected the hosts. Who knows if it will work though, but it has potential. Someone like Iain Kelly would also have worked well with Moog. Ben Croake – I agree with…

DAMIEN ‘Jeno’ Genrich knows a killer car when he sees one. “I’ve had a 600-cube big-block nitrous Falcon that was a seven-second drag car; I’ve had Camaros and a twin-turbo Chevy Nova,” he says. Yep, he’s owned some real hotties, and this big-horsepower Fairmont streeter is the latest in that line. Fellow Queenslander Christie See is the bloke originally behind the XT, having conceptualised and developed it over the past 15 years. “I bought the car in 2007,” Christie begins. “I’ve always had a love of Fords in general, my all-time favourites being XTs. This one was very straight and in good condition.” It still had some tinworm, though, so Christie dove into his first full nut-and-bolt resto, replacing both the inner and outer sills and fabricating new lower and…

WHEN Gavin Knight bought his 1964 Chevy Impala wagon as an optimistic 21-year-old back in July 2000, he already had ambitions of taking it to Street Machine Summernats. “When we brought it home, I asked Dad if we could get it done for Summernats, and he replied, ‘Which one?’ I said, ‘The one in six months!’” Gavin laughs. That would’ve been Summernats 14. But, as with many car projects, timelines blew out, and two decades would pass before the Chev finally graced the Elite Hall at Australia’s biggest car festival. “The quick tidy-up job I had planned blew out to a full-on resto,” Gavin admits, “because once you touch one thing, you just end up doing the rest.” Prior to the Chev coming into his life, Gavin had been playing…

WAYNE CALLEJA TC CORTINA “I PURCHASED my Cortina back in 1997 with the intention of using it as my daily driver. My dad and I gave it a quick respray in red, and I then I drove it around while I was on my P-plates until I ran into issues with the transmission and differential. This forced me to take the car off the road, but I saw it as an opportunity to transform it, converting it from running a pre-Crossflow 250 and auto combo to a worked 250 Crossflow, fourspeed single-rail gearbox and 3.7:1 spooled BorgWarner diff. After a while, I got the idea to paint the engine bay, and things escalated from there – I ended up completely stripping the car, selling off the running gear, and embarking…

HONESTY LATE one Friday night, a policeman spotted a man driving very erratically through the streets of Dublin, so he pulled the man over and asked him if he had been drinking that evening. “Aye, so I have, officer,” said the man. “’Tis Friday, you know, so me and the lads stopped by the pub, where I had six or seven pints. And then there was something called ‘Happy Hour’ and they served these margaritas, which were quite good, so I had four or five o’ those. Then I had to drive me friend Mike home, and o’ course I then had to go inside with him for a couple of Guinnesses – couldn’t be rude, ya know. Then I stopped on the way home to get another bottle for…