Innehållsförteckning för Yearbook 2024 från Street Machine

EMAIL your missives to gday@streetmachine.com.au. Keep it short and sweet! G8 SUMMIT I’M AN Aussie living in Canada, and you should know that Australian cars have a cult following over here. A while ago, I saw what looked like a 2009 VE Commodore for sale on Marketplace, and, having lusted after one for years, I called the owner, Stephane, who lives in Montreal. After the hardest job interview I’ve ever had, he deemed me a suitably qualified candidate to purchase it! These cars were exported to North America as the Pontiac G8, and my specimen was originally built as a 6.0L V8 GT and sold in Florida. That owner sold it to a GM dealership in Toronto, where the trim was upgraded to the highest GXP level and some maniac…

A BRUSH with automotive excellence as a teen can be a powerful, life-shaping moment, as Sydney’s Peter Bonassi understands more than most. He first clapped eyes on this ballistic VK a decade ago, and it hit him harder than a David Warner boundary-smasher. “SHUTEM was originally finished in 2014. I remember seeing it on social media, and I said I had to get my hands on it,” Peter laughs. “It was an iconic car back then, being one of the first of its kind. I was 17 at the time and only had hopes and dreams. The car disappeared for years, and nobody knew where it was.” Even though the epic, blown Chev-powered VK had seemingly vanished, it had triggered something within Peter, and his mind was made up. “I…

COME daybreak on Day Two of DC ’24, everyone was chomping at the bit to get some much-needed track therapy. Usually, the hot and sunny conditions of a day’s racing at Mildura’s Atlantic Oils Sunset Strip eighth-mile brings a one-and-done approach from many of the racers, but with this now being the track on which everyone would set their baseline for the week, plenty hung around until mid-afternoon to bag multiple runs. The morning got off to a very swift start when three of the big guns reeled off four-second passes. The first of those was Adam Rogash, who was the fourth car down the track in Carnage Outlaw Blown to the tune of 4.84@158mph. Not long after, a pair of Boostline Radial Blown fellas also dipped into the fours:…

THE final day of Drag Challenge 2024 was the exclamation mark on one of the most turbulent and hectic editions of the event we’d ever seen. Fittingly, there was a mere 0.062 seconds separating Adam Rogash and Keith Hards in the battle for the overall win going into the day. Keith’s car had been near-bulletproof throughout the week, but Adam was just about at his wits’ end. While everyone else slept on Saturday night, he and MPW’s Ayvon ‘Abe’ McLeod jumped in the latter’s XF Falcon (which was leading the PSR 9.5 class), drove through the night to Pakenham, sourced another transmission for the Capri, and drove another two hours back to the track to install it. We should give an honourable mention to Keith Hards, who, despite chasing Adam…

UNLIKE their Holden adversaries, properly hot 90s Falcons are few and far between. Worry not, however, because Callum Shand’s bright white EL XR8 packs four times the cams and many times the power it left Broadmeadows with in 1997. Callum’s long had a soft spot for E-series Falcons. “My second car was an EL XR6,” he says. “When I was 20 and I had a bit more money, I decided I wanted to build a serious car.” Events like Gazzanats, Motorvation and Powercruise had a profound effect on the young Callum at the time, so he decided to build something that would batter eardrums and torch tyres at will. This XR8 tickled his fancy, as it was fairly presentable and packing the correct number of cylinders, so he snagged it…

MINI-TRUCKS aren’t Street Machine’s usual fare, and funnily enough, they weren’t Darryl ‘Paz’ Penton’s chosen flavour either, despite the photos before you suggesting otherwise. The Sydneysider admits he was more of an LS Commodore man before he bought this epic, supercharged V8-powered 1998 HiLux. “I had an E3 HSV Maloo with a Magnuson 2300-blown LS3 making just under 700hp at the wheels, but I’d go to shows and see all the same old things,” Paz says. “I thought mini-trucks sucked, probably because all the ones I’d seen were half-built hack jobs, but I remember seeing this truck on CarSales, and I realised mini-trucks give you the freedom to build whatever you want, however you want. Purists look at muscle cars at shows and pick them apart, but nobody questions what…

THE CAR DROVE INTO OUR SHED AS A CREAM 202CI VC AND DROVE OUT AS A SILVER CAR WITH A 355 V8 MECHANICAL shop service manager Anika Hodges has been around modified cars all her life thanks to her car-mad dad. Kris Hodges won Top Overall Street two years running at Summernats 17 and 18, and his XB sedan and XA hardtop were featured in Street Machine (Sep ’92 and May ’03, respectively). Judging by Anika’s sweet VC Commodore, U WAIT, mechanical nous and a passion for all things automotive is hereditary. How’d you come across the VC? I spent about nine months looking for a VH Commodore project when I came across this 1981 VC in late 2022. It was in pristine, stock condition – a little old lady’s…

JORDAN BASIC VK BERLINA “I BOUGHT my 1984 VK Berlina about two years ago from Melbourne, with only 80,000km on the clock. The previous owner had already done a bunch of work to it, including a bare-metal respray back to the original colour and installing a new, North Vic Engines-built LS1 383 stroker and a fully manualised TH400. My original plan was just to make it a good-looking streeter, so I bought 17x4.5 front and 15x10 rear Weld Magnums for it. I then needed to mini-tub the rear to get the 15x10s under the guards, and things snowballed a bit from there. I ended up getting a GJ Drivelines 3in tailshaft; a Shane’s Chassis fully fabbed, sheet-metal 9in diff with a Diff Technics Pro nodular-iron centre and Mark Willams 35-spline…

ON THE final day of Street Machine Drag Challenge 2024, Telfo gave me a leave pass to head down the road from Heathcote Park Raceway to Rod Hadfield’s house and personal museum in Chewton, where a few hundred of his closest friends gathered to celebrate the prolific hot rodder’s life and work. While the get-together was a tribute to Rod and his amazing wife Carol, don’t worry, Rod’s still doing pretty well considering his recent Parkinson’s diagnosis. While his body might be a bit shakier these days, his wit most definitely isn’t, as he showed during his speech to those assembled. The occasion was organised by a few Melbourne hot rodders, along with a fair bit of help from Carol herself and Sharon Soldatos. While it was planned as a…

THE beautifully boxy XD-XF Falcon range has long been somewhat overlooked in Aussie street machining circles, but more recently, it’s having its moment in the sun. Arguably the coolest of the lot is the XE Fairmont Ghia ESP, with its two-tone paint, Scheel interior, gold snowflake wheels and V8 heart. Dragos Bjelogrlic’s example is particularly impressive, due in no small part to its stonking Dandy Engines-built twin-turbo Windsor, which should make a monumental 2800hp once it’s set on kill. But don’t go thinking Dragos is a dyed-in-the-wool Ford guy – he’s completely brand agnostic. Sitting alongside the ESP in his shed is a very rapid R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R, an HSV VS GTS 215i, and his beloved HK Premier. THE CAR ABSOLUTELY HAD TO BE ENGINEERED. I’M ALL ABOUT CRUISING,…

THE toughest drag-and-drive marathon in Australia, Street Machine Drag Challenge returned in a big way in 2024, with arguably the quickest field we’ve ever seen soldiering up for five days of hardcore racing, with an interstate road leg spanning some 2000km in between. We’d be starting on Melbourne’s outskirts at Calder Park Raceway, heading north-west to Mildura, into South Australia to Dragway at The Bend, and then back into the heart of Victoria to Heathcote Park Raceway. We were also running a couple of weeks later in spring than last year’s Drag Challenge, so high temperatures would be an issue all week. With two certified six-second machines in the mix this year, this was probably the first time in Drag Challenge history that having a seven-second car didn’t guarantee you…

THE halfway point of this trying week found us at South Australia’s Dragway at The Bend, where we started and finished DC last year. At the 2023 event, we saw some scorching PBs and record-breakers at this track, so both we and the racers were keen to hit the picture-perfect pavement of this world-class facility. As the tyre class hitters got first dibs on track time at Mildura the previous day, we sent out the Hare & Forbes DYO entrants first in the cool morning. Unfortunately, Darren Vartuli’s VZ Tonner munched the tailshaft and diff during the session, causing a significant delay in proceedings. By the time the diff oil was cleared, the clouds had made way for piercing sunlight, and all the big players in Carnage Outlaw Blown and…

IF THERE’S one thing that us Aussie revheads love, it’s a burnout comp. And our brand-spanking new skid comp, Rods Out, brought that in spades. In fact, it doubled down! Two Rods Out burnout comps were added to the Street Machine Drag Challenge program for 2024, with the first taking place at Dragway at The Bend in South Australia on Day Three of DC competition, followed by another event at Victoria’s Heathcote Park Raceway on Day Four. Some of the biggest names in the sport showed up to compete for a $15,000 first prize at each event, along with one of two Pro Burnout Series spots at Street Machine Summernats 37. We’re talking heavy hitters like Rick Fuller (LSONE), Chris Orchard (GAME OVER), Wal Gersekowski (1TUFHG) and mad Mick Brasher…

FAT CAMP MATTHEW EDE HJ HOLDEN “I’M CURRENTLY in the final stages of a two-year build on my 1975 HJ sedan, FATJ. When I met my partner’s dad, Charlie Wilson, we had an instant bond after I was introduced to his Torana ute, ‘Mongrel’ (SM, Jan-Feb ’99, pictured right). This inspired me to start my own build with help from Charlie, and I commissioned Matt from The Render Garage to get some ideas down on paper (pictured, above right). We have stripped the car back to bare metal and started the fabrication needed to fit a 383ci LS, T56 gearbox and 20x12 Simmons FR3 wheels. We decided the engine bay needed a birthday, too, so Charlie and I got stuck into the sheet-metal fabrication there, which has now spread throughout…

THE internet loves to tell us that LS engines have been done to death, but there are still gurus like Troy Worsley at Warspeed Industries who keep finding ways to do new things with the 27-year-old engine platform. The blown LS mill you see here attests to that. While we’re used to seeing Dart-based street combos around the 427ci mark and race engines down at 388ci, this one changes the frequency by running a 400ci capacity. “The initial plan was for a small-cube [388ci] twin-turbo engine to maintain the successful small-cube combo we’ve developed, but then partway through the build, the customer’s plan changed to using a Harrop supercharger, so we thought we’d keep the cubes small and push more boost,” Troy says. “The idea with smaller-cube combos is that…

WRITTEN and co-produced by its star, Sylvester Stallone, 2001’s Driven is set in the now-defunct world of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) open-wheel racing. In the midst of his rookie CART season, talented young buck Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) is starting to buckle under the weight of expectations from team boss Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds) and Jimmy’s overbearing manager-brother, Demille (Robert Sean Leonard). When the pressure to perform, compounded by onand off-track aggro from fierce rival Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger), sees Jimmy make a series of silly driving errors, Carl calls on veteran driver Joe Tanto (Sylvester Stallone) to return to the championship and guide Jimmy back into contention for a series win. However, Joe has some off-track issues of his own to navigate. His return to the track sees…

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IT WAS probably the most disappointing start to a Drag Challenge since Sydney Dragway was rained out on Day One of the very first event in 2014. Although the Calder Park Raceway pits were a hive of activity as entrants got ready for the first day of racing at DC ’24, there was an elephant in the room. The drag strip surface at Calder had recently been ground down for circuit racing, and despite the track officials’ best efforts at trying to make it safe and prepping it as best they could for us, a decision was reached with the IHRA on the morning of Day One that the surface was not safe enough for cars of this calibre to race on. Asking the quickest entrants to slow down while…

THOSE who’d made it to Heathcote Park Raceway for the penultimate day of Drag Challenge 2024 had already achieved a major milestone. The circus would not be returning to Calder Park for the final day’s racing, instead doing a back-to-back double-header at HPR, with no drive route in between. That meant the arduous road miles were done for the week, and entrants could focus on going as quick as possible. Given that the final road route takes even the most capable of cars well over six-and-a-half hours, we gave entrants a breather with a late 2pm start time at HPR, with racing running into the evening. With the Rods Out 2 burnouts taking place alongside DC in the afternoon, the spectator car park was full and the pits were bustling…

DARREN Ison can trace his HT ute’s story back though three generations, in one way or another. “My old man always wanted an HT ute, but his dad would go, ‘Why do you want one of those old piece-of-shit cars?’” he laughs. But Darren’s dad was adamant, and if Granddad could see what that ute looks like now – the Meguiar’s Superstars-proven toughie on these pages – he might sing a different tune. Darren’s dad bought the ute as a driving-but-unfinished deal in Melbourne and shipped it home to Queensland. “It had a 308 and four-speed, so we got it running a bit better and did a few things – rebuilt the front end and whatnot,” Darren says. “Being an old car, it still drove like a bag of crap,…

OWEN Scott has loved EHs since he was a little kid, and after emptying his piggy-bank as a fresh-faced apprentice back in 1998, he purchased a bone-stock EH ute. But while it would later become his trophy-hauling pride and joy, his new toy seemed keen to sabotage their relationship before it had even really begun. “I didn’t drive it before buying it; I just knew that I loved EHs and this one was pretty neat,” Owen recalls. “Turns out the original drum brakes were so bad that we nearly put it into a wall on the drive home!” Fortunately, both ute and new owner made it to the Scott family residence in one piece. One day, Owen noticed a few meagre specs of rust in the tray, which turned out…

01 KEEP YOUR COOL STRUGGLING to find a solution for mounting a transmission cooler in the front of your LC-LJ Torana? This neat mounting bracket from Lowe Fabrications is designed to securely position a 280x285mm PWR transmission cooler in front of your Torry’s radiator. Precision CNC laser-cut for perfect bolt-on fitment, it’s available in a raw aluminium or powdercoated finish, and can be purchased with or without the Australian-made PWR trans cooler and Speedflow −6 fittings to suit. The bracket picks up the factory radiator mounting bolts, so no cutting or drilling is required. Order yours today by scanning the QR code or visiting lowefabrications.com.au. 02 BARRA OF FUN ARE you keen to stuff a Ford Barra into your ride but worried it won’t hook up to your General Motors…

DAY ZERO WED 1 JAN IT’S that time of year again when all roads lead to Canberra, where we’ll get to let our hair down, grab a slushie and ring in the New Year at Australia’s greatest horsepower party, Street Machine Summernats 37! Before we get to all that good stuff, though, entrants need to get scrutineered and stickered up for the weekend. Just like last year, the bulk of scrutineering has been moved to Wednesday 1 January at GIO Stadium on Battye St in Bruce, just north of Canberra’s CBD. Back at Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC), entrants and their buddies can set up camp so they can wake up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to party on day one! SCHEDULE 8am-6pm: Scrutineering at GIO Stadium 9am-9pm: Entrant camping at…