Innehållsförteckning för March 2025 från Street Machine

QUEENSLAND’S biggest car festival is set to get even beefier when this year’s Rockynats descends upon Rockhampton, 4-6 April 2025. Those dates place the event during school holidays but not over the Easter break, which means everything will be open and ready to go. Perfect! There’ll be plenty of new additions for this year, as the organisers look to grow the ever-popular event to meet demand. Along with the burnouts, cruising, on-street drag racing, Elite Hall unveilings and live music, there’ll also be fresh drawcards for lovers of big rigs and Japanese car culture. This year, $40,000 in cash and prizes are up for grabs across the weekend, with $24,000 of that just for the burnouts. Both the Open and Pro Burnout Series competitors will hit the pad, with three…

RECENTLY, I got to spend a couple of weeks in Los Angeles with my talented sister Jacquie, a film music composer, who was there on a working holiday. Both of us share a love of cars, and what better way to immerse ourselves in that passion in the City of Angels than by visiting the golden triangle of LA car displays: Galpin Speed Shop, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Lions Drag Strip Museum. Here are eight of my favourites from our trip, and I’ll have eight more for you next issue.…

BUILT to dominate SCCA and Trans-Am racing in the mid-60s, Carroll Shelby’s fearsome GT350 Mustangs were capable of shredding European exotics on the track and muscle cars on the street. Packing angry small-block Ford power and bulk handling upgrades, these original 1965-’66 Shelby Mustangs have become the most sought-after ’Stangs ever made. Even a GT350 replica will command enormous prices today. Ross Gangemi’s ’65 fastback may not have started off as a Shelby, but it uses plenty of that DNA to become something far wilder – and way quicker – than the original. Packing a world’s-first Harrop 2650-blown, Dandy Engines-built 363ci small-block Windsor, this 870rwhp brute also features hot pro touring hardware like carbonfibre Ringbrothers components, HRE wheels, coil-over suspension, and big brakes. But as with many street machines, Ross’s…

ACASUAL conversation among mates was the unlikely seed that sprouted Josh Sergi’s stunningly executed VK Brock tribute. “I was talking with some friends, and the discussion came up that we hadn’t seen many Brock replicas done in black,” Josh says. That was all it took – in an instant, his entire vision for the car changed. At that stage, Josh had already owned his VK for five years, during which time he’d transformed it into a tidy Blue Meanie tribute sporting a tubbed rear, white Simmons FRs, a very healthy tunnel-rammed 383ci Iron Lion, and TUFGMH plates. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. But that convo changed everything. Three days later, Josh had the VK stripped to a bare shell. There were so many parts strewn around his garage that the…

FOR owner Steve Millias, this HK Kingswood is much more than simply a tough, impeccably finished classic – although it certainly is that – it’s also a treasured keepsake of a fallen mate. “I bought the car as an unfinished project off the partner of a good friend who had tragically passed away,” he explains. But despite his emotional attachment to the HK, Steve wasn’t above making some changes. “I gave the car to Grgic Bros to complete the build and make it more to my style,” he says. “The boys did a fantastic job. I just dropped the car off there and said, ‘I want everything done as if it was your own car.’ Their workmanship is second-to-none and they can fabricate anything – they did the radiator, catch…

WHEN it comes to producing heavy-hitting street machine icons, the Illawarra region of New South Wales has always batted far above the average. Stalwart burnout competitor Phil Kerjean and his family have called the Illawarra home for decades, but that’s about to change as they seek a tree-change in the Riverina. So, what better time for Street Machine to take one last tour through Phil’s legendary Smokin’ Roo Bar – one of the most epic man-caves in the country! Phil, of course, is famous for his formidable skid machine, TUFFST, the blown SBCpowered, VK-fronted VC Commodore wagon that has taken him to a Summernats Burnout Championship win in 2018 as well as two outright Tuff Street wins in 2009 and 2011. Phil and his wife Nat first built the wagon…

WE RAN into Adam Patruno and his tough-as-teak XF at Geelong All Ford Day, where the combination of 295/50s and a blow-through carby stuck out like a sore thumb among the Clevos and Barra swaps. And when we learned that Adam was born this side of the Y2K virus and built the entire car himself, we had to pull him over for a yack about his inspiring work ethic and allergy to T5s. How’d the XF come into your life? My old man brought me up watching Grunt Files and 90s V8 Supercars. My grandfather would pick me up from school in an XF, and some of my uncles had them too. I came across this GL wrapped in orange; I swapped an EL GLi for it. It needed a…

Email your favourite funnies to gday@streetmachine.com.au. > GAG OF THE MONTH THE POWER OF 10 A WOMAN finds an old oil lamp and starts rubbing like crazy, and what do know – a genie comes out! “I can grant you three wishes, but your husband will get 10 times more of what you wish for,” says the genie. The woman is fine with this, and her first wish is to be the most beautiful woman in the world. “You do realise that your husband will become 10 times more beautiful than you and will have women throwing themselves at him?” the genie cautions. “That’s fine,” says the woman. “He’ll only look at me, because I will be the world’s most beautiful woman.” With that, the genie grants her wish. Now…

SCAN TO WATCH THE ACTION! IT WAS a record-breaking year for the Australian version of Optima Ultimate Street Car, presented by R&J Batteries. A sell-out 82 entrants in a diverse array of vehicles threw down at Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway in February for the fourth Aussie OUSC event, vying for the title of the country’s quickest and most capable genuine street car. Competitors were divided into five classes according to their vehicle’s build style and purpose: Modern, Tuner, Exotic, Muscle and Outlaw (with the latter class not eligible for the overall win). Their rides were then well and truly put through the wringer on track via autocross, speed stop, hot lap and drag racing events, each one testing a different aspect of a car’s capabilities. A judged design and engineering…

AFTER last year’s scorcher, which saw the Perth Motorplex literally on fire at one point, it was nice to experience a Motorvation with the temperatures hovering around the low 30s for a change. Sure, it was still pretty warm, but Motorvation 39 was a far more comfortable event than its predecessor, especially if you spent a lot of time in the Elite tent checking out some of the coolest cars in Western Australia. And this year’s Elite line-up was the best I’ve seen for quite a few years. It was a real credit to Rachael ‘Durbz’ Durbidge, who worked her butt off to bring together a diverse selection of top-of-the-line vehicles, with hot rods, muscle cars, full-on burnout cars, lowriders, and even a classy European on display. Some we’d seen…

AARON HAD JASON AT TUNNEL VISION BOLT TOGETHER A MUCH NASTIER SINGLE-CAM COMBO WITH A VIEW TO MAKING FOUR-DIGIT POWER CONSIDERING he owns three of them, you might say Aaron Hamilton has a penchant for XD Falcons. There’s his purple, muscled-up ute; the gold, Clevo-powered panel van that he ran at Drag Challenge 2024; and then there’s this one, the family runabout. Well, it was until it was stuffed with 1227rwhp of turbo single-cam goodness! You see, cars don’t stay slow in the Hamilton clan. Aaron’s been competing with his brothers for the title of quickest in the family for years, and it’s going to take a whopping effort to one-up him now thanks to the eight-second timeslip this sedan has gifted him. The car came into Aaron’s life when…

WE’VE all been guilty of fixating on how much horsepower a car makes and quantifying performance through outright grunt alone. What often gets overlooked is an arguably even more important factor affecting performance: weight. Michael Willoughby’s little four-pot Datto 1200 is the perfect illustration of why power-to-weight is a discussion we should have more often. “It’s funny; when you tell people the outright power figure, it’s not super impressive on its own, but that’s not the point,” says Michael. “The car only weighs 850kg, so it’s handed out its fair share of pain to the V8 boys.” Giving the Datsun its punch is a Nissan CA18DET, a 1.8-litre turbo four-banger originally found in early Nissan S13s. It churns out 342rwkW (458rwhp) on 32psi at 7800rpm, sucking on corn juice, and…

JESS Johnstone’s fate was sealed early on. Born into a diehard Holden family, she plastered her bedroom walls with VL Commodore posters and was ferried to school in her brother’s V8-powered VL. So, it’s no surprise that adult Jess’s prized possession is this ’87 VL Berlina, which she’s owned for over two decades. Her passion for Holden’s longest-running nameplate recently saw her join the team of Commodore gurus at Lowe Fabrications. When did the Berlina enter your life? In 2003. My $2000 budget bought me a stock Berlina with a naturally aspirated RB30, manual, grey interior and faded blue paint, but with a straight body. My mates were in the sex-spec scene, which crossed over with my RB30 and grew my love of turbos and bodykits. Within the first year,…

OF ALL the myriad body styles the HQ Holden was offered in, the humble wagon tends to live in the shadow of its siblings among street machiners. Joe Murphy’s 850rwhp, slammed 1973 Belmont wagon shows why we should be paying them more attention. “I wanted a single-front-light HQ in either a ute or a wagon,” says the West Aussie. “I found this one, so we fixed it up and I cruised it for around seven years with the old 173 and three-speed.” Slammed on AccuAir airbags, it was a damn cool cruiser, but Joe decided he wanted more. “I’ve known Jeff Johnson since I was young, and I’d watched him build tough stuff and LS engines for years,” he says. “I was inspired by that, and originally wanted a turbo…

THE REGAL HAS LANDED JAMIE GUIHOT VF VALIANT REGAL “I BOUGHT this little beauty from the old Trading Post. It’s a 1970 VF Valiant Regal that had been resprayed by the previous owner for the last ASMF Street Machine Nationals in Canberra in 1986, before it moved to Wagga. It won several awards, as it was a real stand-out at the time, with 16 speakers installed throughout the car. I sprayed it with Raptor and added beautiful high-gloss black trimmings. It runs a standard 225 slant-six, but I plan on turbocharging it later on!” WEDDING VOW JAMES JORDAN VC COMMODORE SL/E “THIS VC SL/E was bought for me by my dad when I was just six years old, which was 22 years ago! My dad and I did all the work on it…

FOUND under the bonnets of everything from race cars to dump trucks and monster trucks, Chevrolet’s W-series big-block V8 range kicked off in 1958. Three years earlier, the Bowtie boys had launched their all-new 265ci small-block, but they quickly realised it didn’t have the herbs needed for the company’s upcoming truck and high-performance car models. The W-series big-blocks were their solution. While it’s commonly believed that these bigblocks were nicknamed W engines for the shape of their valve covers, it was actually an internal code used by Chevy engineers. They’d started designing three versions of the new mill under W, X, and Y code names, and ultimately the W version won out. Chevy designed the W around a heavyduty, two-main iron block running a 74-degree angle on the deck and…

BREAKDOWN VEHICLES: 1973 Kenworth K100, 1973 GMC C-1500, 1978 GMC Caballero, 1934 Indian Sport Scout, 1968 Ford Ranchero, 1965 Chevrolet Impala, 1966 Dodge Coronet, 1977 White Western Star 4800, 1975 White Freightliner STARS: Jerry Reed, Peter Fonda, Helen Shaver, David Ferry, Chris Wiggins, Chris Langevin, Wendy Thatcher, Kay Hawtrey DIRECTOR: Peter Carter ACTION: Some big-rig sideways action in the snow, and plenty of rough vehicular justice gets dished out PLOT: Two truck drivers take on a ruthless hijacking gang connected to a local cargo merchant looking to monopolise the industry AVAILABLE: YouTube, Blu-Ray, DVD THERE’S nothing like a 1970s trucker flick to temporarily cleanse your brain of modern-day pressures and reacquaint your ears with the rhythmic joys of CB radio lingo. That’s exactly the vibe I was seeking when I…

AS THE proprietor of Sydney engine builders Westend Performance and a much-decorated drag racer, Sam Fenech was a well-known, universally loved figure, and his tragic death in a racing accident in 2023 rocked the Aussie car community and devastated the close-knit Fenech family. That makes the triumphant comeback of Sam’s iconic LJ Torana, ORSM, all the more remarkable. In just two years, the Fenech family rallied to rebuild the car for an unveiling at Street Machine Summernats 37, where Sam’s son John Fenech drove the revitalised machine to an emotional Grand Champion victory. John smiles fondly as he recalls how the story began. “Dad was working as a mechanic and became infatuated with the racing at Oran Park and the street racing that was happening back in those days,” he…

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THE best contemporary street machines have plenty of horsepower, a slammed stance, neat trim, fresh paint and panel, and improved chassis manners. Aussie and US muscle cars have long been street machining staples, but the ever-rising cost of buying one has seen many revheads look further afield. That might partly explain why full-size American pick-up builds have boomed in popularity. They’re widely available, cheap, and served by an enormous aftermarket that can see them lifted into monster trucks, restored to stock, or slammed into a pro tourer such as Wayne Lineker’s 1968 Chevy C10. We featured the truck as a rolling chassis back in our July 2018 issue, but it took Wayne another couple of years to get it all sewn up. “It was originally meant to be a patina…

AS A visual representation of what our Different Strokes department is all about, Simon Upham’s EH Holden drift wagon is right on the bloody nose – a case of classic (if somewhat dishevelled) Aussie tin meeting modern mumbo and suspension and going for a walk on the wild side. If the thought of using a classic 60s Holden for a drift build triggers you, your blood is likely to boil over when you learn that Simon disposed of a big-block HK Monaro in order to take this path less travelled. “I couldn’t bring myself to cut up the HK to do this to it, so I sold it and builtthis EH instead,” he says. “Old Holdens are what I know, so I wanted to build one into a drifter for…

JAMES GARDNER 1957 CHEVROLET BEL AIR “I’VE had my Chev for a bit over three years now. Initially, I planned to use it as a cruiser, but things quickly got out of hand as soon as I started racing it, which is why it now runs a 6/71-blown 427 big-block with H-beam rods, forged pistons, a 260@.050 solid cam, Dart PRO1 heads, and a pair of Demon carbson E85. The driveline is rounded out by a transbraked TH400 auto and a 9in diff with a 4.11:1 alloy centre and Truetrac, along with Gazzard Brothers mono-leaf springs, traction bars and sliders. Inside, there are bench seats trimmed in red and black, a child seat for school drop-offs, a glitter steering wheel, Auto Meter gauges, and a Hurst Pistol-Grip shifter. We ran…