Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2020 i Street Machine

LET’S start with the bad news: There will be no five-day Street Machine Drag Challenge in 2020. The COVID-19 situation in Victoria means it simply isn’t an option for the first time since the event took flight in 2014. And the good news? Drag Challenge Weekend is going to rock South East Queensland, 27-29 November! The concept is simple: Australia’s quickest street cars put to the test on road and track! All competitors have to make their way safely from track to track under their own power, without support or tow vehicles. If you think you have a swift street car, this is the way to prove that it ain’t no trailer queen! Sound like your jam? Entries are $400, which includes your Drag Challenge T-shirt and covers your crew…

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE PILE OF SHIT, BUT WE COULD SEE THAT, JUST MAYBE, IT MIGHT HAVE SOME POTENTIAL MIKE Roycroft hates to admit it, but he’s a Valiant guy through and through. I guess we could blame his dad, Phil – whose S-Series Valiant we featured in SM, July 2018 – because this isn’t the first Valiant Mike has built. He competed in the burnout scene with BLOWN VAL for a few years, even bringing it across the country to Summernats 25 from his hometown of Perth. That car is undergoing a major rebuild, with a blown Hemi just part of the equation, so it’s turned into a more of a long-term project. So what’s a bloke to do? Get another project, of course! Mike jumped on Facebook and…

PRETTY much all of us have had a moment where we wistfully look back and wish we’d kept our first car; after all, you never forget your first time. Renato Rillotta is smarter than most of us in that regard, having not only kept his first pride and joy but spent years crafting it into his ultimate dream machine. Renato’s love affair with his VH SL/E Commodore began as a young bloke working at a restaurant, where one of his older co-workers paraded it in front of him before Renato eventually cracked and started asking for a price. “I had been admiring it for a while,” he says. “It was in pretty good nick overall; it needed a restoration, but it’d been looked after, and eventually the guy sold it…

TALKING to Peter Hampton and his dad Geoff, I instantly recognise childhoods spent around FX-FJ Holdens. Peter debuted his blown LS3-powered FJ at the FX-FJ Holden Nationals at Murray Bridge late in 2018, and while it is a high-tech car, it’s the culmination of three decades of tradition. Geoff recalls how it all started: “My father bought an FJ new in 1956. He gave it to me when I was 16 to get my licence. The condition was that I couldn’t modify it, so I built up a hottie later on [see breakout, p. 73].” Peter and his three siblings grew up around Southern Earlies FX-FJ Club activities, so it was almost inevitable that he would be drawn into the humpy orbit. “My first one was an FX with a…

ANYONE with even a passing interest in the Queensland Pro Street scene would know the name Rob Bertolacci. Rob and his signature XB coupe have been absent from the track since 2010, but anytime talk turns to fast, fullsize Fords, you can bet his name will crop up. By the time we featured the car in the September 2003 issue, it was already a legend. Rob had numerous Pro Street Shootout wins to his name and was embedded in the national APSA Modified Street Blown Top 10, despite his car’s relative heft. THE XB HAD AN 8.61SEC PB, BUT WHAT MADE IT COOL WAS ROB’S COMMITMENT TO KEEPING THE CAR FULLY STREETABLE At the time we ran our story, the car had an 8.96-second PB, but what made it cool…

CHANTELLE Cilia is studying psychology, so she can probably tell you a thing or two about the age-old ‘nature versus nurture’ debate. But it would be fair to say that the latter played a significant role when it comes to her love of cars. With a bona-fide car nut for a dad, Chantelle was immersed in all things automotive from day dot, attending her first rod run when she was just six weeks old! Your dad Tony has a pretty sizeable car collection, yeah? He’s got everything – ’57 Chevs, XY Falcons, ’34 coupes, ’Cudas, a couple of HQs. So he doesn’t have a specific Ford or Chev or Holden preference. What about you – do you like a bit of everything, too? Look, I’m more of a Chev girl.…

FOR the first time since 1988, there will be no Street Machine Summernats held in Canberra in January. “We’d been working hard with the ACT Government to find a path to holding Summernats in January 2021,” says ’Nats co-owner Andy Lopez. “Unfortunately, at this stage, the rules around holding major events in the ACT due to COVID-19 means that it won’t be feasible in January. Events of more than 5000 people that aren’t in stadiums won’t be considered. “It feels very weird saying that, now that the decision has been made. But we have been working on contingency plans in case this happened, so we’re now focusing on putting on a series of events that will bring the ’Nats experience across the country and into regions where our punters are.…

BACK in the early-to-mid 2000s (when we were actually capable of making decent things like cars), Holden was rife with concept cars and engines. Some of those came to life, like the Crewman ute and Cross 8 wagon, while others never got off the drawing board. One truly left-field idea from that time was to mate a pair of Alloytec V6s to form a 600hp, 7.2-litre V12 monster, which would have been developed locally in a WM Caprice test mule but fitted to a secret Cadillac flagship sedan to rival the likes of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. We shared this story on our Facebook page; here’s what you had to say. Michael Fratino – Still can’t beat a Barra. John Brandt – Not enough people were buying V8s to make economic…

WITHOUT sounding too much like a hippy, there is something special about Red CentreNATS in Alice Springs that sets it apart from any other car show. Alice sits at the heart of Australia, both geographically and spiritually. Unless you’re a local, Alice is a long way for just about anyone, and whether you fly or drive to get there, you’ll have plenty of time to observe and reflect on our mighty continent and its unfathomably long history. It also means most folks arrive having had plenty of time to decompress from the daily grind, so are fresh and ready for anything. What they find is an incredible place full of great natural beauty, amazing weather and friendly locals that is worth a visit any time of the year – let…

WHEN you’re building a car to the calibre of Bob Boyce’s 1968 Mustang fastback by yourself in the shed, you’ve got to keep your nose to the grindstone. Bob picked the car up in October 2018 with the hope of knocking it over in 12 months, but may have underestimated the monumental amount of hours the job required. In actual fact, there were 2300 of them, and it’s a credit to the man that he managed to dedicate that volume of time to the project and see it through to completion in less than two years, all while juggling a full-time job, a wife and five young’uns. “It was no easy task!” he assures us. “There were a lot of long days, nights and weeks in the garage. I began…

THIS tale brings together the stories of two extraordinary car crafters. They have never met in person, and they built their cars decades apart and on completely different sides of the planet. What linked them? A plastic hot rod model. By the 1960s, car shows and wild show rods were a big deal in the USA. All kinds of corporate interests got involved, including model car companies. In the days before kids had computers to entertain themselves, models were a massive industry. The model guys glommed onto the fact that kids loved show rods and started building kits of real-life show rods. This turned into an arms race. Having your car on the cover of a magazine was one thing, but having a model made in your car’s image was…

1973 MINI CLUBMAN RYAN O’HARA “MY NEW project started off as a 1973-ish Mini Clubman panel van shell, which I’m building into a crazy burnout car with a lift-up body. When I got the car it had already been cut down into a ute and had the two-inch roof chop. I then fabricated an entirely new chassis for the Mini at home in my shed, and the reason for the tilt-body was mainly to make changing the tyres easier. I plan on using a fairly standard LS1 fed by a pair of Chinese GT3582R turbos, with aims of 500-600hp. Backing up the budget LS will be a Turbo 350 and a custom four-link/Ford nine-inch rear clip and diff. I’ve dubbed the build ‘The Jnr Dale Truck’, as I want it…

MATT NAZZARI 1968 HOLDEN HK PREMIER “IN 2006 I was on the hunt for an HK-T-G Monaro when this rust-free 1968 HK Prem popped up for sale, with a fresh 350 Chev, TH350 ’box and a 10-bolt Salisbury diff. When I bought the car it was running on straight LPG, which wasn’t going to cut it for me, so it was converted back to run 98-octane. I drove it for a while like that, before giving it a respray in 2009 to its original hue of Hacienda Blue with a white roof. A high-rise manifold was fitted to the 350 Chev to get that air filter out in the breeze, and the interior was stitched in teal vinyl with fresh carpet – just in time for our wedding in October…

AN LX Torana hatch of any calibre is always going to be a stop-and-stare spectacle in 2020, but Corey Vanderlei’s bright orange example is particularly noteworthy: tubbed, packing 427 cubes of blown LS fury, and with a stance to make any grown man weak at the knees. Keen-eyed readers will probably recognise this striking hatch from a few moons ago, as we featured it in the September 2017 issue of SM. Back then it was owned by serial car-builders Dave and Jodie Guilfoyle, who gave it the same paint and interior it’s wearing now and stuffed it with 590hp worth of small-block Chev. Fastforward a few years and the Torana found its way into Corey’s hands, but this is by no means his first fast Holden. Corey has owned a…

IT’S good to be king. And of the 750 entrants who assembled at this year’s sold-out Red CentreNATS extravaganza, Graham Miller’s mega-tough EH Premier, EHMAD, proved most worthy of claiming the crown jewels. Grand Champion is the pinnacle award at Red CentreNATS, and if you’ve ever been, you’ll know that the event attracts some stonecold stunners. Just like at Street Machine Summernats, the RCN Grand Champion is awarded to the car that kills it in the judging and is then expertly wheeled in the driving events by its owner. Unlike Summernats, a key part of RCN is drag racing, so it was a handy thing that Graham’s EH came into the event with a PB that’s about as close to a nine as you can run without actually running a…

AH, FORD Falcon! How we miss thee. You arrived in Australia as an American design, but you were soon adapted to local conditions. And when the Yanks cruelly dropped you, we kept the dream alive with our own spin on the concept, growing in size and sophistication with each generation until Ford gave up on local manufacturing altogether in 2016. Even so, you remain a vital part of Australian culture, and on your 60th anniversary we celebrate you – the highs, the lows and the creamy middles – from A to Z. A is for Allan Moffat ALLAN Moffat’s heroic solo Bathurst drive in 1970 was his first Mountain win, leading home Bruce McPhee for a 1-2. The following year Moffat repeated the feat in a Phase III – despite…

AS WE reported last issue, George Poteet and his Speed Demon streamliner set the land speed racing world on fire at this year’s Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) Speed Week, becoming the world’s fastest pistonpowered vehicle on land with a two-way average of 470.016mph (756km/h). In doing so, he broke the two-way, top-speed, wheel-driven internal combustion engine mark of 448.757mph set in 2018 by Danny Thompson in his refurbished 50-year-old Challenger II, which ran two normally aspirated nitro-fuelled Chrysler Hemis. As cool as that accolade was, what Poteet and his team were really interested in was adding to their collection of SCTA blown fuel streamliner class records. Going into Speed Week, the team already held six records using a variety of engines, including small-block Chev, LS-based, a four-cylinder Dodge and…

ANDREW Natoli’s plastic-powered VK Commodore has been a familiar sight in the Drag Challenge staging lanes, having taken on both our fulllength DC and the condensed Drag Challenge Weekend on a combined total of five occasions since his debut in 2015. His love affair with DC began when he saw the opportunity for a getaway. “I love racing and it looked like the perfect excuse for a week away with mates, and after the first one I was hooked!” he says. Andrew competed in Drag Challenge 2015, 2016 and 2018 in the K&N DYO class (finishing every single one!), before jumping over to the Carnage Outlaw Aspirated class for both DCW and DC in 2019. During that time, the car was rocking a nasty 540hp, 320ci aspo Holden V8 and…

AND now for something completely different: a balls-out, twin-turbo Gen 3 Hemi! With all the LS-ing of the world that’s been going on of late, it’s easy to forget that the Mopar brigade have a modern, fuel-injected bent-eight of their own. First seen Stateside in 2003, the Gen 3 Hemi has since been available in a range of displacements, from 5.7L to 6.4L. Peak Gen 3 undoubtedly occurred with the blown 6.2L version fitted to the Dodge Demon, with 840hp (on race gas) as delivered. Here in Australia, we’ve had the slightly less raucous Hellcat version available in the gloriously staunch Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, along with the more common aspirated Gen 3 Hemis found in lower-spec Jeeps and Chrysler 300s. It’s an engine that is not widely messed with…