Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Street Machine

AFTER more than 13 years behind the wheel of Australia’s biggest horsepower party, Summernats co-owner and director Dom McCormack has decided to move in a new direction. But he won’t be venturing too far from the burnout pad. Dom and fellow co-owners Andy Lopez and Andrew Bee purchased Summernats sight-unseen in 2009. Dom was inducted into the insane world of Summernats by Chic Henry the next year, and was immediately drawn to the total carnage of the burnouts. “Seeing and hearing what these insane cars were doing blew my mind, and quite possibly my eardrums,” Dom laughs. “But my burnout cherry had been popped, and the sport has been in my blood ever since.” A guided tour of Summernats 23 by then-logistics stalwart Colorado Dave and burnout legend Leroy Rees…

HAVE you ever watched a movie that had you genuinely feeling hatred for one of its characters? This is often a sign that the actor responsible is very deft at their craft, and Emily Barclay’s portrayal of Suburban Mayhem’s teen tearaway, Katrina Skinner, is sickeningly on-point. Katrina is a foul-mouthed spoilt brat, bludging off her long-suffering father, John (Robert Morgan), and cheating relentlessly on her baby-daddy boyfriend, Rusty (Michael Dorman). She happily shirks the responsibilities of motherhood in exchange for partying hard and getting her nails done, but her world comes crashing down after her brother Danny (Laurence Breuls) gets life in the slammer for decapitating a mouthy console operator (Steven Peacocke) during a botched robbery. Katrina is beside herself over Danny’s incarceration and makes quite a spectacle during the…

RUNNING killer numbers in drag racing generally requires a surplus of horsepower and as little weight as possible. But Tasmania’s Paul Hamilton has another take on this equation: keep the weight but add more power. His full-fat, big-tyre XA sedan has run 8.0@180mph thanks to a twin-turbo 600ci big-block, but this is only part of the car’s near 30-year story. Paul recalls how it all began. “I’ve always been a Ford man, but I never really cared that much about cars ’til I was about 17 and a mate’s brother had an XA GT,” he explains. “I paid around $1000 for this one, and it wasn’t a glamour, but this was 1994-’95 when they were just getting taken to the tip. It was green with a Parchment vinyl roof and…

GEELONG has it pretty good when it comes to car events. There’s a thriving street car scene, with some of the country’s quickest road-going cars calling the city home. Then you’ve got massive events like All Ford Day, the Queenscliff Rod Run, and the epic Geelong Revival. The Revival’s origins can be traced back to 1956, when a local version of England’s Brighton Speed Trials began on the waterfront’s Ritchie Boulevard. Over the decades, the Geelong Speed Trials became a who’s who of racing legends, from Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss to Touring Car icons like Norm Beechey, John Harvey and Dick Johnson. The Trials were knocked on the head in the early 2000s when the space was renovated, until the Geelong Revival brought sprints back to Ritchie Boulevard in…

A CHANCE encounter with a clapped-out ute for sale on the roadside prompted a 10-year odyssey for Ray Gullotto, who’s transformed it into one of the sweetest FB Holdens we’ve seen. It might look at first glance like just another Holden ute with a V8 stuffed in it, but there are a few clever tricks involved that blend modern updates with an old-school look. Ray had that fateful meeting with the FB back in 2012. “It was parked on the side of the road for sale, so I just pulled in, had a chat to the guy and basically walked away with it,” he says. “It was originally owned by a guy in Nedlands who was a house painter; he’d actually painted the car with a roller, and it looked…

ANDREW GOODWIN 1964 FORD FAIRLANE “THIS is our ’64 Compact Fairlane that Dad and I picked up around two years ago. The grand plan was to give it a quick tidy-up and flip it. Unfortunately, once we had a good look over it, we realised it was a lot rustier than we had first thought. With our original plan in tatters, we decided to start from scratch and build the car from the ground up, doing the work ourselves to keep the costs down. I’ve learnt how to hand-form and weld in patch panels while Dad (pictured above) strips and assesses the rust sections. So far I’ve made both rear wheelarches and lower guards, the entire boot floor, removed and repaired the parcel shelf, replaced the drip rails (the only…

01 BUY THE LITRE IT’S that time of year when we bring a massive swag of merch to Street Machine Summernats and unveil a new shirt design, which this year features Howard Bell’s legendary LITRE8 Torana. Long-time SM readers will no doubt know the story behind this car, and now you can wear it with pride. The artwork comes from Patrick Skinner at Ten Tenths Creative, and as always, we’ve printed it right here in Australia on high-quality AS Colour shirts, in adult sizes from S to 5XL. If you miss the chance to grab one from our stand at the ’Nats, any left-over stock – along with the rest of our merch and back issues of the mag – can be found at shop.whichcar.com.au. 02 SMART THINKING TURBOSMART always…

Send your photos of fun with cars to: Sunday Too Far Away, Street Machine, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, Vic 3166, or email high-resolution images (1mb+) to: sundaytoofaraway@wheelsmedia.com.au. Please send copies of prints as we are unable to return your photos.…

TURBO combos capture plenty of attention at Street Machine Drag Challenge thanks to their epic power potential and great street manners. Still, they can’t match the appeal of a tough-as-teak, big-inch aspirated V8. Keith Hards has brought his sweet ’69 Camaro along to three DC events now, but he’s now stepped up the F-body’s tilt at Pacemaker Radial Aspirated supremacy with a new rat motor courtesy of Frank Marchese and the Dandy Engines crew. “Our goal was to run with Al Vella, the leading car in the Pacemaker Radial Aspirated class,” Frank says. “Hats off to Al; he’s not only run the numbers but he’s made that car live on the road, too, and that is a huge part of the challenge. Lucky for us, the Camaro had a big-block…

THE first weekend in December saw Sydney Dragway play host to a new format for radial racing in Australia, Midnight Mayhem. Put on by the crew from Street 20, Midnight Mayhem differs from other radial events not just due to the Saturday midnight finals (hence the event name), but also because all but one class duked it out across the full quarter-mile – a first for Australian heads-up radial racing. There were numerous classes for both street and strip-only machines, the hottest being Pro Street Villains with its $5000 cash prize. Only the big boys in the Outlaw class wisely stuck to the eighth-mile, with the $10,000 prize for the class win taken home by Jarrod Wood in the final at 1:30am Sunday morning. Prior to the event’s dead-of-night climax,…

LET ME SEE HI GUYS, long-time reader/subscriber here, going back to the days of BLOBAK, which I can remember driving the streets of Morwell many moons ago. I won’t whinge about your feature car choices, although I do find it hard to relate to many of them, as I’m not a burnout or drag freak; I do prefer cars to be ‘streetable’. Won’t comment on Porsches (SM, Dec ’22) either… But I did recently turn 54, and there are two aspects of the magazine that don’t endear themselves to senior readers with old eyes. I often find the photo captions to be in a colour that doesn’t contrast well with backgrounds, eg. red text on a black background, which can be very hard for me to read. I also don’t…

BACK in 2002, Arthur Mitsoulis was working on a Kings Cross construction site, and on his way to work each day, he’d drive past a VF Valiant coupe. “It hadn’t moved in a long time; it looked abandoned,” he says. “One day I stopped for a closer look and realised that, despite being buried under a mountain of dust and leaves, it was actually in very good condition. I left a Post-it note on the windscreen offering to buy the car.” DESPITE BEING BURIED UNDER A MOUNTAIN OF DUST AND LEAVES, IT WAS ACTUALLY IN VERY GOOD CONDITION Much to Arthur’s surprise, he got a phone call that afternoon, and after some haggling, he snatched up that genuine Regal 770 coupe for the princely sum of $1000! After a good…

THANKS to the odd indiscretion behind the wheel, Melbourne bloke Anthony Fortunato earned himself a break from driving, and was subsequently required to start the licensing process again from scratch. When your mates are rolling around in V8 street cars with all manner of forced induction and you must abide by the various provisional driver restrictions imposed by the fair state of Victoria, being a mature-aged P-plater can be a frustrating thing. But it doesn’t mean you can’t build yourself something rad. “That was the main reason for building a six-cylinder,” Anthony says of his stunning, 220ci stroker Holden six-powered LC Torana. “I needed to keep it sensible for now, but the plan was always to put a big motor in it down the track, and I wanted to be…

CHRIS WILSON ED FALCON “MY 1994 ED Falcon started off as a completely standard, one-owner, low-kilometre example that I acquired three days after turning 16. Over the past 17 years, the car has slowly evolved into what it is today. It received a full respray in the original Cardinal Red, along with some subtle changes from factory such as an XR front lower lip. The latest, and possibly my favourite, addition is the Global Trim 19x8.5 EB GT wheels finished in gold. Mechanically, it still retains a naturally aspirated SOHC six-cylinder, but it’s a modified version that I pieced together myself. It has a ported Tickford cylinder head, stage-three Clive cam, Crane valve springs, MLS head gasket, ACL pistons and a host of other upgrades, which have it producing 170rwkW…

IT’S that time of year again! We’re limbering up for what’s promising to be the most spectacular instalment yet of Australia’s biggest horsepower party, Street Machine Summernats 35, which rolls into Canberra 5-8 January 2023. Over 2700 car entries and all Platinum spectator passes sold out months ago, so it’s very likely that we’ll see record crowds pouring through the gates over all four days to smash some slushies and watch tyres get sent to tread cemetery. Speaking of which, with that many cars on hand, you can guarantee Skid Row will be pumping hard all weekend, while the burnout pad will again host the best of the best for both the Burnout Masters and Burnout Championship titles, as combatants vie for over $40K in prize money across both classes.…

THE second day of ’Nats 35 sees the dyno hall kick into gear for both the Haltech Horsepower Heroes comp and MPW tuning masterclasses, while the Drift Cadets get sliding from 9am for demo sessions and passenger rides. The Tuff Street showcase gets underway, and while the Masters take a break, the Burnout Championship eliminations hit the pad from 1pm. The Fringe Festival in Braddon will see local streets bustling with Summernats entrants from 6pm ’til late, while on the Canna Main Stage, a mega-concert featuring Aussie rock legends Shannon Noll, Diesel, Daryl Braithwaite and Jon Stevens gets underway from 6pm. MUSIC ACTS! IT’S AN Aussie rock fest Friday night on the main stage, with Shannon Noll, Diesel, Daryl Braithwaite and Jon Stevens kicking arse from 6pm. FRINGE FESTIVAL THE…

FIRES. Plagues. Floods. Australia sure has thrown some wildcards at event promoters these past few years, but none of it has deterred Geof Tartoosie from staging the annual Adelaide Auto Expo. As the South Australian capital’s only indoor car show, this multi-faceted two-day event covers the full automotive spectrum, from hot rods to imports to the American-only Zippel Cruise. But for street machiners, it’s all about the Extreme Auto Expo side of the event, which remains Adelaide’s ultimate platform to debut quality local builds. The expo also serves as a MotorEx Superstars round, so entrants flock from all over Australia to take part. This year’s event, held at Adelaide Showgrounds over 18-19 November, was no different, but for some interstate travellers, the trip was markedly lengthened thanks to flooding and…

ME AND MY BROTHER WOKE UP ONE SUNDAY MORNING IN 2017 AND WENT, “LET’S BUILD A RACE CAR” IT’S BECOMING abundantly clear that sevens are the new eights in the street-car scene, as Australia’s quickest streeters continually up the ante. Sean Anthony’s 1500rwhp XD Falcon is one of the newest members of the club, knocking out blistering timeslips at the ragged edge of Barra development. The XD began as a spur-of-the-moment thing. “Me and my brother woke up one Sunday morning in 2017 and went, ‘Let’s build a race car,’” he says. “We couldn’t afford an XW or XY, so the next best thing was an XD Falcon. We went on Gumtree and found this car for sale in Canberra, about two ads down. The thing was insane; it had…

GRAEME Brewer and his Down Town Kustoms team are no strangers to engineering and creating truly awesome street cars, and this 1976 Chevy Monza they’ve just finished for owner Falbo Sirianni is no different. Falbo had owned the Chev for around 20 years before taking it to the DTK team, and initially he just wanted the woeful Monza rear suspension fixed up. “I’d tried taking it to a few other workshops, but it just never worked out,” he says. “I then got onto Graeme, so we took the car [to Taree from Sydney] and he agreed to start working on it.” Graeme could see why previous workshops had passed on the Monza, but unlike those others, he wasn’t prepared to dismiss the car. “It was a bit of a mess,…

> GAG OF THE MONTH GRIN & BARE IT A MATURE lady went to her son’s place to call in on her new daughter-in-law while the son was at work. She knocked on the door and the daughter-in-law opened it completely naked. “What are you doing?” the mother-in-law demanded. “I’m going to welcome my handsome new husband home wearing his favourite dress,” the daughter-in-law replied. “He calls it my ‘Love Dress’.” Later, the lady was at home and thought about her daughter-in-law’s plan, and decided she too wanted to give her husband a nice surprise when he came home from work. So when he arrived home, she opened the door wearing not a stitch. “What are you doing?” the husband spluttered. His wife answered, “I’m welcoming you home in my…

THE first day of Summernats used to just be about sign-in, getting through scrutineering and jumping on the beers, but it’s now morphed into one of the most important days of the whole weekend. Cruising kicks off at 9am, with Skid Row opening gates at 1pm. For the burnout warriors, Thursday afternoon plays host once again to the Last Chance Wildcard Shootout for the Burnout Masters, with 33 drivers hanging it all out for a final opportunity to secure a spot in Saturday’s eliminations. For the first time ever, the Meguiar’s Great Uncover has been moved forward to Thursday night, so the Elite Hall is going to be packed to the brim as the covers are pulled off a record 31 never-before-seen builds. The Top 60 finalists show will also…

BURNOUT MASTERS THE Burnout Masters (above) return to the pad on Saturday for the final eliminations before Sunday’s Top 10 shootout. They’ll light up the crowd from 4pm. MOWERS & MULLETS SATURDAY is a massive day on the main stage, with body art and mullet competitions (above), the celebrity mower race, and the traditional twilight Supercruise. SATURDAY is historically the biggest day of any Summernats, and this year will be no exception. It’s a massive day on the Canna Main Stage, with Fashions on the Field, body art and mullet contests all day. There’ll also be the celebrity mower race, as well as silverware handed out for the Elite judging and Tuff Street. The burnout action ramps up as well, with two sessions for Burnout Championship eliminations, before the Burnout…

SUNDAY is the last day of the Summernats, and it’s a day of silverware all across the EPIC precinct as champions are crowned. Earlybirds can head to the burnout pad to watch Australia’s mintest machines duke it out in the motorkhana and go-to-whoa for Australia’s ultimate show car prize, Street Machine Summernats Grand Champion. The PPG Supreme display is also a highlight of Sunday morning, with their awards handed out later in the day. The MPW dyno cell hosts the finals for the Haltech Horsepower Heroes, and after lunch the Burnout Championship finals get underway. From 3pm, 10 of Australia’s best burnout combatants will face off for ultimate bragging rights and a huge cash prize in the Burnout Masters final face-off, and then Summernats 35 comes to a close as…