Table of contents for Yearbook 2023 in Street Machine

THE Australian car scene lost one of its most important voices with the passing of Brisbane-based drag racing and burnouts commentator Kerry Digney on 16 November, aged 77. Kerry grew up in Sydney’s street scene in the late 60s and early 70s, hanging out and getting into trouble at Beefies, Brickies and Castlereagh. He moved to Queensland in late 1971 or early ’72 and took up drag racing with gusto, going into partnership with mates Pete Warrendorp and Archie McIlroy to score two Christmas trees with an LC GTR XU-1. By 1975, Kerry was working as a scrutineer at Surfers Paradise Raceway and was learning the commentator game under the guidance of the late, great Milton Adey. Drag racing was Kerry’s true love, until Street Machine Summernats came knocking, as…

WIDELY heralded as a cult classic, 1971’s Two-Lane Blacktop is often revered as the ultimate road movie. The premise is simple: two blokes, credited only as The Driver (singer-songwriter James Taylor) and his mate The Mechanic (Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson), are racing their way across America for cash in a tough, tunnel-rammed big-block ’55 Chevy, which boasts what must be the most fastidiously checked valves and jets of all time. Along the way, the duo are joined by a hitchhiker, The Girl (Laurie Bird), who ingratiates herself and her bags of crap into their car – neither of which seem to raise query or concern from the boys, despite her not being invited to join them. The trio have some fleeting interactions with the appropriately dubbed GTO (brilliantly played…

AS WE announced last issue, there’s been a whirlwind of activity at Chez Street Machine of late, as we move on from Wheels Media to join forces with the Out There Group, the folks behind Street Machine Summernats, Meguiar’s MotorEx, Red CentreNATS and more. Now we get to work as an independent media business alongside a team who live and breathe street machining. We shared the news on our Facebook page, and it seems that most of you are just as excited about the move as we are! Here’s what you had to say. Vaughan Lynch – This is a great result. After the demise of many publications over the past 20 years, it’s rare to see new life breathed into anything associated with print media these days. Well done…

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IT MIGHT be hard to believe when you look at the photos, but Riccardo Pontonio’s beautifully presented, 800rwhp Mercedes-Benz sleeper is actually the result of a joke gone too far. Ric has a VK Commodore as his main instrument of speed (SM, Mar ’20), a true streeter that entered the Seven-Second Club at Drag Challenge 2022-’23. Running a car to that level can be a tad stressful, though, so Ric wanted something a bit cruisier for his next DC campaign to take the load off the VK – and his sanity. “The idea was to build a simpler car for Drag Challenge and cruising, and we originally got a Rolls-Royce to swap my LSA into,” Ric says. “Problem is, I fell in love with that car as it was and…

Chrome is still cool THE trend of eliminating all traces of chrome to create a unique look has given way to a more balanced approach. Many major builds retained some chrome elements, whether in the form of bumpers, window trims or wheel barrels, which added balance to the car’s appearance and helped preserve its original styling. Elegance MANY of the top-tier builders opted for a blend of understated charm over bold brashness this year. There was a noticeable shift away from the recent pro touring trend towards more subdued restomod builds with discreet OE-style modifications. Modern interior styling TOP-notch builds showcased exquisitely crafted interiors featuring modern-style seats, and bespoke consoles and dashes. Warm, rich colours like brown, tan and red leather were popular trim options in these sophisticated cabins. Subdued…

AS AUSTRALIA’S biggest and most rambunctious car festival, Street Machine Summernats has it all. Each year, it attracts the country’s finest show-stoppers, ground-pounding Tuff Streeters, tyre-frying burnout monsters and epic cruisers. It’s also the place to spot what’s become something of a ’Nats tradition: the Summernats Special. These builds are all about maximum fun for minimum bucks – something you can throw together pretty quickly with a few mates and then cut endless laps with at EPIC while having a non-stop party. There have been plenty of memorable ’Nats Specials over the years – some funny, some quirky, some truly jaw-dropping – so we thought it was high time to pick 10 of our favourites from the event’s 36-year history. Don’t agree with our selection? Drop us a line at…

THE Adelaide street machining scene had a busy November, with both the Adelaide Auto Expo and the Kindig Custom Car Show at the VAILO Adelaide 500 taking place. The Adelaide Auto Expo went off like a frog in a sock at Wayville Showgrounds, 17-18 November, with Dan Morton’s FORGED XY Fairmont (SM, Oct ’23) continuing its winning form. The XY picked up firsts in every category of elite judging, culminating with the Elite Car of Show gong. The very next weekend saw the Kindig Custom Car Show, run as part of the VAILO Adelaide 500, the final event of the 2023 Supercars championship at the Adelaide Parklands Circuit. Located just outside Gate 1, the show employed two big tent pavilions for punters to peruse Australia’s top-level elite metal. Americans Dave…

POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION I ENJOYED reading the ‘know your Holdens’ article (SM, Nov ’23). When I was about 16 years old in the late 70s, I knew all the Holden, Falcon, Fairlane and most Valiant models. I could tell which model it was by looking at things like tail-lights, grilles and instrument clusters (if the car was parked). I also knew lots of American cars and trucks by sight and could reel off all sorts of info about what engines, transmissions, etc they had. I still find it hard to believe that cars such as VS Commodores, EF Falcons and other mid-to-late 90s vehicles are now regarded as ‘classic’, and in some cases wear an H-plate – they’re still too new and common to me! Anyway, thanks for a great magazine.…

THE age-old saying goes that there ain’t no substitute for cubic inches, and with 615ci worth of Sonny’s Racing Engines fat block on board his LX Torana hatch, it’s a theory that Sydney bloke Rob clearly subscribes to. Rob’s previous toy, a VL Calais that we featured in Street Machine LSX Tuner #5, was also an all-motor affair, packing an LSX454R, which at the time was GM’s gnarliest crate engine. Rob was quite content with the Calais, and rightly so, but peer pressure can be a powerful thing. “We were at Summernats in 2017 when my best mate, John Saad, got a phone call asking if he knew anyone who might be interested in a Torana hatchback,” Rob recalls. “Over the weekend, the boys were geeing me up to buy…

DEATH Week was one of the craziest things ever attempted with street cars. Too crazy to ever be attempted again. Most American drag-and-drive events go for five days; this one went for nine. Most cover roughly 1000 street miles; this one tallied around 2000. Most are held in the Midwest, or at least in places east of the Mississippi River; this one dared take it to the west side, where quite a few internet experts had predicted we’d have to run the gauntlet of the California Highway Patrol to avoid impounded cars and imprisoned humans. Needless to say, this kind of crazy adventure is liable to attract a crazy breed of participant. Some were local to Arizona, California and Nevada, while others had come from all across the country and…

THE annual Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show in Las Vegas has long been regarded as the trendsetting event of the automotive aftermarket industry, and the 2023 edition was no different. Our man on the ground, Matt Barnsley of The Render Garage, clocked up well over 100km on foot, taking in everything the show had to offer. By week’s end, he’d whittled the 1500-odd feature vehicles on display down to a list of nine personal favourites. He also identified a bunch of prominent design trends. Historically, US trends trickle down to the Aussie scene in time, often taking on a unique flavour of their own. Here’s Matt’s take on some of the cars and emerging trends that truly stood out amid the sensory feast that is the SEMA Show!…

AS YOU can see on these pages, Joel Sykes’s SINNER HG Kingswood cuts an imposing figure. Slammed on 14-inch-wide rear wheels, rocking gorgeous candy paint, and boasting over 2000hp of blown, injected big-block barely contained within its front chassis rails, it’s a mean-looking machine indeed. However, for all its brawn, SINNER actually has quite a humbling story behind it. Although Joel’s the current owner, it was the HG’s previous custodian, Colin Robbins, who got the build rolling and oversaw most of it. He was dealing with a terminal illness, and the HG build gave him solace and kept him going during a difficult time. Brad Lowe and the boys from Warhorse Motorsports in Rutherford, NSW handled the build for Colin. “When the HG came to us, it was a roller…

BY THE time he was in his mid-20s, Josh Stewart had sampled widely from the automotive buffet. He’d owned stanced JDM vehicles and drift rockets, a few mini-trucks, and a handful of makes and models from the Australian domestic market, tallying upwards of 30 cars. “They were all fairly basic bolt-on builds like wheels and suspension,” Josh says. “I’d never even done an engine swap!” Keen to increase his car-building chops, Josh was ready to get serious about building a street machine, which is how the VL Commodore you see here came to be. “I owned the engine and seats for this build before I even owned the car," he chuckles, before admitting that a VL wasn’t even his preferred base for a build. “I actually wanted to build something…

WINNING a class at Drag Challenge is no easy feat, let alone on your first crack with a freshly built, unproven car. But much to even his surprise, that’s what Emanuel ‘Manny’ Debrincat managed to do at Drag Challenge 2023. Manny had never embarked on a drag-and-drive event before, and his VL Calais was the result of a mad seven-week thrash from a rolling shell to a seven-second-capable machine. He was happy just to finish the damn thing, but he ended up winning the Speed Pro Six-Cylinder class – something he didn’t even think about going into the week. “Honestly, I would’ve just been happy to do the first day’s racing and drive, so I can’t believe we did what we did,” he says. The Calais was already being built…

KATHRYN Moran can trace her lifelong car obsession to her parents. “I blame my dad’s genes and a little of Mum’s,” she explains. “My younger years were spent going to car shows in Dad’s 1956 Chevrolet sedan, where he would promote his work, a radio station in Victoria called 3MP. We later towed the caravan to Queensland for a holiday and never left – Brisbane was where I really got into cars, and my family know I will never change!” Now 51, Kathryn has been restoring cars since her teenage years in the 80s – a time when you could get parts for traditional street machining models from every wreckers in town. 1: KATHRYN was out cruising around Brisbane and the Gold Coast from the age of 15. “I loved…

HI, I AM after an old magazine from the 2000s with an Expression Session article that had an XB and an HQ drawn in a NASCAR style by Ryan Carter. The XB was silver/grey and the Quey was orange, if my memory serves me well. If the mag’s not available, can I bother you for the year and month of the issue? HEY mate, that particular Expression Session was in the November 2002 mag – here’s the double-page spread that featured the HQ and XB. If you’re after a hard copy of that issue, it’s probably best to hit up eBay or similar to see if you can find a second-hand copy for sale. Best of luck! – Broads…

BENDIGO Automotive Restorations has turned out some epic factory resurrections and custom work over the past decade, so when do-it all business owner Chris Frankling decided he needed a rolling billboard, it was never going to be run-of-the-mill. “We wanted one we could keep for ourselves,” he grins. This stunner is Chris’s second XR Falcon, the first being a neat 302-powered cruiser. “We decided it was too good to chop up, so we bought this one to start from scratch, knowing we were going to move away from standard,” he says. “We built it over two years from bare bones and ran the business too, so there were lots of late Saturday nights!” Having worked on plenty of other speccy chrome-bumper stuff, including Jamie Hale’s XY (SM, Feb ’17), Chris…

MIKE Davison has been playing with ’54 Chevs for over 30 years, so when this hard-to-find Sport Coupe popped up in 2006, he made a move on it, despite not really being in the market for a new project at the time. The rust was certainly fixable, and Mike had spares for anything that needed replacing. After enjoying the low-and-slow life for a couple of years, he took it off the road for a freshen-up and some sill and floor repairs. “A ‘mate’ agreed to take it on, as he needed the work, and I thought I was doing the right thing by me and him,” Mike says. “Wrong! After two years of tipping in cash and the ‘mate’ totally stuffing up the rust repairs and totally dismantling the car,…

1. Ruffian Cars – 1967 MUSTANG FASTBACK THIS retro-mod cafe racer caught my eye as soon as I walked into the Central Hall. It exuded vintage Carroll Shelby Cobra race car vibes, with incredible attention to detail and craftsmanship. The overall impression was one of class and sophistication, reminiscent of a Singer Porsche but in a Mustang’s body. 2. Ringbrothers – 1969 DODGE CHARGER WISCONSIN’S Ringbrothers never fail to amaze with their SEMA creations, and this Charger was no exception. It was a bit more understated than some of their recent builds, which I found really appealing. It’s got a 1000hp ‘Hellephant’ crate motor up front, but what really grabbed my attention was the custom hood design and striking deep black paint with gold accents. 3. 1967 Pontiac GTO –…

WHENEVER there’s a Geelong-built powerplant featured in these pages, odds are it’s from Tony Di Biagio’s business, TDR Engines. “I’ve been building engines for 40 years, and professionally off-and-on for about 20,” he says. Knowing how to screw together a reliable, big-power small-block certainly came in handy when Tony finally made time to tackle his own project. “This one turned out good,” he enthuses. “Really good, actually!” Tony spotted this tidy XY Fairmont for sale in Queensland and had it trucked down sight-unseen in 2018. It had already been coated in Wild Violet and given the GS treatment, and it came with a stout 393 combo that sent it straight to 10.8-second ETs with Tony at the helm. However, that mill soon went into a mate’s XA, leaving Tony to…

MAKING your own braided lines and fittings may seem daunting, especially as they play such an important role in keeping vital fluids where they are supposed to be, as opposed to them making a mess – or much worse – in your engine bay. However, with some study, patience and a couple of simple tools, there is no reason why you can’t tackle these jobs at home and come up with a result that is safe and neat. To demonstrate, we dropped into Carnage HQ to watch host Scott Taylor button up the turbo 1UZ V8 conversion in our Toyota Lexcen project for the final time, using Proflow 200-series PTFE line. What’s PTFE? That would be our friend polytetrafluoroethylene (known to most folks by the brand name Teflon), which is…