Table of contents for June 2023 in Street Machine

AFTER wiping out of the professional US race car circuit, ace American driver Judd Pierson (Cliff Robertson) takes his now-troubled life on the road in an international stunt show, with his trusty mechanic, Casey Lee (1970s teen heartthrob Leif Garrett), in tow. Unfortunately, a run of bad luck and waning interest in their show finds the pair struggling to make ends meet. While pondering their collective future, a random offer of $3000 for a few hours’ driving lobs in their laps and seems like just what they need to dig them out of their financial hole. However, the hard case they’ve been entrusted to transport looks extremely suss, and for good reason: they have been hired by a rogue local government scientist, Dr Christine Rubin (Lisa Harrow), who has stolen…

WHEN this HT Monaro showed up at the 2022 WA Hot Rod & Street Machine Spectacular, a lot of punters were trying to figure out which big-dollar custom shop had built it and, more importantly, who had done the arrow-straight panel and paint. Well, no big-dollar custom shop was involved, and the bloke who did the panel and paint was the same person who did 95 per cent of the other work: Lloyd Taylor. Lloyd’s a pretty laid-back bloke, humble about his talents but more than happy to talk at length about what went into making one of the nicest HT Monaros you’ll ever lay your eyes on. Admittedly, it’s not exactly a ‘backyard build’, as Lloyd and his wife Caroline own Precision Collision in Karratha, a coastal town 1500km…

STELIO Birbas’s sharp-as-a-tack VF Valiant coupe has been a build of faith and sheer determination. With the project spanning 25 years, even some of the Adelaidean’s nearest and dearest had given up hope of ever seeing the car completed. The tumultuous love affair began in 1997, when 16-year-old Stelio laid down $2800 for the VF Regal 770. “I always loved Chryslers – especially coupes – and at the time not many Vals were getting around,” he explains of the then-stock, vinyl-roofed two-door. For three months, Stelio racked up cruising kilometres, but when rego ran out, he reckoned it was a great time to give the car a quick freshen-up. Soon the entire coupe was ripped apart on the family’s front driveway. “The idea was a quick respray, freshen the 245ci,…

IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE A SHOW CAR, BUT IT’S VERY MUCH A DRIVER, AS WITNESSED BY THE LS1, MANUAL TRANS, BIG BRAKES AND COIL-OVERS AS I WRITE this, Stewart Parris and one of his best mates, Ben Forster, are making their way from Perth across the country to Melbourne for Meguiar’s MotorEx. Behind them, tucked safely in the trailer, is one of the nicest ’55 Chevs you’ll ever see; so nice that it picked up an invite to Meguiar’s Superstars – along with a bunch of other awards – at the 2022 WA Hot Rod & Street Machine Spectacular. With its stunning paint, which spreads to the undercarriage, you might think this ’55 was built as a show car, but it’s very much a driver – as witnessed by the…

AS A young teenager, Connor Chiarelli was right into the burnout scene, dragging his dad along to skid events, going to Motorvation to drool over the cars, and, most importantly, reading Street Machine! Once he was old enough for his L-plates, Connor was keen to get a cool ride that he could cruise around in when he got his Ps. We reckon this tough XY Falcon more than fits that bill! How long have you had the XY? We got the car in 2016 as a father-son project. The original 302 that was in it pretty much cooked the head gasket as soon as we got it. Back then, I didn’t really know much about cars, so my old man organised some guy to put an engine in it. In…

MELBOURNE can be a pretty volatile place weather-wise around this time of year. When you venture out for a cruise, meet or show, you just never can tell whether you’ll be fat-arming it in full sunshine or dodging hailstones. Sure enough, over the first weekend in May, Meguiar’s MotorEx 21 was stricken with chilly temps and sporadic rain. Fortunately, that didn’t stop around 20,000 hardy punters showing up to gawk and gasp at 800 of Australia’s top cars, and you better believe there was plenty to talk about besides the weather. As always, there was loads to check out across the various pavilions, with the biggest spotlight reserved for Saturday’s unveilings. A return to the tradition of unveiling each car one at a time was well-received, as every builder and/or…

THE Tuff Mounts Holden Nationals is always a premier event on the drag racing calendar, with Heathcote Park Raceway in central Victoria getting inundated every year with entrants from all over the country keen to take part in the Holden-exclusive drag racing weekend. The 2023 running of the event saw an extra 50 cars entered compared to previous years to make a 215-strong entrant list. “I was still getting messages well after the cut-off and even up to race day from people wanting to enter, so it was great to see so much interest in the event,” said organiser Todd Foley. Friday was qualifying day, while eliminations and finals took place Saturday, and there was an optional Thursday test day, too, giving competitors up to three days’ worth of passes…

THESE days, we see so many pro street Torana builds geared towards drag racing that it’s easy to forget the Torana legend was in fact forged in the win-on-Sunday, sell-on-Monday world of touring car racing. The LX platform was particularly successful, scoring back-to-back Australian Touring Car Championships and Bathurst 1000 wins, the latter of which is regarded as the most dominant Bathurst win of all time. One bloke who certainly hasn’t forgotten about the Torana’s roundy-roundy pedigree is Melbourne’s John Szwede. His beautifully turned-out LX SS hatch is built to tackle spirited drives on Aussie B-roads, tarmac rallies and track days, just as The General intended. But despite the Torana’s undeniable Aussie motorsport prowess, and even though his car had already been fitted with an LS1 when he purchased it,…

CHRIS FRENDO  HR HOLDEN “HERE’S my 1966 HR Holden. I’ve always loved the HR because my mum and dad had one, and funnily enough, it was the same colour as this one. I remember being driven around in it as a young fella. When the time came to search for a project, my wife and I ended up driving 14 hours to Ballarat, Victoria to buy it. All the floorpans were cactus, with all four pans and front and rear tunnels needing to be replaced. While the grinder was out, we also decided to mini-tub the rear end for a nine-inch diff. I’m running 10-inch rims on the back, because I’ve always liked the look of a low arse-end with nice rubber squeezed underneath. Because it’s going to be engineered, I have installed a chassis kit with four-wheel disc brakes, retractable…

DAVID ASCIAK LX TORANA “WHAT started as my daily-driven car on my P-plates back in 2009 is now my pride and joy that I enjoy with my family any chance we can! I bought it stock from a man in Brunswick; it was originally white with burgundy interior and a 173/Trimatic driveline. Once I got my P-plates, my old man and I stripped it and he painted it gold (based on a Nissan Pulsar colour) in the garage. As an apprentice motor mechanic at the time, I built a worked 202 for it to make the car a perfect P-plate cruiser, but once I got off the Ps, the fun really started. I ripped out the 202 and built a mild 308 for it with L34 heads, a 286 cam…

FROM the pioneering days of a young Dale Fisher customising youthful FX and FJ Holdens in the 50s and 60s to the sceneshattering legend that was Rex Webster’s FJ in the mid-80s, Holden humpy builds have evolved with the times – Kevin Baird’s elitelevel, Deluxe Rod Shop-built FX (SM, Sep ’22) is a perfect example of current trends. However, when it comes to 1980s builds, people tend to either love them or hate them. We’re firmly in the former camp, so in this final instalment of our custom FX-FJ Holden series, we’ll moonwalk our way through some the most revered humpy builds of the 80s – an era where individuality and a dare-to-be-different mindset prevailed. 1: FEW modified cars can hold a candle to the firmly stamped identity and pure…

HOWARD Astill doesn’t do daily drivers. He’s chiselled his name into the Aussie street machining hall of fame by turning out a string of revered Ford show cars over the past 40-ish years, so when Peter Lewis approached him for a new build, things could have easily not worked out. But they did, and we have this incredible, engineered-to-the-eyeballs XC Falcon showstopper as a result. HOWARD ASTILL WOULD BE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE TO DO JUSTICE TO THE BUILD, BUT I WASN’T CERTAIN IF HE COULD TAKE IT ON Peter spent a good chunk of his youth hooking around Broken Hill Speedway in LJ Toranas, with his first car, a blue six-cylinder XC Falcon, performing tow duties. So, when the time came for a new project a few decades later, the…

DANNY Howe first came to our attention when we featured his stunning Barrapowered, eight-second XE Falcon S-Pack ute (SM, May ’21). This VN Commodore is the latest addition to his stable, and it’s a different sort of build to the XE. While the XE hid its unassuming grunt within a sleek factory body and bonnet, Danny wanted to go completely the other way with this VN. “I do this funny thing where I buy car parts and then build a car to suit, and in this case it happened to be a blower,” Danny says. “Then I saw an SV89 come through a mate’s shop for a rear-end job, and I kind of fell in love with it. I wanted to build a Summernats and Powercruise car, so I thought…

EVERYONE – car people or not – will have indelible memories of times spent in and around the family car. For the Taylor clan, that car was this 1970 ZC Fairlane. Its history with the family stretches back some 33 years, when current owner Will Taylor’s dad, Rob, purchased the big more-door Ford. “I was born in Victoria, and when I was only a young fella, I remember going out with Dad to view a few cars,” Will says. “Dad ended up buying a genuine T-code ZC Fairlane from a director at Ford in Victoria; we still have the original books for it!” As with many now-collectable classics, back then the used Ford was pressed into duty as an ordinary streeter, which is how many of Will’s precious memories were…

CHOOSING tyres doesn’t seem half as fun or sexy as choosing wheels, but it’s more important, both for your car’s and your own well-being. There are various types of tyres designed for different purposes, so to get the best out of your daily driver, weekend classic, work ute, race car or trailer, it makes sense to buy specialised rubber to suit. Let’s dive into what you need to know. READING YOUR RUBBER THE numbers on the side of a tyre denote several crucial specs, starting with the size. We’ll use a 275/50R15 tyre as an example: the first number is the tyre’s width in millimetres at its widest point; the next is the height of the tyre’s sidewall as an aspect ratio (so this tyre’s height is 50 per cent…

AS A young’un, Emma Bell had strong automotive influences from her dad, which forged in her a love of 70s Datsuns. Nowadays she’s immersed in all manner of revhead stimuli thanks to her partner, Charlie Sant of ProFlo Performance. Emma plans to turn her ’71 Datsun 1600 into a stout streeter, and we were keen to find out more. How’d your car journey start, Emma? I grew up around cars. Dad was always working on them, and I’d help by handing him tools and so on. Dad was into Aussie muscle and 4WDs but bought a Datsun Sunny paddock-basher, which my sister and I both would thrash around. Later on, my friends had 1600s, 1200s and Sunnys, so I got hooked on Datsuns. Tell us about your first Datto. I…

> GAG OF THE MONTH FISHING IT WAS raining hard, and a big puddle had formed in front of an Irish pub. An old man stood by the puddle holding a stick with a string on the end, jiggling it up and down in the puddle. A businessman soon walked by and saw this. Curious, he asked the old man what he was doing. “Fishing,” the old man replied. “Poor old fool,” thought the businessman. Taking pity on him, he invited the old man into the pub for a drink. Once they’d ordered their whiskies and had got comfortable at a table, the businessman attempted to start a conversation with the old man. “So, how many have you caught?” he asked. The old man replied, “You’re the eighth.” Justin Uthersucker,…