SMOTY 2016 #12: MAL APPS’S SLAMMED 350-CHEV FC HOLDEN

Valvoline Street Machine of the Year 2016 contender: Mal Apps's slammed 350-Chev powered 1959 FC Holden elite show car

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Photographers: Street Machine Archives

MAL APPS

1959 FC HOLDEN

FEBRUARY 2016

HOLDEN’S classic FC model is Mal Apps’s dream car, yet he spent a lifetime without one. “I owned my first sedan at 21, but I took on a tram and came off second best,” he laughs. So when Mal bought his second FC Holden some five decades later, he knew he wanted something special; little did he know just how far he would take it.

He started with an unfinished project that had languished for some 25 years; the FC had been built with a 350/350 combo, it just needed glass and interior and would have been ready to roll. But when Mal spied Peter Fitzpatrick’s famous SMOTY-winning FC at a local show, he decided he had to start over and create something mind-blowing.

The FC was shipped off to master jack-of-all-trades Glenn O’Halloran, who removed the floorpan and firewall ready for a custom-built full chassis. “I knew in my head how it was going to look; we thoroughly planned every aspect of the car so there’d be minimal afterthought,” Glenn explains.

The chassis is mated to a Rod-Tech front end, four-bar rear, nine-inch and a full set of ’bags that are controlled by a touchpad.

Mick Stevens from Mickz Motor Trimming worked closely with Mal and Glenn to create the FC’s interior. First, Glenn created a custom steel console, trans tunnel and all-metal dash, then Mick went to town trimming the modified Subaru seats and adjacent surfaces in a mix of Bridge of Weir Sahara and Cashmere leather, complemented by caramel tweed cloth and Wilton carpet.

Under the sideways-opening bonnet; the story of which is worthy of a Street Machine article in itself, there still nestles a 350/350 combo, but nothing like what had sat in there for 25 years. Built by James Young Race Engines, the 425hp small-block is topped by a horn-worthy crossram EFI system and, like the rest of the car, oozes stainless and chrome.

Proving how awesome it is, Mal’s FC received gongs for Best Interior and the Laurie Starling Excellence Award at MotorEx 2015.

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RIGHT-no .3

HOLDEN HR PREMIER STREETER RAELENE DREWBAD APPLE 1967 FORD XR FALCON GRANT CONNOR

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