Even for those strange types whose veins don’t course with petrol, everyone remembers their first car. It doesn’t matter if it’s a clapped-out old rust magnet that stops more often than it starts; that first ride symbolises so much – an initial taste of proper freedom, independence, and the start of adulthood.

First published in the June 2025 issue of Street Machine

Michael Licciardi certainly has fond memories of his; having grown up in a family of gearheads, his first car was far cooler than most of ours. “I had a burgundy ’81 Caprice with a 308 and limo gears,” he says. “I had a soft spot for Statesmans back then, and I was looking for an HX, as my dad had one with a 454 in it when I was growing up. Even as a 13-year-old, Dad’s Statey was everything to me, so I hadn’t considered a WB, but Dad found my first one.”

The Caprice might not have been his first pick, but Michael soon fell in love with his square-shouldered WB and set about making indelible memories with it, starting him off on a path he still walks today. “I had that car for seven years and loved it to bits,” he says. “We put S/S Cragars on it and lowered it, and that was my daily driver to get around in. I couldn’t afford fuel, so we put it on gas, and that made it even slower. It was my wedding car, and I drove myself to the wedding. Then a year or two after that, we had my first daughter, so I replaced it with a VQ Caprice.”

Some 15 years later, Michael’s kids were growing up and he noticed some free space in his shed. It took two shakes of a lamb’s tail for him to decide it was time for another WB Caprice.

“It was on eBay in Warrnambool, about five hours from where I am,” he says. “I spoke to the guy and put a holding deposit on it, but then I was looking at other cars that were closer, so I actually backed out of the deal. A week went past, and I realised I had to go look at it, so we made the trek out with the family. I drove it home that day, even though I knew nothing about it.”

The long journey home soon made that clear. “We parked it at Geelong to have a break and a feed, and when we came out, there was a big puddle of oil underneath. It had pushed the rear main seal out, so I grabbed five litres of oil and topped it up to get us home,” Michael laughs.

Still, Michael now had a fine example of peak early-80s Holden luxury motoring in his garage, so he got a bit of maintenance done before enjoying the car for several years. “Once it pushed the rear main seal, I had the 308 refreshed, as I was sick of leaving puddles of oil at car shows,” he says. “The body seemed in reasonable nick, although the bottoms of the quarters were a little rusty, but my intention was to take it off the road and do it all properly.

“We’d found my son Gianni a VL Calais, and one night while he and I were talking in the shed, we decided the 308 from the Statesman would go into Gianni’s VL, which it still runs today. He and I then started pulling the interior out of the WB that night, and we ended up taking everything off it.”

Though he’d initially planned to only fix areas of the body that looked like they needed attention, Michael soon realised the car would require a fair bit more than that after the sins of past owners were brought to light. “There were a few horror stories hiding under the paint,” he says. “Drew from Classic Autobody Restorations looked at the car at our place, and he found bog an inch thick and fibreglass in the quarters, so he suggested we do it properly.”

Classic Autobody Restorations got the tinwork slicked and smoothed, and even added a 3.5-inch reverse-cowl to the WB’s big, flat bonnet. The team then applied the bright Holden Atlantis Blue metallic paint, before sending the big rig home for Michael to re-assemble. “It took around 12 months to finish the body of the car,” he says. “The metallic in the Atlantis Blue is tricky, so Drew chose to rub the car back and repaint it so he’d be satisfied with it.”

With son Gianni’s Commodore housing the WB’s original 5.0-litre Iron Lion, Michael had to find a new powerplant for his Caprice, and once again, memories from the past came flooding back to influence his choice – at least initially. “I was thinking of fitting a big-block, because I loved the 454 that Dad had in his,” he says. “But Joe from Princi Motors has a turbo LS-swapped VL, and he told me that for my budget, I couldn’t go wrong with the LS. Not many people do up Statesmans, let alone have a forced-induction LS in one, so one night, Joe came up to the shed so we could work out if I should go turbo or supercharged. He thought I should go blown, as it wouldn’t need as much pipework, and there were some other benefits.”

Joe got to work with an L98 alloy 6.0-litre from a Series I VE Commodore, adding a VCM 713 cam and LS7 lifters, Manley double valve springs, and a Magnuson 2300 TVS blower. A Rod Shop sump allows the late-model small-block to fit in the 40-year-old Holden engine bay, while a VE Commodore E38 Siemens ECU controls the show.

Currently, the blown L98 is sucking straight 98 premium unleaded, but the car is set up to run on flex-fuel, so Michael will be able to stick boost-friendly E85 in it when he wants to really turn the combo up. For now, while he’s still shaking the car down, it makes a healthy 550rwhp on a scant 7psi.

“The car has been running for about a year, and we’ve got over some teething problems, but I didn’t want to force too much boost into it just yet,” Michael says. “We do want to step up to 10-12psi on E85. Joe thinks we’ll easily get past 670rwhp, but we want to work up to that.”

Having taken 33 years to get to this point, Michael understands there is no sense in rushing for a power figure. But once thing’s for sure: now that his kids are grown up and cruising their own cars with him, he won’t be letting this Caprice out of his sight any time soon.

MICHAEL LICCIARDI
1983 HOLDEN WB CAPRICE

THANKS
Joey at Princi Motors; Drew at Classic Autobody Restorations; Frank at FP Auto; Chris at Yarra Valley Motor Trimmers; Chris Hargraves for the fabrication; big thanks to my son Gianni for everything he did with the build; thanks to my wife for all her support.