As we write this, the 10th edition of our full-fat, five-day Street Machine Drag Challenge event has been run and won, and while some racers this year are now well established in their classes or familiar names to long-term DC followers, there were plenty of newcomers keen to upset the applecart. Enter Anthony Spadavecchia, who came, saw and conquered the Speed Pro Six-Cylinder class on his first crack!

First published in the January 2026 issue of Street Machine

Anthony’s no stranger to drag racing, though he’s more used to piloting a tube-chassis, carbon-bodied Mustang to 7.90s in Top Sportsman, as opposed to the all-steel XW Falcon ute he used to run mid-eights at DC. He and a carload of mates got their first taste of Drag Challenge tagging along as spectators a few years ago, and Anthony came away with a pressing urge to build a suitable drag-and-drive car to take the event on himself.

The perfect candidate was already sitting in his shed. “It was just an old farm ute that I picked up about five years ago, because I thought I’d do something with it eventually,” he says.

Once Anthony decided the X-dub would be his DC steed of choice, he set about whipping it into shape to withstand the rigours of five days of drag-and-drive, although he’s the first to admit that he may have handled the project a little arse-backwards. “We did the paint, then the tubs, then assembled it!” he laughs.

The ute’s shell was delivered to All Street Panel in Adelaide, where the 50-year-old duco was stripped back to reveal a lot of decent steel and a bit of rust in the usual spots. The All Street team cut out the cancer, straightened the panels and laid down a coat of Graphite Grey paint from the FG Falcon catalogue. George from All Street also took care of several major fabrication and assembly jobs around the ute, including mounting the fuel tanks, building the rollcage and knocking up the snazzy centre console.

Next stop on the XW’s journey to the DC podium was a visit to CDS Engineering for a brand-new bum. The diff is a reinforced nine-inch with a spool, 3.9:1 gears and 35-spline axles, while mini-tubs allow plenty of room for the Mickey Thompson 275s. Calvert mono-leaf springs running in Gazzard Brothers sliders have been relocated inside the chassis rails, with Calvert shocks controlling the boing and an Enemies Racing Australia anti-roll bar keeping the ute running in a straight line. Directional changes are taken care of by the factory front suspension, although Competition Engines QA1 coil-overs now handle the bumps on the street and wheels-up launches at the track. Standard Ford discs on the front and drums on the back pull the XW up just fine on the street and the eighth-mile, but Anthony is thankful for the parachute on the quarter.

When it came time to power the ute, Anthony turned to his mate and long-time engine builder Dino Cecere of Cecere Performance to bolt together a Barra tough enough to handle DC. Dino filled a stock block with a billet Spool crank, Nitto rods and CP slugs for a standard displacement of 4.0 litres, then capped it with a head lightly ported by Just Heads Performance. Crow bumpsticks and lifters operate PPM Racing roller rockers and Ferrea valves, and the engine breathes through a Plazmaman plenum. Of course, there’s a suitably large Garrett G45 snail hanging off the 6boost manifold, and an electronic Turbosmart ProGate controls boost production.

After leaving the spinny thingy, exhaust gases are expelled through a four-inch pipe with a single resonator to combat the noise, something it doesn’t do that well: “It was loud-as on the road,” Anthony laughs. “We’d use earplugs and just crank the stereo.” A Powerglide full of all the good stuff from SA Race Transmissions is fed well over 940hp of twist by a custom converter from AK Converters, sending it rearwards via a four-inch chrome-moly tailshaft.

Just days out from DC 2025, Steve at Paul Pavlou Motors tracked down a valvetrain instability issue related to the original solid cams. In a mad rush, the cams and lifters were swapped for the current Crow hydraulics and the car was retuned, ready to race.

Anthony put down a one-and-done 8.59@152mph at The Bend on Day One, and finished the week with an 8.65@158mph on Day Five before the weather put an end to racing. In between, the ute’s high diff gears helped him stay at the front of the Speed Pro Six-Cylinder pack over the eighth-mile, with a 5.42-second pass at Portland on Day Two, and 5.71 and 5.67 on Days Three and Four respectively at the Mildura double-header.

As with any drag-and-drive event, Anthony found the long cruises between tracks to be the real test of the XW’s mettle. Between the unlocked converter and high diff gears, the Barra was doing 3000rpm at 95km/h between tracks, and Anthony had to raise the rev limiter to a cloud-scraping 8200rpm to avoid tagging it at the end of the quarter.

Fortunately, Anthony had a dream DC run in terms of breakages, with nothing required but an oil change halfway through the week, but he also admits that he packed too much gear for the trip. He and his crew quickly discovered that the rear suspension was fantastic at the track but couldn’t handle the weight of the trailer, so for the road legs, the Calverts were swapped out for old-school pumped-up air shocks.

Now that there’s a shiny trophy on his mantelpiece, Anthony’s got his sights set on some improvements, some cruising on the street and some even lower numbers. “It was only on 32psi of boost at DC, and it should make 40psi, so we’ll turn it up and see if we can get a seven out of it,” he says. Hopefully he’ll be back at the next Drag Challenge to defend his Six-Cylinder title!

ANTHONY SPADAVECCHIA
1970 XW FALCON UTE

THANKS
Cecere Performance for the engine build; Dandy Engines for the engine machining; Just Heads Performance for the cylinder head; George at All Street Panel for assembly, fabrication and suspension tuning; CDS Engineering for the rear suspension and tubs; Steve at Paul Pavlou Motors for tuning; Coretech Electrical for auto electrical; Richard at AK Universal Torque Converters for the converter; SA Race Transmissions for the Powerglide; Jeremy Payne at J Payne Race Engineering for the fabrication and coming along for the ride; everyone who helped along the way.