Barra conversions into E-Series Falcons are a dime a dozen today, and in fairness, it’s not hard to see why. But for Victorian Paul Rush, that wasn’t unusual enough.

First published in the March 2026 issue of Street Machine

“I’d thought about a Windsor or a Barra, but too many people have done it, so Godzilla it was,” he says. “I’ve always liked the E Series; I had one when I was young, so I thought I’d buy another one.”

He found a pearler, too, in the form of a 1992 factory V8 EB Fairmont Ghia. “The whole car was built at home except for the rollcage and rear end,” says Paul. “I had it stripped down to a shell before the ’cage went in, so it was a decent project.”

Fitting the 7.3-litre Godzilla in the EB required swapping out the entire front subframe and suspension for FG Falcon equivalents. “These Falcons actually have the widest strut towers, but we found the rear sump just didn’t work with the EB stuff,” says Paul. “So, we used the FG one with a Holley sump. Now it has Shockworks FG coil-overs, the FG brakes and all of that with the conversion.”

Because 7.3 litres of Ford pushrod behemoth clearly isn’t enough, Paul has had a Pulsar 7375G turbo strapped to either side to make one hell of a package.

“Daniel Kelly of Chase Fabrications was responsible for a lot of the build at home. He used the factory cast headers to suit the turbos, with a full stainless exhaust system running from turbo dump pipes through the wheelarches,” Paul says. “A lot of hours went into getting the dump pipes to clear everything in the arches.”

The rear end fabrication and rollcage were outsourced to Kane Goodliffe at Hellbent Fabrications. The EB was tubbed to suit the 15×8 race wheels with 275 rubber, giving the car its distinctive look. The BorgWarner diff has been binned for a four-link and nine-inch with a 3.55:1 ratio.

Unfortunately, just a few weeks out from its grand debut at Drag Challenge 2025, the EB’s Godzilla came to grief on the dyno. “It was a completely standard crate motor, and we found out the hard way that standard Godzillas don’t cope too well with boost,” Paul says. “It resulted in a rod out the side of the block just weeks out from DC – not ideal!”

While that would prevent most people from getting to the event, Paul and his mates banded together in a last-ditch effort to ready the Fairmont for its Drag Challenge debut.

“I wasn’t even given the chance to pull out of DC, with everyone coming together to get a new motor in the car,” Paul says. “We saved what parts we could from the old motor, and Frank Marchese at Dandy Engines had spare standard heads, stock rods and pistons for us to use.”

To keep this new engine a bit safer, the rings were gapped to suit boost and ARP bolts were used throughout. Horsepower Junkie took care of the machining, and Brett Ewings screwed together the new bottom end.

Despite the team erring on the side of caution with the tune, the new combo still netted a stonking 598kW (802hp) on just 12psi, sucking E85 and controlled by a Haltech Nexus R5.

With no testing at all, Paul and his crewmate Dave Kelly hit the road from Central Victoria to South Australia in the EB for the start of Drag Challenge ’25. “We did do a 200km drive with the trailer on to make sure that all worked, but in terms of racing, we were completely untested,” he says.

Competing in the PSR 9.5 Radial index class, Paul’s fresh car had an interesting week on track. “We didn’t get one good pass the whole week, with a few small problems along the way,” he says. “One of those was every time I would let go of the transbrake, it would put the car into limp mode. It wasn’t our year, but at least we finished the event.”

Their best pass from the week was 10.91@125mph over the quarter on Day One at Dragway at The Bend, and an eighth-mile best of 6.99@101mph on Day Four at Mildura’s Sunset Strip.

Plans are already afoot to make amends at this year’s Drag Challenge. “We’ve already got a new motor being put together by Brett, and I’ll enter PSR 9.5 again this year,” says Paul. “The goal is to end up in the 8.5 class, so it’ll hopefully be an eight-second car by then.”

PAUL RUSH
1992 FORD EB FAIRMONT GHIA

THANKS
Daniel Kelly at Chase Fabrications; Dave Kelly for the fabrication work; Brett and Sara at All Trade Automotive; Kane Goodlife at Hellbent Fabrications; Chris at Race Wires; Marcus at The Race Shop.