First published in the December 2021 issue of Street Machine
Best Street Machine special features 1986-2002
Feature cars and event stories are the bread and butter of Street Machine. Tech is a big part of the mix, and we don’t mind a profile piece on the heavy hitters in the scene either. But from time to time, we take a chance and try some special features. They usually cost a bit more and take some time, but they’re generally worth the effort and make us think, ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’
So to celebrate our 400th issue, we’ve dug through the archives to find the best of these special features, including some killer photography that has never before seen the light of day. This is just part one; we’ll have more to come. And if you have a bright idea for a new summit for us to aim at, let us know!
1986
CAT KILLER
DECEMBER 1986
Phil Scott, Street Machine’s second editor, always knew how to generate some hype, so when he featured Gary Walker’s twin-turbo XJS Jaguar in the April-May 1986 issue, the challenge was put to all red-blooded street machiners to defend V8 honour against this Euro upstart in a drag battle. When push came to shove, Walker didn’t turn up to the showdown at an Oran Park street meet, leaving a pair of sleeper Clevo-powered Cortinas and Barry Birt’s specially built HQ Monaro to duke it out.
Barry’s HQ came packing a blown 427-cube big-block, topped by a pair of Predators and built by Warwick Jones. The Capris were both built by engine conversion guru Bob Pinnell, with Bob driving one and customer Michael Fritsch the other. Barry stomped the Fords by more than a second, with Fritsch’s Corty being the quickest street-legal car on the day.
For whatever reason, the event was only allocated a page in the news section, but it was the start of a long tradition of Street Machine-brokered shootouts that continues to this very day with Drag Challenge.
ABOVE: When we cracked the archives open, we realised that Gary Satara’s OVAKIL hardtop was at Oran Park on the day too!
1988
SHOOTOUT!
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1988
Our first serious attempt at a quickest street car title fight was the Street Machine Shootout at Calder Park in 1988, with John Taverna officiating as starter and stonewash jeans as far as the eye could see.
Editor Ewen Page hit up Calder, Willowbank, Oran Park and AIR to nominate the single toughest streeters currently running at each track. They complied, except for Calder, which couldn’t split the Capri of Doug Stankov and the Nikodjevic brothers’ Cortina. From South Australia, we had Michael Krenc’s XT GT, with Bob Pinnell representing Sydney in his yellow Capri. From Queensland came Chris Hanifan in his B&M-blown, 10-second Statesman.
The story goes that the Victorian cars were regarded as not truly streetable by the other competitors, so a drive element was added to the program to prove otherwise.
Bad weather drastically reduced the amount of laps on offer, but history records that the two Victorians faced off in the final, with Doug’s Chev-powered Capri taking the win with a 10.34-second pass at 138mph. He also scored the cover of the mag, one of the most iconic we’ve ever produced.
1990
STREET FIGHT!
MARCH 1990
After the Street Machine Shootout, the SM crew got even more ambitious and put on the Australian Street Machine Drag Racing Championships at Calder in November ’89. The event combined a show ’n’ shine, a swap meet and two days of hardcore racing.
While the SM crew were disappointed that the entry list just topped the 100 mark, they were more than happy that 12,000 punters lobbed on the Sunday to see the racers battle it out.
The field was divided into a street-tyre class dubbed ‘Street’ and another called ‘Pro Street’ for those running tubs, four-links and engine swaps that had not been blessed by the authorities. Geoff Paton fitted an alloy big-block to Robin Waite’s stock-suspension HJ Holden, top-qualified in Street with a 10.23@138mph pass and took the cherries. Manuel Galea won the Pro Street class in his tubbed 400-cube Mazda.
Sadly, that was the one and only ASMDRC to run, leaving Performance Street Car to take up the mantle with its excellent series of Street Car Shootouts that ran throughout the 90s.
1995
GENERAL’S PUPROSE
MARCH 1995
1995 was a big year for special features, starting with this one that pitted a selection of Holden’s finest – both stock and hot – against the clock at Phillip Island with a 23-year old Craig Lowndes behind the wheel.
The line-up included Howard Bell’s LITRE8 Torana (sadly sidelined by a sheared-off dizzy shaft), an LJ GTR XU-1 (“A rorty little bugger,” said Lowndes), an HG GTS 350 (“Bugger-all grip, heaps of body roll”), a Walky (“Not too bad at all”), and a brand-new VR HSV GTS 215i.
MUSCLE RULES
APRIL-MAY 1995
Street Machine editor from Dec ’94 through to Oct-Nov ’96, Todd Hallenback was a creative powerhouse – something exemplified by the April-May 1995 cover. Todd and then-art director George Bassiaskos commissioned a graffiti artist known only as Blake to recreate the SM masthead, cover lines and backdrop – everything except the barcode – on a wall in spray paint, stuck Frank Bennett’s pink XF Falcon in the foreground and had Mark Bean shoot the whole shebang.
THRASHING ’ROUND OZ
JUNE 1995
Another cool yarn from Todd’s era saw three Queenslanders take an EF Falcon wagon rental car and reset the unofficial around-Australia driving record to the tune of five days and 19 minutes, with an average speed of 105.6km/h. Their choice of a wagon meant that they could fold down the rear seats, enabling two team members to sleep while the third drove. This, along with precision fuel stops and enthusiastic use of the NT’s then-liberal speed limits, gave the team the edge over their only rival. Despite not bringing any tools and a close encounter with a cyclone, they nailed it!
Noel ‘Dirty Stuff’ Tuckey spun the yarn for us – you can check it out here.
HOONS ON THE HILL
DECEMBER 1995
For the Great Race in 1995, Glenn Torrens headed to Mount Panorama with his mates as usual, but this time he took his camera and notebook with him. The resulting story is a precious time capsule of a mostly bygone era – when ‘pit specials’ were specifically brought up the mountain to be sacrificed in a Thunderdome-style arena and then set on fire for the entertainment of the masses. All this at the biggest and most prestigious motorsport event Australia has to offer!
Even at the time, this was pretty hairy stuff, and the story resulted in threats of legal action from parties that will remain nameless. Imagine what would happen these days!
WARPED SPEED
DECEMBER 1995
The 1990s were an exciting era, with EFI-equipped factory muscle cars becoming widely available to the masses for the first time and with an eager aftermarket growing to help make these rockets go faster. Street Machine itself was less focused on the drag side of things than it had been, and editor Todd Hallenback was pushing the line that real streeters should stop and handle better than the Queen Mary.
To test this laudable aim, Todd and the crew assembled five disparate street cars – and one HQ racer – to see how they performed around Eastern Creek. This included a genuine A9X sedan with VN Group A injection, a VN Calais sleeper, Bill Wilhelm’s infamous 350 Chev-powered Morris Marina, and a Vortech-blown ED XR8 Sprint.
The Marina was easily the quickest car in a straight line and came equal second with the XR8 around the track, with the well-sorted HQ taking first place. Great stuff!
1998
MUSCLE FLEXING
JUNE 1998
The Warped Speed test was so well received that the crew returned to Eastern Creek for another shot in ’98 under Mark Oastler’s stewardship. This time the mix included some well-known machinery: drag legend Vince Rigoli in his turbo Fiat-powered Datsun 1200 ute, Valiant guru Cameron Tilley in his turbo slant-six VC, and the late Mark Donohoe’s tough VF Valiant hardtop. Plus Bob Parkin’s racy Walkinshaw, a tough XY GTHO, a rorty Mazda RX-2 and a mostly stock LJ GTR XU-1.
As expected, the Brembo-equipped Walky brained the field for lap times and on the braking test, while Rigoli’s nine-second-capable Datto ruled on the unprepped quarter-mile.
Once again, it was a fun exercise and one we should revisit. Any takers?
1999
SCORCHED EARTH
JUNE 1999
We haven’t included much project car stuff in this list – we covered a lot of that ground in the 40th-anniversary issue back in the September mag – but winding the just-finished Sony Scorcher EA Falcon coupe off the clock around Ford’s You Yangs proving ground must be acknowledged.
Woot! And Scorcher was recently treated to a birthday by Drago Ostric.
2000
THE DARK SIDE
NOVEMBER 2000
Arby and ace snapper Mark Bramley hit the mean streets of Sydney to cover the illegal street racing scene. The yarn raised more than a few eyebrows, especially with ANDRA when a certain Pro Street Torana was pictured with its race numbers visible. Oops!
2001
VINCE VALIANT
MARCH 2001
Road trip yarns don’t get much better than this. After a stint running WAR440 on methanol, Mark Arblaster converted his famous Val back to a pump-fuel deal and decided to test the blown big-block’s streetability with a road trip to Springnats – a 2000km return trip from Sydney to Shepparton.
Accompanied by Shannon Pettersen in his blown WILDE1 VK, Arby averaged 11mpg on the trip, with the only drama being a bad batch of fuel. Once in Shep, the Val was pounced on by the over-zealous constabulary, then hit the burnout pad.
POWER & INFLUENCE
JULY 2001
To mark Street Machine’s 20th birthday (imagine!), then-editor Geoff Seddon and the team gathered some of the biggest names in the scene to discuss the state of our sport and look to the future. SM founder Geoff Paradise, Summernats supremo Chic Henry, judge Owen Webb, SMOTY winner Darryl McBeth, Meguiar’s boss Bruce Morrison and Expression Session guru Jeff Haggarty all took part.
The discussion got quite heated at times, with topics including what the burgeoning hot fours scene meant for the mag, Summernats, and the sport as a whole. Paro offered some sage advice, warning against the street machine scene become elitist by shunning the young guys in their pocket rockets – in the same way that hot rodders had shunned the early street machiners back in the day.
CRUSTY DEMONS OF FOG
AUGUST 2001
At the turn of the millennium, the burnout scene was still a decade away from its zenith of popularity. But more than a few folks could see the potential of the sport, including a bloke by the name of Geoff Davies, who ran the first and so far only indoor burnout event at the Homebush Superdome.
“I wanted to be able to combine muscle machines in a boxing ring with all the lighting of a rock concert, in a venue with controlled weather elements,” he said.
The pad was encased in a see-through plastic tent to prevent the smoke filling the Superdome, and despite two massive fans extracting the smoke, the fishbowl almost instantly filled with smoke each time.
Peter Gray, Mark DeOliveira and Mark Dall’acqua came away with the class wins.
SALT SHAKER
DECEMBER 2001
If you look up the old adage ‘driven not hidden’ in the fictional Street Machine dictionary, you’ll find an image of Gary Myers and GM176. Not content with doing countless burnouts (including four Summernats Championships), a spot of drag racing and hours of cruising, Gary ventured out to Lake Gairdner in 2001 to test out the Mustang on the Great White Dyno – in the same issue we announced the car’s 2001 SMOTY win.
With Arby manning the camera and voice recorder, Gary piloted the Mustang to a best of 170mph – that’s 270km/h! Impressive stuff for a street car on its first trip to the salt.
2002
MOVING PICTURES
FEBRUARY 2002
Another nugget of wisdom that Geoff Paradise imparted during the Power & Influence talk-fest was that “you guys need to be more actively involved with cars. Practise what you preach.” Seddo was all over it, and a great example was our double-header showing of Mad Max and Mad Max II at Blacktown Drive-In.
The joint was packed out, and attracted everyone from the Myers clan in GM176 to the actual trike booked by The Goose in Mad Max.
We did it all again when Love The Beast lobbed in 2009, so we’re well overdue another outing. Whaddya reckon?
RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE
OCTOBER 2002
We teamed Arby up with photographer Tony Rabbitte for this iconic yarn that saw a gaggle of tough steeters of dubious legality cruise from Sydney’s west, through Kings Cross, down to Harry’s Café de Wheels for some pies and then back to the Cross for a spot of power parking on the Golden Mile.
Untroubled by the local coppers, the crew then headed out into the night. In the days before social media, this was catnip to the imaginations of young and not-so-young car pervs everywhere!
MAD TO THE MAX
NOVEMBER 2002
My first big job for Street Machine was to pilot a brand-new Tickford TS50 from Sydney to Broken Hill with photographer Simon Davidson to cover the 20th-anniversary celebrations of Mad Max 2. Dubbed Back To The Max, the show was run by Max fan Scott Smith and some buddies, and boy, did they do a cracking job.
Interceptor replicas and ratty hardtops turned up from all corners of the country to roam around the sacred region where the film was created. Visitors included Emil Minty (aka the Feral Kid), the Myers clan in GM176, then-local lad Howard Astill, and even Mel Gibson’s Mad Max 2 stunt double, Dennis Williams.
KNIGHT LIFE
NOVEMBER 2002
Guy Bowden’s award-winning pictorial essay on South Australia’s Road Knights club shone a light on the delights of traditional hot rodding, long before the movement achieved wider popularity.
“Build it and let it age gracefully,” club member Michael Ahrens was quoted as saying. “I’d rather be out there driving it than spending hours keeping it clean or fixing stone chips.” Amen, brother.
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