First published in Street Machine’s Slickest Commodores #2, 2002

Chrome steel bumper bars. Over a loud beer or 15, stern purist street machiners might argue that proper full-metal-jacket cars died when car makers started going nuts with plastic. For Ford, ‘real steel’ disappeared with the XC Falcon and P6 LTD back in 1979. And from the 48/215, Holden lasted 34 years before chromed steel bars were superseded with the introduction of the VK Commodore. For Aussie cars – no offence, Rodeo fans – the last bastion of shiny chromed steel glory ended the day the last new VH Commodore rolled off the showroom floor.

The chrome is dead – long live the chrome!

It’s little wonder that the humble VH body style holds a special place in the warm and steely hearts of many diehards. While VH and VK models are fundamentally the same – just different condiments to the same meat and three veg – a whole lineage of Aussie chrome muscle styling stopped dead in injected-moulded tracks in September 1994. At the time, Neil Bunce was six years old.

Come the time when the powers that be allowed the Queenslander to drink and drive – not concurrently, of course – Neil was busy tracking down his maiden car project. Then one fateful day in 1995, he and a carload of mates dug up an unloved two-toned four-banger VH while digging around a Gold Coast wrecking yard and saved it from metal-crushing oblivion for under a grand. Bingo!

“Just a quick rebuild,” he thought, with the spirited enthusiasm of youth. “Only a mild 308,” he reckoned. Five years and one Monaro later…

One Monaro? Yep, albeit a short-lived one. Neil had toiled for three years before he was ready to pronounce the VH an official ‘unfinished project’ and flog it off to more enthusiastic hands. “I was just sick of pouring money into something that sat in the garage,” he admits. And so, needing a fresh spark to ignite his fire, he “bought an HK Monaro with a 327”.

The Munro was stolen 12 days later. Back to the money pit…

A lot can change in five long years. Take Neil’s approach to his “mild 308”, for example. You see, the further Neil honed his engine-building skills by screwing together racing donks nine-to-five at Brisbane’s Cragar Performance, the bigger the Commodore’s balls would eventually grow. Rather than go ballistically radical, though, Neil settled on “a tough street/strip engine combo that you can drive on the street”. He also reckoned that cracking into the 10s, in un-tubbed street trim, wasn’t such a hard ask either.

Pulling 10s in a 1350-odd kilogram sedan means big horsepower, or big torque multiplied by big rpm. Neil figured 383 cubes – the physical capacity threshold of Holden’s cast-iron eight – and about seven grand on the tacho would do the trick nicely. Ross slugs, COME crank and well-prepped Chev rods are bottom-end no-brainer gear, but it was the top end and the VN heads where Neil spent many hours jumping between the flowbench and experimentation.

A competition-style HP Series Holley 950DP, Harrop inlet manifold and a custom-grind roller bumpstick – the secretive specs of which Neil will take to his grave – are name-dropping gear, backed up by a list of stout hardware longer than an elephant’s doodle. High compression? You betcha. At 12.5:1, Neil admits to “stopping in at the airport for fuel every Friday night after work, without fail!”

Stomp the right foot and 550 horses (410kW) burst forth from the stable. On top of this, its 485lb/ft (657Nm) is enough to pull the front hooves off the floor – and break stock Commodore drivelines as well. Smart money would be on a well-prepped Turbo 350 auto, tough 4200rpm stall converter and 4.56:1-loaded nine-incher, just like Neil used. The suspension – lowered 2.5 inches via Kings and Koni gear – has been treated to strategic strengthening, including boxing in the rear control arms.

At 50 paces, there’s no mistaking the Blood Red Pearl VH for anything but an animal dedicated to making rapid haste over the standing 400 metres. It has strip styling written all over it. In its debadged glory, Neil has black-banned visual dead weight, adding only the hornet scoop, a trio of chrome gauges, Cragar Super Lite wheels and a pair of CYCO8 rego plates that hang like a warning to those too dumb to take heed from the other blatantly obvious drag-racing cues.

The difference between this VH and lesser strip warriors is the deceptively good build quality. Five years’ worth of tinkering is plenty of time to get things right and the level of detail is impressive.

If you get the chance to catch the VH standing still long enough for closer inspection, you’ll notice the 2-pak has that permanently wet look about it. To further highlight the great paint, Neil fitted brand-new lights, lenses, windshield, rubbers, wipers and, of course, some glorious new chrome bumpers. “The chrome really sets off the stunning paint,” he says with a wry smile.

Interior appointments, much like the rest of the car, are businesslike and exclude unnecessary crap that might rob precious ET 10ths. A pair of Japanese import sports buckets serve duty up front, while Neil rebolstered and trimmed the rear bench in cloth and also whipped up a set of unique door trims to match. Monster tacho on the A-pillar? Check, while the four-point alloy cage adds a few necessary kilos. The only sweet audio tunes you’ll hear emanate from a pair of 2.5-inch pipes that dump right in front of the diff. A top-shelf Magna Flow surge-tanked fuel system and battery have been relegated to the spotless boot.

Neil is so happy with the final results, he has forgotten the usual toils and gremlins that have plagued the build for half a decade. Time, money, his sister’s boyfriend (read more, below) and the Munro are now ancient history. But his family (Mum) and mates (Craig, Steve, Dan, Darren, Brett and Jai) who helped build the car are still there, to whom his beaut tribute to a past era of chrome still in the driveway is a proud 10-second testament.

Dumb & Bummer

“About six months after I had the car straightened and painted,” Neil recalls, “my sister’s boyfriend parked his four-cylinder shitbox at the top of the driveway.” The bright spark also left it in neutral, with the bloody handbrake off!

“It came rolling down the driveway, smashed through the garage door and onto the Commodore’s bonnet! The force pushed the whole car backwards into the workbench.” Ouch! “It cost him $2000. I didn’t see him around much after that…”

NEIL BUNCE
VH Commodore