Way back in 1991, when you could legally stuff a fat-block into a Torana, Mark crammed a 454 Chev into his coral-coloured two-door street car and started running numbers. 

First published in the April 2006 issue of Street Machine

“I’d had another LC two-door with a 308 nitrous motor in it before this car,” he says. “Back in the day, nitrous was cheap and easy; you could bolt it on in an afternoon.” 

Within three meetings, Mark had the nitrous-huffing rat motor running 10.6s as he got a handle on the Torry’s set-up. And it remained a genuine street car he would cruise all over the greater Sydney region.

“It was always driven to the track, raced, and driven home,” he says. “I went everywhere in it; we just got in it and cruised.” 

As the racing progressed, so did the engines, and the LC soon scored a 540-cuber that propelled it to 8.30s. But Mark wanted a seven-second timeslip, so he upped the ante again with 632 cubes. 

“It went 7.99 in 2003 and with more adjustments we got it down to a 7.84@179mph,” says Mark, who scored plenty of wins in the APSA racing series, even taking out the 2009 Streetcar Superstars event. 

Mark’s next LC build, a 765ci dedicated drag machine built to Elite standards, was unveiled at Summernats 28, as he sought to go faster still and in a safer manner. That dark blue mountain-motored beast runs 6.60@199mph thanks to plenty of nitrous, while the coral LC is pressed into use as the coolest tow car ever. 

“It’s probably got 15,000 miles on it since it was originally finished,” says Mark. “As it got wilder and wilder, it saw less road miles, but I still love driving it. Literally the only thing that has changed is it now has a very mild 454 in it. I could put it back to a race car in a day.” 

MARK HAYES
1970 LC TORANA