It might upset some people to read this, but more than three decades have passed since 1995. That’s the year the readers of Street Machine couldn’t split Howard Astill’s XA Falcon hardtop and Darryl McBeth’s FJ Holden for the hallowed Street Machine of the Year award, so we declared them joint winners and captured the moment for posterity on one of our most iconic covers of all time.

First published in the October 2026 issue of Street Machine

As far as claims to fame go in the Aussie car scene, a Street Machine of the Year win is about as big as they get, instantly cementing the winner as an icon of our sport. So, when we gathered to farewell 2018 SMOTY winner Ben Judd’s workshop (SM, Jul ’26), we were stoked to see the ex-McBeth humpy make a special guest appearance thanks to its current custodian, Matt Eastburn. Needless to say, we weren’t about to pass up the opportunity to grab some present-day photos and chat with Matt to find out what the car had been up to since its memorable SMOTY win.

As you can see, the FJ still looks very similar indeed to how it did all those years ago. The 15-inch Center Lines the car once sported have been replaced with larger-diameter Boyd Coddington billets, and the BDS blower and twin carbs that once force-fed a 327ci small-block Chev are no longer in situ, replaced by a single-plane manifold and single carb atop a 383ci stroker. Other than that, the Orange Sherbert pearl duco and tweed interior look very familiar indeed.

“I bought it in April 2014 out of Perth, sight-unseen,” Matt says. “I originally had another FJ that I built when I was 17. I took that car to Summernats in January ’95, so I already had a passion for FJs. That year at Summernats, I loaned Darryl some Brasso to clean the Holden badge in the grille of this car, so in a way I had a personal connection to the car. Obviously, I was aware of its history, and I still had the magazine from when it was first built, so as soon as I saw it up for sale, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s me!’”

Matt had sold his original humpy in his 20s to start a business and focus on his family, but after years of being surrounded by car-mad mates, he was keen to get back into it.

When Matt got his hands on the FJ, it was largely still McBeth-spec, but the blown 327 had been switched out for a tired naturally aspirated 350 wearing a shotgun scoop, and true flames had been applied to the front clip. 

“The motor was rooted,” he says. “I ripped it out and had Simon at Simon McMah Automotive build an alloy-headed 383 for it, still with the Turbo 350 that was in it. Originally, the car only had a little five-litre fuel tank in it, but along the way, someone had put a larger alloy fuel cell in it to make it useable on the street, but they’d just plonked it in there. I replaced that and had Matt Gibbs at Artistic Trim do up the boot and tidy up the interior. Then we took it to Summernats and it rolled straight into the Top 60.”

A year or so later, Matt could no longer deal with the flames and decided to be rid of them and return the car to closer to the OG look. Unfortunately, due to the heavy blue pearl in the paint, it was impossible to perfectly colour-match the existing paint for a partial respray, so Shaun Van Zyl mixed up the paint as close as possible, then flowcoated the entire car.

So now, save for the blower, wheels and steering wheel, the car presents exactly as it did when Darryl completed the SMOTY-winning rebuild. The magnitude of owning a car with such a storied history isn’t lost on Matt.

“That’s one of the reasons I’ve never thought about selling it, even though it doesn’t get used a heap,” Matt says. “Ben Judd and I are good mates, and cruising together in two SMOTY winners is pretty cool – it’s not something you see often. Some of the boys have some heavy-hitter cars that are extremely well known, but when I cruise the FJ around with them at Summernats, it always gets noticed.

“I only drive it very occasionally, and just locally. It goes to Summernats each year and local cars-and-coffee events and stuff like that. To be honest, it’s a horrible thing to drive, even just from the ’Nats into Braddon and back, or to a local show. If you were to build this car these days and you were paying for all the fab work, it’d be a big-dollar car. But it rides really rough; it was built as a show car, not a pro tourer or anything like that.”

Few things make us happier than seeing such a historically significant car surviving and thriving in the hands of someone who appreciates its provenance. And if you’ve ever found yourself wondering what happened to the iconic McBeth humpy, now you know!  

Custom Rodder
April-May 1992

ABOVE: Before the FJ’s more widely known SMOTY-winning iteration, it had an earlier build in blue and rolling on Center Line Convo Pros, pictured here on the cover of the April-May 1992 issue of Custom Rodder

Street Machine
March 1996

ABOVE: The March 1996 issue of Street Machine boasted one of our more memorable covers, featuring our joint 1995 Street Machine of the Year winners – Darryl McBeth’s humpy and Howard Astill’s hardtop