Many a P-plater has professed a grand plan of “I’m going to turbo it later”, but not all of them follow through to the extreme Anthony Fortunato has with his RB-powered LC Torana GTR tribute.

First published in the November 2026 issue of Street Machine

When we featured the LC in the January 2023 issue of SM, Anthony was still on his Ps, and the car rocked a beastly, 220ci stroker 202 with a J.ZED head and the sort of trick internals Holden six-pot fanatics cream over. But as cool as that mill was, Anthony always saw it as a temporary measure.

“This was always the plan, which is why we built the car with the tubs, the big 275 tyres and so on when it ran a 202,” he says. “I had the RB in the build back when it was featured, and straight after Drag Challenge 2024, we pulled the 202 out and started prepping the car for the RB.”

That was off the back of a creditable fourth-placed finish in the Dial Your Own class at DC ’24, where the LC ran high 11s all week with the Holden six. Back then, it had a PB of 11.87@112mph to its name.

But in hindsight, we really shouldn’t be surprised that it wasn’t enough for Anthony. After all, he has convoyed at Drag Challenge with current overall champion Brandon Zito and his seven-second, twin-turbo small-block LC, so a quicker car was always on the cards. That’s how the current Nissan donk came about.

It’s actually an RB26/30, using the bigger, taller RB30 block but with the GT-R RB26 twin-cam head bolted on top. A standard crank swings a set of CP rods and pistons, and in its current guise, the crank is held in with a PRP girdle and block brace. A Nitto oil pump cures the common RB oil pressure woes. 

The head has been CNC-ported to “as much as it can take”, according to Anthony, with 1mm-oversize valves and Kelford camshafts. FuelTech FT240 injectors feed it sweet E85 corn juice through a Plazmaman intake, which takes up to 38psi from the Pulsar G42 compact turbo. All in and screaming at 9200rpm, the SR Engines-built hot six belts out 1100hp to the hubs.

“DC ’25 was the first time this combo had seen the asphalt,” says Anthony. “We got off the dyno two days prior to the event and sent it to Tailem Bend for the rego and test day at DC.”

After a first pass on test day to calm the nerves and shake down the package, Anthony went for another run – and that’s where things nearly went very pear-shaped. “Leaving the line, the car was on a mission,” he recalls. “I was feeling good, and it was smooth sailing to 8500rpm in first gear. I punched it into second and heard the engine free-rev; without even having a second to think, the car’s sideways and I’m facing the wall in the right lane!”

Thankfully, the LC swung around so that the parachute mount took the brunt of the impact with the wall, and the car escaped major damage. An ejected radiator cap that sent water under the rear tyres was found to have caused the near-catastrophe.

Anthony and the boys managed to turn the minor damage around for the car to be safe enough to make a pass at The Bend on the first day of competition, but the rough going wasn’t done yet.

Electrical issues stopped the LC from putting in a representative time on Day One, and the following day’s racing at Portland’s South Coast Raceway saw Anthony’s first DC campaign with the RB come to an early end.

“Entering the staging lanes at Portland, I had a bad feeling about the pass, even telling my engine builder Stef,” he says. “Sure enough, the transbrake wouldn’t work, so we pushed the car back to the pits, and that’s where a crew member noticed lots of liquids coming out of my exhaust. We took the plugs out, and cylinder one was full of water. After the event, we believe it was boost lifting the head, even with the half-inch head stud upgrade.”

Despite the Torana being out, Anthony jumped in to crew with good mate Brandon Zito, helping Zito’s own LC snare the outright Drag Challenge 2025 win. 

This year, Anthony’s Torana is much better prepared, and both he and Brandon are looking to bring some serious firepower to DC 2026.

As we write this, just a month out from Drag Challenge, Anthony had just run a new PB of 8.68@160mph at Sydney Dragway, but he’s hoping to go a whole lot quicker at DC ’26. “The goal is a seven, so if we can do that and finish, I’d be bloody stoked with that,” he says. “I want one of those Seven-Second Club red hats!”

ANTHONY FORTUNATO
1971 HOLDEN LC TORANA

THANKS
My partner Stephanie Augello; Andy at AutoMotion Performance; Stef at SR Engines; my tuner Andy Micallef; Brandon Zito; Jon Rizza at J.R Modifications; Adam and Adrian Fortunato; everyone else that has been elbow-deep in oil or had thoughts and ideas to get this car to perform to its fullest