There’s plenty of crowd favourites already packing into Canberra for Street Machine Summernats 37, but one that really caught our eye is John Stoddart’s mud running, Mad Max-esque 1951 Ford, aka a twin-spinner

“I’ve had it for about for years, I got it from a mate who saved it from a farm, it was a one family car before I got it,” he says. “I wanted something to build to take to the Mud Run, so I got car and another one to make the one car.”

The LS driveline is out of a VE Calais, with a shortened VL turbo diff and XA Falcon leaf springs in the rear. “I had the VE but you see plenty of them here at Summernats, so I figured I should do something different.,” says John. “For my job I restore concours Falcons, so it was nice to build something like this for a change!”

The whole car was built in in a matter of months with his mate Corey, and has ripped up two Mud Run events already. As for why the LS is shoved all the way back into the cabin with a renovated firewall to suit, John had a simple answer: “It just gets it out of the way of all the front suspension and steering, way easier.”

The engine itself hasn’t been opened by John, and behind it is the 6L80E transmission from his old VE. The body was already pretty banged up, but John made that a whole lot worse when he sent the thing on its roof at his second Mud Run in it. “We had five people in the car when it went over, it squashed right down too!” he says. “We knocked it back out, and yes it has a roll cage now.”

This is John’s first time with the Ford at Summernats, as his partner Kayla explained: “He was going to bring it last year, but he thought it was too rough for this event! Funny, considering it’s been so popular with people stopping to look at it and ask questions,” she says.

Aside from the diff mods, the chassis and steering are all still as it rolled out of Ford in 1951. “She rips on the dirt, it’s way too much fun!” says John. “We might have a go a Skid Row here, just depends how the trans handles the heat.”