It doesn’t get much better than sharing beers and thrashing on old Holdens in the lead up to Street Machine Summernats, and this year Steven Serone decided he wanted a slice of that pie.

“I’ve always wanted to do a last minute thrash on a car to get it ready for Summernats, so this year we decided stuff it, let’s finally do it!”

Steven has run his nitrous-huffing, LS-swapped EJ Holden at our Drag Challenge event twice now, and is also in the process of building a twin turbo LC Torana that’ll hopefully run sevens at DC next year.

So, he’s no stranger to building cool shit. Using a crusty HJ ute as their base, what was meant to be a quick tidy up and engine swap for ‘Nats quickly blew out into a bare metal resto. “We went from fixing rust to putting on underbody, gapping doors, doing paintwork and all that rubbish – I usually don’t paint my trash cars!” he laughs.

The HJ will be running an LS1 nicked from one of Steven’s mates, rebuilt with stocko rods, pistons and some mild head work. “It has a cam, tie bars, lifers and oil pump, but she’s pretty basic!” he says. “It’ll be running on methanol though, which was key for me. I’ve been going to Summernats since number 16 when I was a kid, and I’ve always loved the cars cruising on methanol.”

Behind the LS1 is a Turbo 400, and a fresh nine inch diff. Steven plans to lay as much down Skid Row as he can manage over the four day horsepower party in the freshly painted machine, along with a stab in the open class burnouts on the pad.

“Once we’re done at Summernats I’ll probably pass the car onto one of my mates, that way I can focus on the Torana,” he says. “But, that’ll be after it’s slayed plenty of tyres!”