DAVE and Robert Stephenson outsmarted themselves. The brothers set out to build a cheap and cheerful cruiser to cut laps in at Street Machine Summernats 31, but the car came up so nice that it ended up locked in the Elite Hall for half the weekend!

“That’s all Howard’s fault!” laughed Dave, referring to legendary car crafter Howard Astill, who happens to be his next-door neighbour.

“I wanted a tough cruiser, so it had to be an LS motor, and I wanted space for as many people as possible, so it had to be a Stato or a wagon,” Dave explained.

They coughed up the princely sum of $2000 for an LS1-powered WH Statesman and did most of the fab work themselves, with Howard lending advice and a helping hand when required.

“We put a 28-spline BorgWarner diff with 4.11:1 diff gears out of a Pintara from the wreckers, and a $60 mini spool off eBay,” boasted Dave. “We removed the K-frame for the IRS, then used VS Commodore trailing arms and welded plates to the floor, bracketed off the mounting locations for the IRS cradle. The rear springs are V6 Prado front springs with lowered VS Commodore shocks, and the fronts are VE coil-overs out of the scrap bin at Pedders!”

The cruiser owes them $10,000 in total – possibly the cheapest Top 60 build in Nats history!