When a mate found a Gemini wagon up in Shepparton, Ross had no idea the project would snowball into an Isuzu-powered road and race monster. “I got it for a thousand bucks,” he begins. “It was a 5-speed manual car with the stock G161Z,” Ross pauses for effect. “But I got bored of that pretty quick.”

“I was going to go Ecotec, but you can’t get them engineered anymore, so then I thought about SR20, but I didn’t really want to do that.” Unbelievably, Ross found the solution in the unkillable TF-series Holden Rodeo, because although it was a fairly common upgrade back in the day, this 2.6 litre 4ZE1 four-pot is making pretty good power and returning incredible quarter mile times.

Buying the base engine for only $500, Ross built up to the tune of 335hp at the wheels with the aid of a Pulsar GTX3582 turbo. “The dyno said 250kw at 20psi,” he explains. “Then I went out and did a 10.9 at 120mph.” Wanting to run both E85 and 98 octane premium, Ross again strapped it to the dyno for the
flex-fuel tune.

“Once we sorted that out, I was like, let’s just run it up and see what it does. It started spinning on the rollers at 27psi; it was just eating tyres and the whole thing was covered in rubber,” he laughs, “So I don’t know what it makes now.”

The manualised Trimatic behind the 4ZE1 is fully built, and Ross is confident it’ll take the power. “A lot of people put C4s in them or whatever, but I did some research and the Trimatic’s strong enough.” Wanting to keep the interior relatively stock, the factory Holden auto means Ross could retain the factory t-bar, a perfect match for the 70s-AF thin-rimmed plastic steering wheel.

Despite the 10-second quarters, the car retains or adapts a lot of Holden and Isuzu parts, from the 2.6 litre donk between the Gemini’s pointy shock towers, to the narrowed VL Commodore BorgWarner three link and the HSV ‘Walkinshaw’ alloy wheels; it’s a credit to the vision Ross had when he dragged it home.

“It’s taken a while, but I’ll be happy with low 10s,” he says, before gesturing to the passenger seat, “Oh and no dramas between races; no co-driver.” Anybody that rawdogs their way through Drag Challenge in a high-revving four cylinder deserves to have their wishes met.