FOR a relatively young bloke, Lorenzo Gullotto sure is going places – fast! He bought his VL Commodore when he was just 16 and proceeded to fix it up to the point where it is now running very deep into the nines.

When he got the car it was fitted with a 304 Holden, which morphed into a stroker 330ci combo that ran 9.81 with a little help from a 100-shot of nitrous. It must have been a cranky bit of gear, because it went 10.14 naturally aspirated! That was impressive. But, like all good drag racers, Lorenzo wanted more.

The next stage involved the purchase of an LSA crate motor, which saw the quarter-mile times drop considerably, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.

“After two or three passes it went 9.50 and had a lot more in it, but it started slowing off,” Lorenzo says. “I had the car parked up for a month or two and decided to slap together an L98 that we had lying around and put the blower on that.”

This slapped-together combo propelled the car to a 9.19@146mph, but Lorenzo wasn’t confident with the reliability and decided to go with a twin-turbo set-up at the last minute.

A couple of 35/82 turbos were sourced from China and a custom-grind cam was supplied by Johnny Marshall before Lorenzo got busy with the TIG welder and fabbed up the whole hot side of the turbo system. Steve Lundy at Lundy Race Fab did the intake and intercooler plumbing, which feeds into a 95mm Holley EFI throttlebody attached to a stock intake. A sheet-metal version is on the wishlist and hopefully won’t be too far away.

There’s also a new Powerglide with an SFI-approved case, and the rear end is a full sheet-metal nine-inch.

“It has adjustable top and bottom arms but still runs the standard coil springs and 21mm sway-bar with a set of AFCO double-adjustable shocks,” Lorenzo says.

It obviously works well, because the car picks up the front wheels with ease and comes down nice and straight before vanishing into the distance. With its gunmetal grey paint and black wheels, it shouldn’t draw too much untoward attention – although the parachute and wing might give the game away. So far, the new combo has ran a PB of 8.83-seconds at 154mph.