First published in the November 2003 issue of Street Machine

When we asked Andrew Clatworthy why he needed to pull his wild FC coupe off the road and redo an already brilliant piece of Aussie customising, his response was: “It had a small crack in the left-hand door when I finished it three years ago and that shit me to tears. Show judges never picked it but I was never completely happy.”

Now that’s attention to detail, especially considering how well it did in SMOTY ’02 and that it has an almost 100 per cent trophy-winning record. However, the FC was showing signs of wear and tear after 7000-odd miles on the clock since its debut. Those signs needed to be tackled to keep the car looking sharp and hauling awards, and Andrew has certainly pulled off that job brilliantly.

Although the latest build wasn’t as extreme as the original, it still consumed two months full-time of Andrew’s concentration and devotion to sort the car’s new style.

“I just like creating cars and I can’t stand to put any crappy parts back on a car if I know there are better parts out there,” he says. “Basically, I was trying to get back to a more traditional look. Plus the green-gold colour I gave it before got really popular.” And it wasn’t just street machiners getting into the Fiat Giallo Exploit. “I even had a phone call from Holden marketing asking what colour it was. They said: ‘We really like the colour, we’ve got one just like it called Hyper Yellow’.” So it had to change.

After fixing the crack in the door, Andrew and wife Kim finally settled on a colour.

“The PPG Cyan Blue was chosen right at the 11th hour. It was going to be green-gold,” Andrew says. “Some people see the blue, come up to me and say, ‘Oh where’s the green? You’ve wrecked the car!’ I don’t try to please everyone, but the vast majority like the blue better.”

In order to get the best paint job, the Clatworthys loaded ace artist and good mate Darryl McKenzie onto an Oz-bound bomber and flew him from Christchurch in New Zealand to Brisbane. Darryl’s first move was to spray the delicious ghost flames that lick down the side of their rad ride.

The final touch was a 1950s-style pin-up girl dubbed “Miss Lead” that he airbrushed onto the Continental spare tyre kit that sits between the ’82-model Cadillac taillights.

The new paint spices up the style of the car, which is inspired from one of the most famous custom cars of all time: the George Barris-built Hirohata Mercury. You can spot the similarities most prominently in the rear-wheel arches, where Clatworthy used VW Kombi items to come up with a Mercury-esque flat wheel arch.

To keep the lines flowing (and to follow kustom show car tradition), the FC is never displayed with the bonnet raised, as this would break the continuous flow from the frenched headlights through to the finned taillights.

Miss Lead was originally set up to take a 327ci Chev and TH350 auto, but Clatworthy didn’t want to test the friendship with the stern Queensland authorities, so a mildly-worked Holden 202ci Red six-cylinder was pulled out of the corner of the workshop and tuned for straight LPG, which is perfect for cruising duties.

“Of all the cars I’ve built, it’s the only one I’ve put a second-hand motor in, but it’s also the most reliable car I’ve built,” Andrew says.

“There is no point building the car if you can’t drive it!” Amen to that!

Since we last saw Andrew’s FC (SM, Sep ’01), the engine bay and venerable mill have copped a tidy-up that included a finned rocker cover that adds more custom cool.

Andrew is proprietor and operator of Street Neat Panels, Rod and Custom in Brisbane, but still managed to get out and search for new parts to be included in this facelift. Among them were some goodies for the interior, which had been pulled out for the rebuild, including cool V2 Monaro stainless aluminium scuff plates and VY Commodore door handles.

The dash was painted the same off-white as the rims although the top was changed to dark navy blue so it wouldn’t reflect on the windscreen. The billet interior mirror and lock knobs were pulled off the car, as Andrew wasn’t happy with the way they operated.

“If it’s on my car it’s gotta work and be functional, and they didn’t work all the time, so I got some new old-stock replacement pieces.”

As far as knock-out punch for minimal bucks goes, this car is a super heavyweight. For a couple of grand more than a base-model Hyundai ($15,000 in parts), Andrew has built a car that confuses average punters to no end.

“If I was driving a Chev or Mercury, people wouldn’t get it,” says Andrew. “Some people even think that Holden built an FC coupe, but people who know see it and go: ‘Whoa! Look at that! That’s a Holden?’.”

As a testament to his car building prowess, he actually took photos of the yet-to-be-completed FC to the USA with him in 1997, and showed George Barris and Gene Winfield. Gene was so impressed that he offered Andrew a job!

“You can see a lot of Barris in it,” Andrew says. “I read every American custom car books and magazines. You read ’em and you get into their brains, and as soon as you start looking at problems like they do, you start seeing simple answers.”

ANDREW AND KIM CLATWORTHY
1958 FC “MISS LEAD” CUSTOM

MATES WHO RATE
Darryl McKenzie, Graham Carr of Street Neat, Little Mick, the guys from Pilkington Glass, Tom Robertson for the new front screen, wife Kim and the kids, and of course Street Neat Panels, Rod and Custom.