“I ALWAYS promised myself that if I was ever fortunate enough to put a street machine together, it would be in the vein of the cars from the glory days, drawing inspiration from such icons as Ron Barclay’s SMOTY HQ and Scott McLachlan’s Summernats-winning ‘Blue Diamond’ WB. First published in the June 2021 issue of Street Machine

The opportunity arrived when I spotted an unmolested HQ Belmont ute sitting in a shed at my wife Anne’s family farm. It had been sitting for over 30 years before I made the decision to bring it to Perth and give it the mother of all birthdays, ending with the ute being finished just in time to make the Elite tent at Motorvation 34.

The chassis and body were blasted back to bare metal where there were fortunately no big surprises. The paint colour is based on Mazda’s Eternal Blue Mica, with a Xirallic Pearl added for good measure.

The 308 build started with a 30thou overbore filled with 9.5:1 pistons and L34 heads with new roller rockers and valves. A Lunati Voodoo cam was fitted along with an Edelbrock Performer carb atop a Performer manifold. Power gets to the wheels via an M20 four-cogger and a 3.55:1 Salisbury diff.

The interior was an exercise in making an improvement on the original, so there’s a set of rebuilt GTS gauges in the dash. The seats were retrimmed in Ivory suede, which was Anne’s decision – she didn’t want to get into the ute on a hot day and burn her legs on the leather!”