When Kiwi battler Brad Anderson bought this VL Commodore off his old man, neither of them had the faintest clue it’d one day morph into one of the wildest streeters in the country. Back then, it was just a tidy, stock-ish 308-powered cruiser. Now it’s packing 632 cubic inches of big-block punch. It’s the sort of progression that starts with a harmless idea and ends with an engine bay full of madness.

First published in the April 2026 issue of Street Machine

“It actually began with something simple,” Brad laughs. “I went to see my old mate Matt at Pariah Custom Werks to have a Gilmer belt fitted. Then we started talking about a 632 he’d just put into a customer’s ’67 Chevelle.” One conversation turned into a tape measure, a few raised eyebrows, and then a handshake. Game on.

Turns out the VL bay would swallow a motor that size. Not quite as easily as the Chevelle did, but with some creativity and a bit of sheet metal work, it was definitely possible. So the boys ordered up another monster crate motor from BluePrint Engines in Nebraska. Out of the box, they’re rated at 815hp, and the sheer physical presence of the thing blows your hair back.

The BluePrint mill starts with the brand’s own cast-iron block, sporting four-bolt mains and 4.6-inch bores. They’re stuffed with BluePrint’s 6.635-inch H-beam rods and forged slugs, with a pump gas-friendly compression ratio. Up top, the home-brand heads feature 119cc chambers and swallow air via 2.30-inch intake valves, exhaling through 1.88-inch versions. A 0.698in-lift roller cam (272/282 duration) keeps the whole orchestra in time.

Matt worked to get the motor as low into the bay as physically possible, because even by NZ’s liberal certification standards, 10 litres of carbed big-block was going to end up sticking a bit far through the bonnet. The solution? A Shaun’s Custom Alloy billet intake wearing an Aeroflow 105mm throttlebody – functional, but also awesome to look at. A Moroso four-stage dry sump helps tuck everything tighter still. The firewall and tunnel still needed a bit of surgery, which was overseen by Chopper from Chopper’s Auto Body Shop.

With 632 cubes on hand, turbos weren’t even a consideration. Instead, Pariah called on Duane Huxtable at Fueled by Fab to craft a set of 2¾-inch stainless four-into-one headers dumping into 3.5-inch pipes, with AdrenalinR mufflers. The result is a deep and unique soundtrack that turns heads as it comes on song.

A Lowe Fabrications fuel tank was fitted alongside three 500hp Walbro pumps that feed the big girl through a pair of –8AN lines. With the billet intake came the jump to EFI – 1000cc Injector Dynamics squirters fuel the show under the direction of a Haltech Nexus R3 ECU. Brad took things a step further with crank and cam triggers, letting him run LS-style coil-on-plug ignition. The combo behaves like a giant LS – but an LS that’s been injected with a whole lot of steroids.

When tuned by Dave at Tune Technic, the car laid down 750hp and 624lb-ft on the Mainline hub dyno, and that’s on what Brad calls a “nice, happy medium tune” – sweet for daily driving but still rowdy enough to keep things interesting. “There’s definitely more in the big dog,” he reckons. But because Brad isn’t wired like the rest of us, he’s added a 200hp Nitrous Express multi‑port nitrous kit, just in case.

Most sane humans would’ve backed all this with a stout auto, but Brad wanted something different. “I wanted fun, so I went with a Tremec TKX five-speed with an S1 sequential shifter,” he explains. “Took a bit to get used to, but it’s addictive.”

So, how’s traction? Apparently better than you might expect. Not because of any electronic wizardry – the traction control the Haltech ECU offers hasn’t even been turned on – but thanks to 275-wide Mickey Thompson ET Streets on 15×9.5 RC Comp hoops. Up front are matching 17x6s, also wearing M/T rubber.

Stopping power comes from six-pot Wilwoods and 355mm rotors up front, with four-pots and 280mm rotors out back. The big-block’s rocker covers killed any hope of keeping a brake booster, so a Hydratech hydrobooster and Wilwood one-inch master cylinder got the nod instead.

The original VL diff was never going to stay in the picture; it’s been binned in favour of a Ford nine-inch filled with 32-spline axles, a Currie centre member, and a billet snout.

Initially, Brad planned to leave the paint alone, but once the guards were stretched to swallow the wide rubber, the VL headed to Jason at Autocolour Matrix for a flawless respray in factory Mulberry. The stance is exactly how Brad wanted it – low, tough, and unapologetically serious.

Despite the mountain motor up front, Brad insists he built the VL to enjoy. “I just want to drive it to the shops,” he laughs. There’s a good chance it might see a few events, but Brad is not into chasing timeslips. The cabin backs that up: simple and useable, with Autotecnica seats, a Haltech uC-10 hidden in the stock dash, and that sequential shifter hinting that something special is underneath.

The final step in the build was NZ’s cert process – the country’s version of engineering sign‑off – and, as Brad puts it, “Matt’s an absolute perfectionist, so it went through no worries at all. I couldn’t be happier with everything he’s done and how the build has come out.”

That stamp of approval shows that if you’re mad enough, you can slide a seriously oversized big-block into a VL. It’s a hell of a leap from a 308 with a Gilmer drive to a 10‑litre street stormer, but that’s what happens when you have vision, attitude and a total disregard for the ordinary.

BRAD ANDERSON
1987 HOLDEN VL CALAIS

THANKS
Matt at Pariah Custom Werks for the build; Dave at Tune Technic for tuning; Jason at Autocolour Matrix for panel and paint; Matt at Elite Motors for wiring; Chopper at Chopper’s Auto Body for the tub work; Scott at Skeleton Welding for the custom radiator; Hayden at Peregrine Speed Shop for all the parts.