Clint DiGiovanni has been a fixture of the modified car scene in Perth since the mid-90s, and he’s always stretched the boundaries with his styling and paint schemes. One of his first cars to make a big impact was his XW ute (SM, Jul-Aug ’99), painted in two-tone black over apricot with graphics, and rolling on massive-for-the-time, 16-inch Alan Jones Signature Series wheels.

First published in the December 2024 issue of Street Machine

Clint still owns that ute, and it may make a comeback in the not-too-distant future, although he’s still pondering what direction to take it in. But regardless of the form the XW finally takes, there’s no doubt the result will be better than ever, as Clint has refined his skills considerably in the 25 years since its Street Machine feature. The F100 you see here is testament to that fact. Clint purchased it 26 years ago from the original owner, who was in his 80s at the time.

According to Clint, there hadn’t been a mark on the rust-free, factory 302/four-speed F-truck until its elderly owner hit the letterbox while reversing out of his driveway. “His daughter said, ‘It’s time to get rid of it; you’re too old and it’s too big,’” Clint recalls. “That was the end of it. I bought it for five grand, and two weeks later it had a Lexus V8 and transmission sitting between the rails.”

Clint has always been more willing to set a trend than follow one, and while 1UZs are the hot thing these days, we’re talking the late 90s here, and Clint was one of the first – if not the first – people in Perth to swap a 1UZ into a street machine. It wasn’t just about wanting to be different, though; there were other considerations a well.

“I had an XA coupe with a big-block in it that I had built from the age of 13, but by the time I had finished with that car, I just couldn’t justify tipping that much money into an engine anymore,” he explains. Pondering whether to put a turbo RB26 in the car, Clint was on the phone with a bloke in Queensland, who asked if he’d heard about the Lexus 1UZ V8. “I said, ‘What’s that?’” Clint laughs. “He had just brought in a container-load of them – the first lot to come into Australia.”

The Queensland bloke was onto something. Packing four cams and six-bolt mains, Toyota’s 4.0-litre 1UZ is near-bulletproof, and when Clint heard the $1400 price tag, he simply said, “Put it in a crate and send it to me!”

The Lexus-sourced V8 was duly installed in the F100, and Clint drove it around in naturally aspirated form until he started hearing about people getting crazy horsepower from turbocharged 1UZs. Before long, he’d relieved an XR6 Falcon of its turbo and fitted that to his engine. However, he soon realised the truck’s antiquated suspension really wasn’t up to taming all that extra stonk. To remedy that, Clint fitted a Jag front end and four-link, and then went through the process of getting the truck fully engineered.

Since then, Clint’s F100 had a few major makeovers. It was initially treated to a two-tone purple and silver paintjob and some BA Falcon ute tail-lights, before being repainted in its current black over lime – a custom mix inspired by a Hot Wheels car Clint bought in the US. “I knew that was the colour I wanted to do the bottom half of the truck, so I colour-matched the Hot Wheels car with the spectrograph,” he explains.

Before the paint went on, Clint did plenty of custom work on the body, shaving the door handles, drip rails, badges and trim, and adding some classic mini-truck touches like a filled tailgate, offset and frenched number plate, and Cadillac tail-lights.

The current paintjob was laid down in 2012 by JD Spraypainting and still looks amazing, but it was Clint who added the intricate flame job that really sets the F100 apart. “I designed, masked and laid out the flames and airbrushed the shadows. JD only applied the black, lime and clear,” he explains. “It’s never been colour sanded – only buffed when it was first done – and Johnny from Benzenes Detailing did a paint correction detail just before the photoshoot.”

Apart from a wheel change, the F-truck has been externally the same since then, but just like a Transformer, there’s more than meets the eye. “The whole truck was re-fabricated and mostly reassembled in my home garage; only the dash pad and outside paint and body were untouched,” Clint says. “Pretty much everything else was re-fabbed or replaced.” The truck also copped a new, built 1UZ, with the old mill going into Clint’s Ford Capri (SM, Feb ’18).

Scott Pitt at Scott’s Performance Engines screwed together the new mill, keeping the stock crank but adding Arias rods and Ross pistons. He then ported the heads and fitted them with custom-grind Bain Racing cams. The heads also copped a shim-under-bucket conversion and some Supertech 2JZ-GTE valves.

Twin BorgWarner S300SX turbos went on, feeding through an air-to-air intercooler and Plazmaman throttlebody before entering a custom-built plenum that Clint fabricated and welded to the stock bottom half of the intake. The engine and driveline were detailed in satin bronze and black, and considering the amount of stuff jammed into the engine bay, it’s all as neat as a pin. Clint hasn’t really leant on it yet, but with a run-in tune and only 9psi of boost, the mighty 4.0-litre pumped out 560hp at the hubs.

The rest of the driveline also copped an update to handle the extra brawn. A fully manualised, reverse-pattern Turbo 400, filled with Coan gear and built by Peter Veersma, replaced the previous Toyota ’box, while the old nine-inch was swapped out for a Clint-built sheet-metal version with a Strange 35-spline centre, billet axles, 3.7:1 gears and a Wavetrac LSD.

The chassis was completely reworked, a new firewall and centralised transmission tunnel were fabricated, the Jag front end was modified to accept coil-overs – not an easy task – and the rear suspension bar work was redesigned and fabricated from scratch. There are also new inner guard panels in the engine bay, wheel tubs in the back, and a rear wing to keep the truck planted when it eventually makes its way down the quarter-mile.

Amid all this, Clint somehow managed to build his wife’s Capri (SM, Dec ’11), and another pro touring-style F100. He even runs his own business, Street, Race & Muscle (SCM) – the man is a machine!

No doubt we’ll see more of Clint’s work gracing these pages before too long, but until then, check out his Instagram page @clintdigiovannisrm.

CLINT DIGIOVANNI
1977 FORD F100