When David Dewhurst caught up with childhood friend Trevor Pyatt, who had lived behind the Dewhurst family in the 60s, the last thing he was expecting was to fall in love with an old Valiant. “I hadn’t seen Trevor for 35 years or more and was pleasantly surprised when he called me one day out of the blue,” David recalls. “He’d ended up being a car wholesaler, and he contacted me because I’m an electrician.”

First published in the June 2025 issue of Street Machine

Trevor needed some work done, so David visited his workshop at Panorama in southern Adelaide. “While I was doing the work there, I noticed this blue VF Valiant tucked away over in the corner. Strangely, it had the roof cut off, and I’d never seen one quite like that before. I said to Trev, ‘What’s the blue convertible you’ve got over there?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s not for sale; that’s my brother Barry’s.’”

Not if David could help it! For him, it was love at first sight, so he told Trev that if his brother ever wanted to sell the VF, he wanted first option.

It was three or four years later that the call finally came from Trevor. “It was my birthday the next week, and I couldn’t get my 43-year-old arse down there fast enough – I just couldn’t help myself!” David laughs. “I took it for a drive and thought, ‘I’m gonna have this.’”

The Val had apparently led a rather colourful life up until then. Apart from the roof delete, which had happened in the 80s or 90s, the car had been the centrepiece of a music video by the band Chunky Custard, and at some point, it had been shot with a .22-calibre bullet, which was only discovered when the paint was stripped off!

This weird and wonderful convertible Valiant was now all David’s, and he happily cruised it around for years with the 225ci slant-six, extractors, original Capri Blue paint and a set of Hotwires. But he did have a longer-term plan for the car: “I had three young boys, and I had a classic line that I used to say to them: ‘One day, I’m going to put a V8 in that blue heap of shit.’ I said it to that many people that they’d just go, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know!’”

Well, it might have taken 15 years, but this topless Val did end up getting a V8 – and then some!

As David didn’t have the time to do the planned swap himself due to the demands of his business, he decided to find an expert, which led him to Jason and Jess Riding at Lonsdale Autoshop. “I think Jason might have thought I was a bit of a wanker at first, maybe wasting his time, not knowing what I was in for with this sort of project,” he laughs.

David dropped the VF at Lonsdale Autoshop for its V8 heart transplant around Christmas 2019, and there it would stay for the next five years, as it ended up getting a lot more than a new engine.

Jason suggested a 318 as the basis for the new mill, so with that decision made, he added a Scat four-inch stroker kit and a little bit of an overbore to arrive at the legendary capacity of 392 cubes. The shopping list also included SRP forged pistons, a Crow roller cam, Edelbrock Performer RPM heads and Air-Gap intake, and a Quick Fuel 750cfm carb.

The final touch was a set of JSR Performance extractors and an Airs Race Pipes exhaust system. It all resulted in 327hp at the wheels – probably triple the power the Val had before, and sounding 10 times better, too.

That was more than enough for David, who was keen to preserve his convertible’s cool cruiser vibes. Having said that, he is a sucker for shiny, polished alloy bits, so the Lonsdale Autoshop team kitted the car out with one-off billet hinges for the bootlid and bonnet, among other sparkly pieces.

David had already swapped out the standard diff for an EB Falcon BorgWarner unit, so that should hold up to the extra power – for now – and there’s also a 904 Torqueflite that’s been toughened up by JRM Transmissions and fitted with an AK Converters high-stall set to 3500rpm. Joining them together is a GJ Drivelines tailshaft.

The final piece of the puzzle was the front end, and David didn’t skimp there, opting for a Southern Chassis Works tubular IFS to replace the old torsion-bar set-up. That gave the VF better brakes, coil-over shocks, and power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering, and it also freed up a fair bit of space in the engine bay.

With all the mechanical stuff sorted, it was time to get that body smoothed out, as it was starting to show its age. Being a typical 50-year-old Valiant, rust was a problem, so Leroy at Roy’s Refinishing and Damo at DMT Restorations put in many hours of hard work to restore its long, straight panels (the VF model was in fact the longest two-door hardtop ever built in Australia!).

The stunning paint is a slightly tweaked version of the factory Capri Blue. “It’s a bit darker than before and has an opal pearl in it,” David explains. “I’ve still got the convertible roof for it, but it turned out so nice, I’m too scared to drill holes into the body to mount the press studs.” I doubt this Val will ever see the rain again, so does it really matter?

One problem David didn’t count on when he got the VF back from paint was having to redo the entire interior. “While it was being built, I had the seats covered and the trim done similar to how it was when I bought it,” he explains. “It was blue velour with creamy white panels, but when we were putting the car back together, we looked at it and thought, ‘You know what, it looks like it’s got the wrong seats in it.’ Because the paint colour was slightly different, it just didn’t look right.”

The solution was to take the car back to Ben at Elite Trim, who re-covered everything in sumptuous Italian leather and added a couple of subtle chrome features on the seat backs to give the Val the class she deserves.

David’s convertible was finally finished just in time for the Adelaide Auto Expo in November 2024 – well, there was one thing missing: the windscreen. “There were plenty of four-door screens, but the two-doors are different,” David says. “We couldn’t find one anywhere in the country, delaying the project for nearly 12 months. We eventually ended up getting one for a Dodge Dart out of the US, but it didn’t arrive until just before Christmas. We entered the show anyway, but I don’t think many people noticed it didn’t have a windscreen, because we won the Extreme Favourite Award!”

That may well be the first and last trophy this cool Valiant convertible ever wins, because as nice as it is, David didn’t build it to win awards. But now it’s back on the road, it’s definitely going to win plenty of hearts.

DAVID DEWHURST
1969 VF VALIANT CONVERTIBLE

THANKS
Jason, Jess and Jaiden at Lonsdale Auto Shop; Leroy at Roy’s Refinishing; Damo at DMT Restorations; Damon at Airs Race Pipes; Davor at Performance Auto & Dyno; my wonderful and understanding partner Carol who listened to a lot of BS for nearly six years – and still is!