Once the staple of the Aussie street machine scene, the iconic FJ Holden has faded a bit in recent years. That’s a shame, as while we love seeing tough, clean 70s and 80s builds, the nostalgic hit you get when you see a humpy riding low and clean on fat wheels is hard to beat.

First published in the July 2025 issue of Street Machine

And when you see an FJ as clean and well-built as Jason and Sam Evans’s example, it shows what a great piece of design Holden’s second-ever model was. With carefully smoothed-out lines above and below the car, a sumptuous interior, and a grumpy, triple Weber-fed 202ci Holden six under the curvaceous bonnet, the Evanses’ sedan drips with details.

“We got the car from my wife Sam’s grandfather after he passed away,” says Jason. “It was a car he drove around Geelong, but it had been parked in a shed for a while, so while it was still registered and driveable, it wasn’t really safe to take out with the family. Thankfully, it wasn’t a basket case, and what needed repairing was all the usual stuff like the sills. But at least this one was kept in the shed, so it wasn’t too rough.”

Getting the seven-decade-old Special safe for modern roads was key, as the curvy sedan was to serve as family transport on sunny weekends. While he doesn’t have a long history with early Holdens, Jason, his brother and their dad have all played with plenty of cars over the years, and this made them the dream team to breathe new life back into the vintage Holden.

“I’m a car guy in general, and I like all cars, but I was more into smaller cars like Mazdas and Escorts,” Jason explains. “This car was built in the shed at home by my father, brother and me, and we tried to do as much as possible.”

Jason had a couple of Street Machine legends in mind when working out what he wanted to do with the FJ. “I liked Ken Neilson’s aqua FX (SM, Oct-Nov ’93) and Dave Keen’s orange two-door FJ, 1BADFJ (SM, Nov ’13),” he says.

With those inspirations to help guide them, the Evans boys got to work, shaving off the bonnet emblem and decorative fins on the rear guards, smoothing the firewall, and working hard to improve the FJ’s undercarriage. “It’s got the Rod Shop independent front end, plus full chassis connectors front to back, a bigger transmission tunnel, and a higher boot floor and diff tunnel so we can get it low,” Jason explains.

Once all the fab work was done in the home 6×6 shed, Max Fry Smash Repairs helped smooth the lot and get it ready for the Warwick Yellow and Snow White paintjob.

“I got the idea for the yellow from a guy down here with an HK wagon that’s Warwick Yellow with a white roof, and the pastel colours work so well with the curves,” Jason says. “I’ve seen Dad paint a lot of cars over the years but not to the level he achieved on the FJ, and I think it’s cool we were able to do so much of this car ourselves. It makes it special.”

One hurdle the Evans crew had to overcome was the FJ’s age and how tough it could be to source parts to suit a build that was fast heading for the Summernats Elite Hall. “FJs are old, so most of the parts were buggered when you did find them,” Jason says. “I got onto Marketplace and FJ groups online and found a lot of parts that way. It was a bit of a time-saver for when I had time at night, rather than having to spend a day driving around visiting people or swap meets.”

He might have sourced parts the modern way, but Jason chose to go old-school when it came to a powerplant for the humpy. Plenty of people might be expecting to see an LS or injected Holden V8 under the bonnet of such a clean streeter in 2025, but Jason flipped the script with a grumpy, triple carb-fed 202 red six. “I get a lot of people saying to me they’re glad I did the six instead of putting a V8 in,” he says. “It’s a cruiser, and I’m not really into the idea of racing it, but it definitely sounds pretty good.”

Jason went the traditional route to get his six-in-a-row to go, with a stock crank, flat-top ACL slugs and Holden Starfire four-banger rods. The whole valvetrain is from Crow Cams, with a mild flat-tappet cam working the Crow lifters, pushrods and valve springs in the 12-port head.

A JP oil pump and LJ Torana sump close out the bottom of the cranky 202, but the real party piece lives up top: a trio of Weber 45 side-draughts sitting on a Lynx manifold, which hides custom extractors below.

“The whole car turned out better than we expected, so my brother said we should do Summernats and MotorEx while it’s all new,” Jason says. “The whole build timeline wasn’t too bad to put the car together – I think it was two or three years – but once I entered Summernats, it was very full-on for that last year, with us working on it every day and all weekends.”

That hard work paid off handsomely when the FJ was awarded a spot in the Elite Top 60 at Street Machine Summernats 37, and it also took out Top Street Machine at the Showcars Melbourne PPG Showdown at Moonee Valley in February. “It was so exciting seeing it freshly finished and set up in the Elite Hall,” Jason beams. “Getting it there was a bucket-list achievement, especially having done it all ourselves. I’ve now done MotorEx with the car, so now we’ll cruise it and drive it to shows.”

We can’t wait to see this tough FJ back on the roads – maybe it’ll inspire a proper humpy revival!

JASON & SAM EVANS
1955 FJ HOLDEN SPECIAL

THANKS
Dad; Darren; Lee; Rob; Westo; Glenn; Jamie; Trav; Mat; Kempy; Paul; Bryan; Victory Lane Racegear; Harkrome Electroplaters; A1 Tailshafts; KJF Custom Trim; OCD Metalworx; Marshall Speed Shop; Global Autopaint; DA1 Installations; AndyFX; KDS Designs; last but not least, my wife Sam and daughters Milly and Matilda.