When the covers were pulled off this magnificent FB Holden in the Elite Hall at Summernats 21, more was revealed than simply an exquisite example of bodywork and bare-knuckle toughness. We also discovered a story of a bloke with a dream and enough mates to see it through to the end after he took his own life in September 2005.

First published in the March 2008 issue of Street Machine

It’s baffling why a bloke as popular as Justin ‘Froggy’ Farrar would choose that path. Those closest to him say it was an affair of the heart but everyone who knew him was shocked.

“I was mates with him — it was like we were brothers,” says Shaun Horton. He’d known Froggy for years and, like many others in their Shepparton-Mooroopna hometown, shared his passion for classic cars.

“When he done that, we all just spun out.”

His parents Ross and Chris were understandably shattered, to the point where they couldn’t bear to look at the FB wagon that had been taking shape in the shed. It was too great a reminder, so Shaun bought the painted rolling shell and set about finishing what Frog started in 1998.

“I wanted to finish the car as a tribute to their son, and tried to keep them as involved and informed on the car as I could,” Shaun says. It wasn’t always easy, as it reminded Ross and Chris of a bloke who had a strong will and plenty of drive.

Frog was an engineer and got to know pretty much everyone who was into cars. He was always helping someone with something when he wasn’t working on his own projects which included another FB wagon — factory pink and white on the outside, but with an engineered 400 Chev under the bonnet!

“He loved all the chrome on them,” Shaun says, “and those chrome strips — I pulled apart three wrecks and went to 20 people’s houses and five or six swap-meets to get strips. I’d been chasing parts for two years to get it finished, ringing Holden car clubs and everything, and they couldn’t help me.

“I couldn’t find a good bonnet mould anywhere; they were always rusted out. Believe it or not I found one in Shep. A mate’s old man has a panel shop and he gets old cars from paddocks which are all rusted out but because this car had been pulled apart, all the chrome moulds were inside the car. So this bonnet mould had been sitting in the car for 10 years and had no rust.”

That was the finishing touch to what was going to be a quarter-mile crusher. Frog loved the classic style but like any street machiner worth his chrome, wanted to blitz all comers on the strip.

“He just wanted something that would run faster than 10 seconds,” Shaun says. “He said he’d settle for 650 horsepower but I went a bit overboard under the bonnet.”

Which means that renowned engine builder Sandy ‘Doggy’ Graham was presented with a 350 small-block Chev and a simple set of instructions.

“We didn’t say we wanted a nine-second car, we just said we wanted as much power as you could get from a small-block,” Shaun says. “But we wanted it fairly reliable so we didn’t have to pull it apart all the time.”

To get that kind of performance, Doggy went for the classic combination of a Blower Shop 6/71 supercharger and Enderle Birdcatcher hat injection. Heads are CNC-ported Air Flow Research 227cc units, housing Manley valves with Del West titanium retainers and collets and PSI valve springs. Inside the block are Arias forged flat-top pistons wearing Speed Pro file back rings, along with Scat six-inch H-beam conrods, held in place by 2000-series rod bolts. With 16psi boost, Dog reckons the motor has around 20:1 final compression. Fuel is methanol — it’s cheap compared to race gas, runs cool and has plenty of octane. Fuel economy isn’t great, but Shaun is hardly going to use this baby for commuting, is he?

The resulting force is punched into a custom twin-keyway Scat 4340 crank spinning on Clevite 77
H-series bearings. Keeping it all lubed is a Mellings oil pump, drawing the black stuff from a High Energy sump.

“People kept asking: ‘How’d you get that motor in there?’” Shaun laughs. “There’s nothing unusual about the engine bay, though — it’s standard. It’s been welded up and smoothed out, but none of it has come out, apart from where the pipes go.”

The pipes are mandrel-bent fully custom-made examples, built by South Geelong Exhaust, while the radiator is an alloy Aussie Desert Cooler item. The whole shebang has been polished to within an inch of its life, with lashings of chrome and braided line.

To handle all the grunt, a two-speed Powerglide with the works was installed, along with a Dominator 4500 torque converter. A custom three-inch driveshaft locks into a mini-spooled Ford nine-inch diff, with 3.7:1 gears sending the drive out to 17-inch Centreline Billet Tornado rims. The rears are shod in BF Goodrich’s finest while there’s Pirelli rubber up front, but if you look underneath you’ll see there’s plenty of room for proper race slicks between the John Taverna jr four-link suspension kit.

“Frog started tubbing it in 1998 when it was an old grey and white wagon,” says Shaun.

Racing was the original plan, but that’s changed: “I don’t want to risk sticking it in the wall, so we’ll keep it off the strip for now. I’m just happy to cruise at events like Summernats and Gazzanats. You can have some fun at those shows and light up the tyres without wrecking the car.”

That’s not a surprising choice, given the years of work that Frog put into smoothing the body to get it ready for paint. Some of the neater mods that Shaun brought to the party are the one-piece bumpers (they came standard in three pieces) and the smoothed engine bay with the drip rails and guard edges removed. Then there’s the flat floor and tan interior that Shaun and two mates worked on flat out for three weeks to finish in time for Summernats 21.

This was after Michael ‘Pronga’ Gorjup finished off the panel work and sent the whole lot off to Shannon ‘Pyro’ Jennings for a coating of PPG Deltron Verti Rose.

“Frog would be rapt,” says Shaun of the finished machine. “Everyone keeps saying that if he could see how good his car came up, he’d spin out.”

Frog’s parents have come around to the idea of the car too — it would have been hard for them to not hear about the car’s Summernats success with the buzz around Shepparton. It picked up the trophy for Top Station Wagon Elite on its way into the Top 60, and was one of the 10 PPG Supreme Finalists.

“They were pretty pleased. I don’t think they expected the car to come up this good.”

SHAUN HORTON & JUSTIN FARRAR
1960 FB HOLDEN WAGON