Frank Zammit’s mantelpiece must be about to give way under the weight of his new collection of trophies from Street Machine Summernats 37. A first-time entrant in the ’Nats Elite Hall, Frank’s fabulous XW ute didn’t just make the Top 60 – an impressive achievement in itself – it also scored gongs in practically every elite category it was eligible for. We’re talking Top Undercarriage & Driveline and Top Pro Commercial; third in Top Engine Bay and Top Bodywork; runner-up in both Top Interior and Top Standard Paint; an invitation to be part of the Meguiar’s Superstars finalists at this year’s MotorEx; a spot in the Top 10; and the big kahuna: Top Judged Elite!

First published in the April 2025 issue of Street Machine

When this XW came into his life way back in 2012, winning Australia’s most prestigious show-car trophy wasn’t even on Frank’s radar; he was just after something he could build into a tough, two-door streeter.

“My first car was a six-banger XW sedan when I was an apprentice boilermaker, which I drove while I built my Capri [SM, May ’24],” Frank explains. “Now, I’m a bit of a collector and all my cars have two doors, so when I decided to buy an XW again, it had to be a ute.”

The one he ended up purchasing had been done up like a GT, including the GT dash and a Windsor V8 under the bonnet. “It had been in the guy’s shed for 20 years, and it was perfect – no damage, and no rust at all,” he says.

Frank immediately enlisted the help of his mate and long-time engine builder, the late Sam Fenech of Westend Performance, to piece together a mill that would have the ute scooting along nicely. Sam was given free rein to build whatever he liked, with the only stipulation that it be a Windsor. “I love Windsors; most of my cars have them,” Frank says.

Sam filled a tall-deck Dart block with a Callies crank and rod combo wearing JE slugs, for a total displacement of 427 cubes. AFR heads seal the cylinders, and a Bullet bumpstick controls the valves. While the engine itself is basically a copy of the one powering Frank’s purple Capri, the bits bolted to it are completely different. Instead of the Capri’s massive Whipple 510 blower, ENDLESS’s Windsor receives its boost from a pair of Precision turbos strapped to coated stainless exhaust manifolds custom-built by ProFlo Performance.

Frank also entrusted the ProFlo team with giving his XW a radical make-over. You see, his initial ‘tough streeter’ plan had now grown legs; when he delivered the ute to ProFlo’s Paul Sant, he had one simple instruction: “Build me a show car.” Within a couple of weeks, everything that didn’t look like the outside of an XW ute had been chopped off, including the entire floorpan. The tub was rebuilt with a flat floor and sides adorned with a simple, subtle rolled pattern. The same pattern flows underneath the entire car, wrapping over the diff, along the cab floor and finally up to the front crossmember, where it turns into a combination belly plate/chin spoiler.

You won’t find another early Falcon with a better-fitting front end than ENDLESS. The trim around the grille and lights has been slightly recessed into the bonnet and guards, resulting in a much neater, flusher finish than the Ford Australia engineers envisioned back in the late 60s. The front and rear bars were dissected and rebuilt so that they hug the body, with a 6mm gap the whole way around. A subtle reverse-cowl scoop was added to the bonnet to clear the sheet-metal Hogan intake, along with extra stiffening ribs and a mirror-smooth underside, and the pattern rolled into the floor has been continued on the engine bay sheet metal.

Once ProFlo had taken care of the bulk of the fabrication work, the X-dub was delivered to Kingpins Kustom Paint for Daniel and his team to work their special brand of psychotically detailed magic, which included gapping every single panel to exactly 2.8mm the whole way around, including the doors. The crew then slathered the entire vehicle in an eyeball-busting paint hue based on Audi Misano Red, with a significant amount of gold pearl added to really make it glow.

This is one of those cars that has so many custom touches you can spend hours trying to pick them all, but at the same time, effort was made to retain the ute’s original personality. The body lines down the sides have been sharpened to accentuate them, and the panels themselves are straighter than your average laser beam. At the rear, the tailgate was welded up and the bar was swapped for the sedan version, but otherwise, it still looks like an XW ute tub – just the tidiest version you’ve ever seen.

In stark contrast to the subtle exterior modifications, the cabin is completely custom. The ProFlo crew shaped the dash, doors, trans tunnel and rear wall out of steel and made it all smoother than a baby’s bum. Mick Carter at Raw Hide Interiors was called upon to fill in the remaining areas with bespoke fibreglass and MDF constructions that were then draped in Porsche leather so exquisitely fitted it looks like sheets of biscuit dough. To finish the ute off, Mark Sant at Ontrak Auto Electrical wired everything up so there was not a strand to be seen.

You may be wondering how ENDLESS earned its moniker. “The painful part of the build was the waiting; for five years, people would ask me where the car was and I’d say, ‘It’s in the paint shop’,” Frank says. “The project grew and grew, with more mods and more work straightening the panels. That’s why I named it ENDLESS – endless time, endless money!”

Given the ute’s multi-award-wining Summernats debut, we’re pretty sure Frank would agree that it was worth the wait.

FRANK ZAMMIT
1969 FORD XW FALCON UTE

THANKS
Paul, Sam and the team at ProFlo Performance; Sam Fenech and the Westend Performance team; Kingpins Kustom Paint; Mick Carter at Raw Hide Interiors; Mark Sant at Ontrak Auto Electrical; my wife Nicole and our boys Andre, Jackson and Xavier.