Like a true blue larrikin, Gary O’Brien rocks up to Newcastle’s All-American car show and pays his 10 bucks to enter. And why not? His finned two-door V8 is unmistakably ’57 Chev, so maybe it’s the mural and custom pink paint that bring a momentary look of doubt to the faces of the guys at the gate. Yeah, course it’s a Chev. Isn’t it? Yep, mate, take his money and let him in.

First published in the December 2002 issue of Street Machine

Gary’s hiding his smirk as effectively as he’s disguised his EK Holden. He’d probably have to park up next to a genuine Yank tank before any FAT ’57 fans realised that the pink thing had either been shrunk in the wash or was, God forbid, an imposter.

“They were just about to let us in,” Gary says. “Suddenly this guy came running over out of nowhere and said, ‘Don’t let him in, it’s not even a Chev! It’s a bloody EK Holden and we’re not lettin’ any Australian cars in!’ They had to give me my money back. I was a little disappointed in a way. We ended up just parking it out near the gates and people were looking at it all day.

“But it was just funny the way he came running over. We had ’em convinced it was a Chevy, eh! I said, c’mon mate, it’s got a Chevy motor in it, but he said no, it’s still an old Holden. One guy stood there and argued that it was a Chevy. It was pretty funny.”

Gary and his wife Carolyn have been running around in this EK for a few years now, and he happily admits it’s a poor-man’s Chev. He’s being too humble, because he’s sunk more into this car than he would’ve paid for a half-decent Chev, so he’d be better off saying it started as a cheap idea.

“Realistically I couldn’t afford a ’57,” he says, “so the next best thing was to do one. We tried to make it like a two-door ’57 Chevy, like a miniature, sort of Aussie version.”

The two-door conversion is very neat. Each door is stretched about 180mm, creating the right sort of proportions. There was a lot of work in getting it done, and Gary enlisted some help from a mate. Rather than go through the difficult task of changing the EK’s roof guttering to match, Gary ground it all off, creating a subtle, classy smoothness that stands out the more you look.

He followed up inside by welding shut the glovebox, heater/demist controls, speaker hole and every other hole in the dash except the speedo’s. Very clean, very smooth.

Gary’s a tubs kinda guy and fattened the EK’s attitude with fat wheels up the back. He had the rails modified and engineered, and did the tubs himself. His business, A Too Z Fabrications, is all about playing with sheet metal and he’d done tubs for a few people beforehand. Two doors, neat lines and fats up the back still ain’t enough, so Gary expanded the body by extending the painted area, making it look larger. All the bits that Holden chromed are now painted.

“It looks lower and wider,” Gary reckons. “The colour does a lot of that – it looks a lot wider at the front because it doesn’t have all the chrome. Even the taillights; because they’re painted body colour, it makes the fins look longer.”

“We tried to make it like a two-door ’57 Chevy, like a miniature, sort of Aussie version”

Which brings us to the mural. The swooping chrome strips on the sides of the ’57 Chev are so iconic that something similar is an obvious addition to any ’57 replica, but Gary didn’t want to copy it and make his EK look too much like a try-hard Chev wannabe. And he liked the idea of a painting with his own car in its element. So the shape and colour tone of the mural came from Chev inspiration but the scene is pure Aussie. Gary went to Jeff Elliott.

“I knew what I wanted. I drew up a few pictures for him, but he didn’t want to do it at first because he thought it’d be a little harder than what it actually was, but naturally the outcome was pretty good.”

The EK was a bloody slow car, and Gary didn’t want something that was all show and no go, so he initially fixed it with a 307 Chev donk. More recently (and since the photos were taken) he’s packed serious performance into the bay.

“She’s a lot wilder now,” he says. “I put a 350 into it. You’ll laugh when I tell you – it’s out of a nostalgia-style sprintcar. It’s got some balls, eh! I wish I’d had it for Summernats actually. I’ve had it dyno’d twice just to get it set up and it’s got about 360hp at the rear wheels, so it goes pretty good!

“I didn’t actually build it. The guy who owned it built it as a back-up engine for his sprintcar. He gave me all the receipts and all the parts he’d bought for it.”

Some of the gear in and on the engine includes a 750 double-pumper carb on an Edelbrock manifold, fuelly heads, TRW pistons, four-bolt mains, an Aussie Desert Cooler radiator that Gary says makes a big difference, HEI electronic ignition and custom extractors. It runs to a 3500rpm Dominator stall converter, still with the same Powerglide box, and the nine-inch diff’s ratio is now 4.11.

“It’s running 10.5:1 compression and runs on avgas which is a bit of nuisance in one way – it doesn’t run very well on unleaded fuel. When I bought the motor it was running on methanol and naturally I didn’t want to run that on the street so we had to change it a bit.

“The compression is probably still a bit too high, and that’s why you’ve gotta run the avgas.”

Gary went shopping at Rod Hadfield’s place and got a chassis kit to keep the V8 in place, rack-and-pinion steering, and dropped spindles to get the front end riding a little lower. The final result is a truly unique car and one that grabs attention. Gary has taken home 16 trophies so far, a hell of a lot for a car that goes cruising at least once a week. The fact that most of them are People’s Choice awards says a lot for the effect of this home-grown Holden custom. It also took out Top Graphics in the street division at the last Summernats.

“The thing is, it’s different,” says Gary. “You can go to a Summernats and see 10 ’57 Chevs. But if you take this, it’s a one-off. I’ve had other good cars, like a tubbed Capri and a few hotted up EHs and that sort of stuff, but this car has had much better response than anything else.”

EK, it’s a miss!

The EK was not one of Holden’s high points, at least initially. Although we’re allowed to like the finned style now, in 1960 it was dated, a passé Mini Me version of the ’57 Chev which had by then been superceded by much more modern looking models.

But there’s more. Where the big Chev had decent power, the humble Holden meandered thanks to its Grey motor which, in a quarter of the cars produced, was hooked to a fun-numbing automatic gearbox.

The EK was the first auto Holden and rates as the slowest car Holden ever built. Put one on the strip and everyone would have packed up and gone home before it finished its run. No wonder Gary O’Brien whacked a small-block into his. And by the way, Holden used a pink EK in its 1961 promo campaign. Only it didn’t have a mural.

GARY & CAROLYN O’BRIEN
1961 EK HOLDEN two-DOOR