First published in Street Machine’s Australia’s Slickest Commodores #2, 2002

Every movie good guy seems to drive a great car. Maxwell Smart drove a Sunbeam Tiger and a Karmann Ghia, Joe Friday drove a beige Dodge, Nash Bridges drives a super-cool cabrio ’Cuda that just tips off Crockett’s Ferrari Daytona (later a cabrio Testarossa) which, while we think of it, is far sexier than the Ferrari 308 that Magnum drove. Cobra totalled his custom sled, Rockford drove a Firebird backwards, Batman drove the Batmobile, Bodie and Doyle drove a 3.0-litre Capri, Starsky and Hutch cruised a…what was it, Ford Torino, maybe…and Inspector Morse tootled around in a 3.0-litre MkII Jaguar.

Austin Powers had an E-type Shaguar, James Bond did duty in Aston Martins, Lotus Esprits and BMWs, The Pretenders drove a Dino, The Avengers’ Emma Peel tarted around in a Lotus Elan. The Saint (would you call him a good guy?) drove Volvo coupes, Bullitt fanged the friggin’ freckle out of his green-with-dents 1968 Mustang and, of course, Mad Max Rockatansky wreaked revenge on the scoot jockeys in his black slant-nose Interceptor Falcon.

What’s all this have to do with our man, Malik Hatibovich? When he’s not sitting, quietly alert, in a mundane VT Commodore as a private investigator, he drives this Lin-a-mint VP Berlina with a snotful of V8 breathing through an iron lung.

Malik immediately violated Rule One of the investigator’s handbook, which clearly states: don’t drive a flash motor. “Everybody stares,” he says. We already figured that. “A lot of people don’t like it. With that colour there’s no in-between.” And there’s definitely no forgetting a car that attacks three of your primary senses.

Sight, hearing and touch are assaulted by the blown 260kW, bright-mint VP with a HDT bodykit. Contrary to popular belief, this Holden isn’t a magnet for the local constabulary. “In the few years I’ve had the car this colour, I’ve been pulled over twice; both times for being stupid,” confides Malik. “Stupid like giving it a bit too much at the lights.”

Too easy in a car where legal and lighting ’em up is separated by a few millimetres of throttle travel. It’s a fine line between idle and incineration of the rear Falken 245/40s on 18-inch Simmons. And Malik wants more power, as any man would.

“For the first few weeks it was hard to drive with that much power, but now I’m used to it and I want more.” The plan calls for more cubes and cooler air – meaning a long-arm Harrop 5.7-litre stroker crank and an intercooler to dose down intake temps. That should guarantee pumping more juice to the jack-end, which already turns a hard-going 3.89:1 ratio.

First stage entailed plopping a Centrifugal Air Pumps Australia (CAPA) centrifugal supercharger blowing 8psi to an internally standard 304ci injected V8. The exhaust starts with a set of 1¾-inch Pacemaker extractors and breathes into two cat converters and a three-inch mandrel-bent system. A set of high-flow Bosch Ford Motorsport fuel injectors replaces the standard squirters. The next step to 260kW required rethinking the cam timing. Malik did this with a roller Crane 284 grind with Yella Terra roller rockers. Remarkably, the pistons are standard.

Anyone who has seen the Summernats Horsepower Heroes competition would know that wringing 260kW from a 304ci V8 is not easy, but it’s not impossible either. However, Malik is now talking about 300kW at the wheels. With the cube increase to around 350 and the intercooler, tougher pots, more boost and further tweaking of the Delco EFI, it shouldn’t be hard.

Meanwhile, the Commodore’s sometimes-fragile TH700 four-speed automatic transmission has had its guts reworked to reliably take the punch from the flexplate. Transtec Automotives did the work.

Before Malik turned to P.I. work, he handled a different type of gun as a professional panel beater and painter. “I had to give it away after almost eight years because the fumes were affecting my health,” he said. “I still do the occasional job for my mates and for myself. I did the VP.” By the way, the Lin-a-mint is the old LC Torana mint tint.

Ground control is done with a set of Kings springs front and rear with Monroe shocks. Front brakes are now the larger VT discs and calipers while the rears stay standard VP discs.

The last piece to converting a humble VP (it was originally fitted with a 3.8-litre V6!) is a complete HSV interior. On those long stakeouts, Malik’s careful not to get doughnut crumbs on the seats.

WINGS AND THINGS

Of all the bodykits bolted to Commodores in the dying days of the ’8Os, the HDT Aero kit has to be one of the best-looking. The aerodynamic jellybean styling of the new 1988 VN Commodore polarised opinion with its knock-kneed stance (especially from the front), questionably tall ride height and wheel covers that made the volume-selling Executive model’s 15-inch rolling stock look even smaller than it really was. But HDT’s VN Aero styling efforts proved how tough the new aero VN could look. New front and rear bumpers, a bootlid décor panel which relocated the rear number plate and the smooth side panelling was light years ahead in style compared to the then-new HSV’s early offerings. Lowered over larger wheels, the HDT version had a hunkered-down appearance that made the sorta-wimpy VN look a lot more athletic. Looks great in green, doesn’t it? It could be argued that it took HSV more than three years to catch up style-wise to the benchmark VN HDT effort, with a smooth, refined, integrated look being introduced with the VP-series SV91 and Senator.

Malik Hatibovich
VP Commodore Berlina