Personal issues saw the car fall into Darran’s hands, where it was parked up for some years. In between his earthmoving business and playing with several other hot Holdens, Darran finally found time to get it back on the road last year.

This article was first published in the September 2019 issue of Street Machine

The Quey runs a 350 with a 700 double-pumper, ported heads and a solid Crane cam. A 3500rpm stall converter feeds into a shift-kitted T400, through to a nine-inch diff. Plenty of special fabrication was done, including the entire three-inch stainless exhaust and tidy radiator surround. “My mate Darren and his dad took it right down to every nut and bolt themselves and put it back together,” Darran says.

The same Weld Draglites and Yokohama 352 radials have been living under the HQ’s arches since its initial transformation almost 30 years ago. A fibreglass scoop and full custom respray round things out.

There’s just as much crushed velour as you’d expect from a car retrimmed in this era, keeping the early-90s mood alive. Darran gets his feedback via a custom gauge cluster packed with Auto Meter gauges.

He says he doesn’t want to alter anything on the car. “If I go and change one thing, I’d have to change the rest of it,” he says. As they say, if it ain’t broke… To Darran, the Monaro is and always has been a tough weekend cruiser. “Drags aren’t my thing, so I’ve never looked into quarter-mile times,” he says. It’s safe to say, however, that the old Monaro still knows how to get up and shimmy when called upon.

The car is a tribute to its builders – Darran’s mate and his late father. The duo did the bulk of the work themselves, so the car is a testament to their skill almost 30 years later.