Sometimes, our crazy car scene can feel like a pretty small world. For example, not only did Scott Konndouras have a poster of this stunning XC-fronted XB hardtop stuck to his wall some 20 years before he bought it, but it also adorned the front cover of the very first car mag your humble scribe was given as a pimply teenager!

First published in the February 2026 issue of Street Machine

Scott had been looking for a coupe for his brother Brad when he spied this orange monster as a rolling shell on Marketplace. Brad turned it down at the time, but Scott became the interested party when a little digging revealed that this Fairmont hardtop was in fact the ‘Killer Tomata’ – a Super Stock car that was originally raced by Jai and Corrina Schluter for about two decades and had been featured in Street Machine Fords #8. The owner at the time had enjoyed it but had decided to move it on, so after a hurried discussion, a price was agreed upon. “Transferring that much money to someone I didn’t know in another state was really scary,” Scott recalls. “Half an hour later, my brother Rod and I were driving from Victoria to Queensland with a trailer!”

One whirlwind 4000km trip later, the hardtop was in Scott’s shed ready to be treated to a serious rebirth. “It was pretty tidy considering it had a buggered guard from an on-track mishap, and the paint was 20 years old,” he says. Scott and Rod are no strangers to elite-level builds, having turned out some really tasty machinery from their Chief Customs business, including the recently completed resto of Peter Robinson’s ‘Easy Roller’ Bedford (SM, Jun ’25), so they were just the fellas to take the coupe from lifelong race car to suave streeter.

The first job was to tidy up the unfinished boot floor and give the entire underside of the car a coat of stoneguard. Every part of the hardtop except the roof, quarters and doors was stripped, straightened and painted in that retina-searing orange that had earned the car its moniker.

Propping up the bum is a set of Calvert mono-leaf springs, which carry a sheet metal nine-inch filled with a Strange centre and muscular 40-spline axles. AFCO shocks, CalTracs and the original anti-roll bar keep the diff in check when Scott stabs the loud pedal. Up the front is mostly refreshed standard Ford parts, with the addition of RRS reinforced lower arms, Strange shocks and Wilwood four-piston disc brakes.

You can’t drive around in something with this much pedigree and wearing such a radioactive shade of orange without something spicy lurking under the bonnet, but Scott’s choice of propulsion has been known to upset diehard Ford fans. All that shiny black two-pack disguises an angry LS2, courtesy of Steve at MKAL Automotive. A stock 6.0-litre aluminium block envelops a standard crank, K1 H-beam rods and SRP forged pistons, while the bores are capped with a set of Higgins heads. A custom Crow cam operates LS7 lifters, and the lot is crowned by a FAST two-piece poly intake manifold with a whopping great 112mm Nick Williams throttlebody. Hanging off the side of the LS is the party starter: a Vortech V7 centrifugal supercharger that shoves an extra atmosphere of air down the engine’s throat. All that good gear netted Scott a lazy 772hp at the hubs, but that number is set to climb much higher now that he’s sorted a few teething issues.

Scott turned to Paul Rogers for a stout auto to handle all that shove, so a built reverse-pattern TH400 with all the usual goodies inside it got the nod. SDE Converters built a nice little 3800rpm unit to keep the snappy blown mill in check, and a four-inch chrome-moly shaft from GJ Drivelines takes the twist back to the diff.

Inside, the cockpit is far less ostentatious than the exterior, but you can’t go wrong with a swathe of black vinyl in a 70s muscle car. The front buckets are Autotecnica items, but there wasn’t enough room between the tubs to use a standard rear bench. Instead, Scott built a base from timber and cut up a modern Mustang rear seat-back – there are even cup holders on each side! The centre console is also a custom item liberated from a shoebox Chev and modified to fit the hardtop, with room to hold the TCI shifter, Sony head unit and Haltech keypad.

The hardtop had been floating around unfinished for about a year longer than Scott intended, but the boys got it done just in time to show it off at the 2025 Bright Rod Run. Unfortunately, some tragic news threw a spanner in the works. “We were at Bright for a day, and then we got a phone call that my old man was passing away, so we loaded up the cars and drove back home to see him off,” Scott says. “He was the first person I took for a drive in the car, and it was the last time he got to go for a drive. He always had Fords and loved coupes, so that was a pretty cool way to see him off.”

On a happier note, it seems like a passion for two-door Falcons might be hereditary, as Scott’s 18-month-old daughter Harper comes running every time she hears the Killer Tomata fire up!

Tomata Source

This is the second time this XC-fronted XB has graced the pages of a Street Machine publication, the first being way back in 2006, when it was on the cover of Street Machine Fords #8 as Jai and Corrina Schluter’s ‘Killer Tomata’ drag car. But the story doesn’t start there.

It was originally built by Haigh Engineering as a back-up race car for Ford, packing a 351, Top Loader and an aluminium rollcage, and was raced at Surfers Paradise and Willowbank. In the mid-90s, the young Jai and Corrina Schluter wanted to go racing, so they dragged it out from under the house where Jai’s dad had stored it, modified it to suit the Super Stock class regs and campaigned it for the next 20 years.

When we featured the car, it sported a 462ci big-block Ford, C6 auto and ladder bars, but by the time it was sold to Jai’s mate Dave in 2017, it had a 311ci small-block and a five-speed manual. Jai’s PB was 8.55@152mph, and the coupe still holds the H Modified Production class speed record at Sydney Dragway. Scott’s iteration of the hardtop is the first time in the car’s life that it’s ever been registered!

SCOTT KONNDOURAS
1974 FORD XB HARDTOP

THANKS
My brother Rod for endless late nights, hard work, knowledge and especially all the paintwork; Ethan at Kings Motorsport Wiring for a stress-free complete wiring job; Steve at MKAL Automotive for the stout LS2; John at J.R Modifications for making all the plumbing, mounting the remote brake boosters, installing the diff centre and more; Dave Higgins for trimming the seats. and console; Dean G Fabrications for engine and trans mounts, stainless exhaust system, cooler and cooler piping; my late father Peter for his hard work on this build and insults along the way.