Throwing a rambunctious classic car around corners is a world of fun, as James Feros well knows. His HK Kingswood looks like a neat survivor, but it packs a Harrop-blown Holden 304, lots of cornering mods, big brakes, and bulk smarts.

First published in the November 2024 issue of Street Machine

You may think such a project would come from meticulous planning, but James didn’t intend to go quite so far when he started out.

“I bought the HK in Tassie about 15 years ago,” he says. “I’d had a little browse on Gumtree, and the next minute my girlfriend Rochelle and I were on our way to Tassie to view this car. It presented as it did in the photos – super straight and honest; an original-paint, two-owner car. We exchanged $4000 cash for the keys and were on our way.”

For the first 12 months, James kept the Holden pretty much as he’d bought it. “Then I decided to stick a 308 in it and got a donor VR Commodore Executive sedan with a factory 304 V8 and five-speed,” he says. “I dumped that driveline in the car, and it stayed like that until 2020, when COVID hit.”

Living in Melbourne at the time, James was fortunate to be an essential worker able to escape the lockdowns. “I had a factory I was legally allowed to go to, and it had a fresh car hoist I’d purchased and installed,” he explains. “This is when I went into full build mode and 3D-modelled, designed, and fabricated most of the parts you see on the car.”

James’s initial plan was to bolt a dirty old supercharger to the unmodified, 300,000km 304 and see how much power he could get out of it until it went bang. “One day, it got a bit ugly going around a corner, and I thought, ‘Bugger this – I’m not adding any more power to this thing until I’ve done something about the steering,’” he says. “It snowballed from there.”

James got in touch with Ryan Carter at United Speed Shop in Newcastle for a shortened version of United’s Magnum independent front end. This included the tube control arms, double-adjustable QA1 coil-over struts, 25mm blade-end sway-bar, power rack-and-pinion steering and an improved crossmember design.

HK-T-G Holdens were never known for their chassis rigidity, so James slapped a set of full-length chassis rails under the Pyrmont Green more-door. These link to a custom parallel four-link rear end with a shortened VR Commodore BorgWarner diff and Panhard rod, with Viking double-adjustable coil-overs replacing the stock leaf springs.

All that chassis work was needed thanks to the 443rwhp Holden 304ci V8 up front, which James built himself at home using Chevy hypereutectic slugs, stock crank and rods, and the biggest flat-tappet bumpstick that Crow Cams sold.

“I built a clean room that had positive-pressure airflow that I made from a computer fan and a pod filter, and that’s where I built the engine,” James says.

After purchasing a second-hand Harrop HTV1900 supercharger, James cut up the stock bunch-of-bananas intake manifold to fit the blower system, which includes a water-to-air intercooler and twin 304ci 65mm throttlebodies bolted to the blower for quicker throttle response. He then turned up his own pulleys to overspin the blower so it could deliver up to 16psi at 6000rpm.

The blown 304 is backed up by the VR’s BorgWarner T5 with a custom NPC clutch. The third member is the Borgy BTR78 diff, shortened and fitted with a Truetrac LSD. Despite it not being the strongest diff out there, James says it’s actually the clutch that’s the driveline’s weak spot.

“I’m onto my third clutch since the lockdowns, but I feel I would definitely blow either the gearbox or diff if it were any stronger,” he says.

With James building the HK in a very different style to a classic restoration or traditional, drag-oriented street machine, the Kinger draws a fair amount of attention from passers-by. “When I take the car out, I get a lot of comments,” he laughs. “On a few occasions, a random will look around the car and say, ‘You should keep it all-original, mate; they’re worth more.’ But I’ve built this car for no one else but me, and I’m not looking to ever sell. These cars suck from factory and are horrible to drive when stock; they look cool and that’s it. The challenge for me was to make it something that it’s not.”

A corner-carving HK sedan with a supercharged Iron Lion might not be what most people would build, but you can’t deny that James hasn’t knocked it out of the park with his sedan. “My inspirations for the build were physics, dynamics and engineering,” he says. “That’s why I like cars; there’s nearly every engineering feat wrapped up in one little package. I also like going around corners fast, so I’m keen to hit the track – perhaps at the Optima Challenge!”

JAMES FEROS
1968 HOLDEN HK KINGSWOOD

THANKS
The Engine Reviver, Epping; Electronic Automotive, Epping; Sam at Auto Image Interiors; my good mates Richie Brownlee, Jason and Richie Roberts; last but certainly not least, the lovely Rochelle.

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