The best-laid plans often go awry. Just ask Jim McLaren, who had grand aspirations to bring his genuine 308 Monaro GTS back to factory spec. “The HQ coupe was white with a black interior and a 308 when I bought it,” Jim says. “The engine was from a WB Holden, but it came with a spare block that the seller said was the original.” 

First published in the October 2026 issue of Street Machine

It was only after Jim laid his money down that he did a quick Google search and found out what he’d been told was all sorts of wrong. “The spare block wasn’t original to the car, and although it was a Melbourne-built, factory 308/Trimatic, it was supposed to be gold with a tan interior,” he says.

With his dream of a straight resto gone, Jim decided that his new acquisition may as well have some more power. “Believe it or not, I paid $1000 for an old LandCruiser with a 350ci Chev in it and got to work transplanting the V8 in my mate’s shed.” With about 350 horses on tap, Jim turned the Monaro into a nice, driveable car, and that’s the way it stayed until 2019. “I parked her up, as we decided to do some travelling around Australia, but that plan didn’t work out either,” he laughs. We all know what went down early the following year.

After things began to settle down pandemic-wise, Jim wanted to give the Monaro a birthday. “All it needed was a quick paintjob and 100 more horses,” he says. “I wasn’t aiming for a show car.” While he’s a handy guy and pretty good at fettling, Jim admits he’s better at roofing than restos. Fortunately, a chance meeting with Anton Duval – a mate of a mate – soon saw Jim trucking the Monaro to Anton’s business, Muscle Car Restorations (MCR) on the Gold Coast.

“Anton sent the car for sandblasting, and had the engine assessed,” Jim says. “And the news was all bad.”

It turned out that the body had taken a fair pummelling, and anything that wasn’t a dent was a hole. “It was pretty tragic,” Jim says. “It really was a testament to what people could cover over with a tub of bog back in the day.” The engine wasn’t any better, with metal shavings evident in the sump. 

Happily, the workshop-client relationship soon transformed into genuine friendship between Anton and Jim, with the pair spending a fair bit of time discussing the options. “Oh, we had countless beers,” Jim smiles. “And it was probably amongst those beers that I thought an LSA would be a good idea.”

Rather than working the old-school Chev, Jim figured that a road-ready, factory-blown LSA was an easier path to cheap horsepower. “And I already had it lying around,” he says.

You see, Jim had bought a 2019 Colorado for that round-Australia trip that COVID cancelled, and had straight away swapped its turbo-diesel for the blown Gen IV LS. So, the LSA was duly liberated from the dual-cab and given a freshen-up by Jamie at NME Motorsport for duty in the Quey. 

“Seeing as I was going with a new-school powerplant, I picked Anton’s brain as to how we could modernise the Monaro,” Jim says. “We’d brainstorm this stuff well into the night, and then Anton would race to the workshop the next day and work out how to do it, usually with very minimal sleep.”

Sleep must be for the weak, because plenty of the ideas discussed by Jim and Anton made it into the Monaro now known as ENVIE. The body mods are seemingly endless, and the more you look, the more you see.

Some are relatively straightforward, such as the one-piece nosecone that deletes the join between the guards and the nose. The narrowed front bar that’s now tucked closer to the body is another. The custom door handles are a nice touch; they’re shaped to match the original HQ items, yet sit perfectly flush with the body. “The actuation of the latch is opposite to anything we found available, so the MCR crew designed and engineered it all themselves,” Jim explains.

But there’s one major modification that is utterly mind-blowing. Jim calls it ‘trim delete’, but that is too modest a label to adequately describe the work that went into it. For the down-low on what did go into deleting the window trim and rubbers, we had to go to Anton directly. 

“I’d never seen this sort of thing done before,” Anton says. “We wanted the windows to bond to the shell rather than be held in with a seal.” Anton suggested to Jim that they extend the body to meet the glass. “It was probably a crazy idea, as it was a more mammoth task than we thought,” Anton smiles wryly. Not only did it require Anton and the MCR team to build up a double-skinned, 25mm reveal for the front and rear screens to mount to, but they also had to create the A-pillars from scratch. “That was a mission,” Anton admits.

Not half as much of a mission as the mods done to the plenum. “The chamber had to be lifted 20mm and extended back to the glass another 15mm,” Anton explains. “If we’d just ramped the plenum up, it would have looked weird.” Naturally, the height of the guards was adjusted to suit – that’s a lot of work. 

Although the screens aren’t custom, there was plenty of work required to bring them into line with MCR’s perfect bodywork. “We spent a lot of hours blocking the edges to shape them and get them symmetrically right – they’re never finished perfectly from new,” explains Anton, who notes that they can vary as much as 10mm from side to side.

It’s this attention to detail that was Anton’s undoing one fine day. “I’d spent hours on the first rear window, had masked the inside and blacked out the outer edge – like a modern car that hides where it’s glued. Then I set it into the body and was 99 per cent happy.” But Anton wasn’t 100 per cent happy, so he used a wedge to shift the window north about a quarter of a millimetre before the glue bonded properly. “Apparently it had bonded quite enough – the window broke, and I had some cleaning up to do,” he laughs. “I had to start all over again on a new window.”

Fortunately for Anton, Jim’s no better when it comes to avoiding mess. “I really put the car through its paces on our way back from Summernats – I took it to the Warwick drags,” he says. Jim’s enthusiasm exposed ENVIE to the indignity of a few stone chips and a coating of rubber in the wheelwells. “I thought I’d better see what it would do down the quarter, and did a 10.7. It’s got a low 10 in it, but we should probably put some PPF wrap on it before the next run,” he says. “Still, it’s nothing a few touch-ups and a cut-and-polish won’t fix.” 

Jim’s attitude makes sense. After all, he never wanted a show car; he wanted a driver, and despite the HQ’s trick body mods and endless paint, not to mention the elite trophies it’s received – including the Red CentreNATS 11 Champion award, no less – that’s exactly what he’s got.  

JIM McLAREN
1971 HOLDEN HQ MONARO GTS

THANKS
Anton, Tan and Alyssa Duval and the rest of the MCR crew: Braden, Michael, Scott, Simon, and Scott Barlow the auto electrician; Jamie at NME Motorsport; Steve at Heddlespec Specialised Transport Services; Damian Caniglia Photography; Fossil Fuelers Car Club; Ben at M1 Tuning; my wife Mel and daughter Neave; all my friends and family for following the build