Many of us wish we could’ve kept our first car and built it into the dream machine we envisioned as naïve teenagers. We usually end up either crashing or selling them, but Matthew Orsida is an exception. He’s kept the same 1971 Datsun 1200 ute since he was 16, and over time has transformed it into the car you see now.

First published in the November 2024 issue of Street Machine

“It had an A15 engine with twin SU carbs when I bought it,” says Matt. “I rebuilt that engine in school for an automotive project, and me and a mate did all the bodywork and had it painted.”

By the time he got his ticket for the road, Matt realised the wheezy A15 wasn’t going to cut it. “I went on the hunt for a 13B rotary engine and found an aspirated, bridge-ported 13B and installed that,” he says.

“That year, I won the burnout comp at Springnats in the Rotary division – I was the only rotary in it! – and I made the front page of the Shepparton News.”

During all this, Matt befriended Scott Briant, another Shepparton local who loves his old Japanese cars. Scott now works at Southern Rod & Custom, and Matt hit him up to give the ute a birthday. “Originally, it was going to get a Nissan VG30DETT V6, to the point I even had it mounted in the engine bay,” says Scott. “Then an SR20 from a proven eight-second S13 popped up for sale, so Matt bought it and changed to the SR.”

The ute was sent to Sydney, where Advance Motor Mechanics mounted the SR into the 1200, along with the R33 Skyline five-cog manual ’box. They also wired the whole ute from headlight to tail-lamp with MoTeC gear. “There’s so many sensors hiding under that intake manifold,” Scott says. “The MoTeC PDM literally controls the whole car.”

Once back in Shepp, Scott, his boss Shane Rowe and the rest of the Southern Rod & Custom crew tackled what would end up being a roughly three-year build. They took care of all the chassis and bodywork, laid on the beautiful DeBeer Blue Heaven Pearl paint and did the final fit.

Before the paint went on, SR&C went a bit nuts tweaking the body. “All the panels were replaced, including the roof skin,” says Scott. “Because it’s a 1200, most people can’t pick what’s changed, but it’s extensive.”

The body lines around the windscreen were pushed up to delete the factory window mouldings, and the rear window glass is a larger, one-off piece that achieved the same thing. Datsun 1200 nerds will also note that the door quarter windows are gone, which was a big task.

“We had to have the door glass custom made, and it’s actually curved to meet the door frame, so those had to be sent off and made overseas,” Matt says.

That’s not the end of the body mods, either. “The drip rails on the roof are gone, the vents have been deleted from the cowl below the windscreen, and the rear wheelarches are stretched,” Scott explains. “The chrome rear bar is completely custom, because these utes never had one!”

The side mirrors are new, as is the chin lip under the front bar to help hide the Plazmaman intercooler; the grille was extensively modified to further hide the ’cooler, but you’d never know – and that’s the whole idea.

The SR&C team also did their due diligence with engineering throughout the build process, so everything you see here is 100 per cent approved, certified and street-legal in Victoria.

That used SR20 had done plenty of work in its life and sadly didn’t last long, which led Matt to contact Michael ‘Stix’ Kalaitzakis from Quickbitz in Dandenong, who used to own a seven-second SR20 Corolla. “When we saw the quality of the car, I decided to take on the engine build,” says Stix. He ordered a ballsy SR20VE package from Mazworx in Sanford, Florida. Stix immediately pulled it apart and gave it his special touch. “We re-do the tolerances to our liking; we also get fancy with the oiling, and we put the Kelford camshafts in as well,” he says.

The block is still Nissan, housing a Mazworx 91mm billet crank and girdle, Carrillo rods and CP pistons. The bore is now 88mm, combining with the stroke for a capacity just over 2.2 litres.

The SR20VE head was treated to a CNC port job by Mazworx. A VE head optimises the SR20 platform in several ways, as it features shaft-mounted rockers, which cures the SR20’s main shortcoming of dud rockers and shims, and it also has raised ports. As such, a VE head not only minimises the SR’s notorious valvetrain problems, but it also allows the mill to rev well beyond 10,000rpm. “It’s the best thing you can do for an SR20, hands-down,” Stix says.

Matt’s car isn’t meant to be a record-breaker, so it isn’t quite in the five-digit rev bracket, but even capped at 9000rpm, it’s still good for 800hp to the hubs at around 40psi from the PTE6466 turbo. “The turbo is a bit on the smaller side, but that’s all based around street driveability,” says Stix. “So, you won’t get 1000hp, but especially with the manual, it makes it torquey down low and better for what Matt wanted.” The car is flex-tuned on E85 and PULP 98 via the MoTeC M150 ECU.

“It’s a solid package, but because Matt doesn’t want to race it, we’ve kept it pretty tame,” says Stix. “This engine could do 1500hp, but the power it makes in a little 1200 ute is more than enough!”

By all accounts, it’s one hell of a thing to drive. “It’s nuts! I think it weighs around 950kg, so as you can imagine, it’s a bloody weapon,” Matt enthuses. “It still cruises nice, the clutch is super soft, but it’ll light ’em up as soon as you roll into it.”

The ute’s long build process culminated in a grand unveiling at MotorEx 2022 in Melbourne, where the little Datto scored top place for Bodywork in the Street Elite judging. Matt would like to hit Street Machine Summernats with the car eventually, but right now, he’s just enjoying using it. “I built it to drive it,” he says, “and that’s what I do – I drive the hell out of it!”

MATTHEW ORSIDA
1971 DATSUN 1200 UTE

THANKS
Shane Rowe and Scott Briant at Southern Rod & Custom; Craig at Option Auto Interiors; Sam and George at Advance Motor Mechanics; Mazworx; Stix at Quickbitz.