We’ve already featured a couple of Mike Roycroft’s cars in Street Machine, and they’ve all been Chrysler products. As well as the VH Valiant hardtop (SM, Nov ’20) and VJ sedan (SM, May ’23) that appeared in the mag, the Perth local has also owned a bunch of other cars over the years from the Pentastar stable. But for his latest project, Mike was after something a bit different – preferably something that wouldn’t require him searching high and low for parts.

First published in the March 2026 issue of Street Machine

That’s how he ended up with this Sting Red HQ Holden ute in early 2021, after selling his VH hardtop. Not that a Quey was originally what he had in mind: “I initially wanted to build my own car rather than buy somebody else’s build, and I wanted a black HJ ute – definitely not red and definitely not blown, as I wanted to be able to use it and cruise it without fuss,” he explains. “But after looking at lots of overpriced rubbish here in Perth, I wasn’t very impressed with what was on offer.”

Fortunately, George Separovich of Blown Motorsports stepped in. “He knew of this car in Adelaide, and for the price, it was too good to pass up as a turnkey deal – I could be enjoying events in no time,” Mike says. “So, before I knew it, I had sent the coin sight-unseen and the car arrived a week or so later.”

Although a tubbed, blown, methanol-sucking red HQ wasn’t close to what he was looking for, Mike was pretty happy with the ute at first. It was an older build that had been done well, although it looked like it had been through many owners who had added or changed bits and pieces over the years.

“We put it on the rollers with the unknown-spec 383ci small-block, and it rolled off a lazy 660rwhp through those big tyres on George’s conservative roller dyno,” Mike says. “I was pretty disappointed, as the number didn’t really seem that massive, especially in this day and age, but I took it for a drive anyway and was actually very impressed. It sprayed the tyres effortlessly, even at 100km/h. The power band of a blown methanol engine is totally different to other cars, and I’d forgotten that,” says Mike.

At that point, Mike had no real plans to change anything, and spent the next couple of months enjoying cruising it. But one night while he was driving home, the engine suddenly lost oil pressure. “Luckily I switched it off early before any significant damage was caused. I pulled the engine down and found that the oil pump had snapped in half,” he says.

While pulling the motor down to assess the rest of the damage, Mike made a few other discoveries. “The thing ended up being basically a mild aspirated street engine with a blower slapped on,” he says. “From memory, the rods were rated at 450fwhp and it had a $250 cast crank in it – and none of it was balanced. Honestly, I’m surprised it even lasted a day!”

Mike immediately tried to buy another engine combo to get the Quey back on the road, but this was right in the middle of COVID, when it was hard to buy parts and the lead times were huge. However, he did spot something on the other side of the country. “I foolishly bought a unique, screw-blown, twin-sparkplugged SBC from a Top Alcohol race boat from NSW,” he says. “Long story short, the guy stole half the parts off it before he sent it, and when I pulled it down, it turned out all the bearings had been burnt, rattled to bits and torn up. Due to COVID, I was unable to travel interstate to do anything and couldn’t even source the bespoke parts this engine needed to run. Now I had two motors that were basically paperweights, so that was really cool,” says Mike sarcastically.

Keen to salvage some sort of triumph from all that tribulation, Mike and George performed an autopsy on the blown 383 that had come with the car. Using the bits he could salvage from that motor, along with a few parts he was able to muster, Mike managed to screw together a pretty stout combo. “With the help of my mate Gooba, we dropped it in the ute in no time and we were off,” he says. “That got me through almost a year of cruising while I licked my wounds and attempted to sort out the mess of the NSW engine.”

The combo the HQ now runs is essentially half the NSW boat engine with a new top end and a series of other upgrades that George helped with. Mike added a Summers Brothers front drive for the distributor, which has a provision for a mechanical fuel pump just in case Mike ever feels the urge to go injected, as well as plenty of clearance for a huge magneto to go with it. This was necessary due to the Hogan’s sheet-metal blower intake taking up space where the distributor normally would go. “It’s definitely kicked off quite a few conversations at shows, with people asking, ‘What engine is that?’ It kind of looks like an arse-about big-block Chrysler from the front, or some weird AMC engine,” says Mike.

The foundation of the engine is a Dart Little M block with a Crower crank, Carrillo H-beam rods and Venolia pistons, which combine to punch out capacity to 403ci. It is topped with a pair of hand-ported Brodix 11X heads with PAC springs and titanium locks and retainers. “The guys at Performance Modifcations in Osborne Park handled all the machining, including fire-ringing the block,” Mike says. “The plan was for it to be capable of much more power down the track if need be.

“I assembled the whole thing myself under the guidance of George,” he continues. “There were a lot of curveballs due to the nature of this combo, but each time he helped me figure it out, I’d pull it back down, clean the parts and start over. It was very nerve-wracking starting it up for the first time at home, but it ended up laying down a conservative 840rwhp on George’s roller dyno, with that little blower only turning at 10 per cent overdrive.”

Since then, Mike has changed the pulleys to 15 per cent over, which probably equates to more like 900rwhp, but he’s not had the chance to validate that on the dyno. “It makes no difference anyway on the roads, as you can’t use any of it, but it’s way more aggressive and much crisper to drive,” he says.

As you can imagine, a blown small-block on methanol needs a fair bit of fuel to stay happy, so Mike added a 168-litre fuel cell by Glen at Nelg’s Ali Mods. “He’s built every tank or cell for every car I’ve owned, and he’s a magician with a TIG,” Mike enthuses. “The HQ originally had an 80-litre tank under the tray, but that only really equated to about 40-50km total range, and that’s with no heavy footwork – kind of defeats the purpose!”

The rest of the ute is almost unchanged. With a very tidy body already resplendent in Sting Red, there was really nothing else to do besides change the wheels, so the satin Auto Drags that came with the car were swapped out for some rather more menacing-looking Race Stars. “I did like the original retro pro street look of the Center Lines, but I didn’t like to feel I was driving somebody else’s car, so I wanted to change the look in some way,” says Mike of the wheels. “The other notable change was swapping the HQ buckets to some old-school fishnet Recaros. I couldn’t really fit in the car before, as my legs wouldn’t fit under the steering wheel!”

Mike has since moved the ute on, and as we go to print, it has come up for sale again, as the new owner felt it was too nice to do skids with. One thing’s for sure: this HQ ute’s next owner will be getting the keys to one hell of a cool ride.

MIKE ROYCROFT
1973 HQ HOLDEN UTE

THANKS
George Separovich; Terry Napoli; Connor Chiarelli; Michael Giles; Schooch; Gooba; Bundy; Radar.