The combination of a few hard bevvies on a school night and trawling the internet for project cars rarely turns out well. With alcohol quelling our inhibitions, most of us turn into Richard Rawlings from Gas Monkey Garage and spend money we don’t have, lowballing innocent sellers. Fortunately for Ricky Toms, his ‘refreshed’ impulse buy turned out a lot better than most.

First published in the January 2026 issue of Street Machine

“I’d had a few beers and woke up the next morning to find out I was the proud owner of a VH SL/X. What’s more, I had to get myself to Shepparton in Victoria to pick it up,” chuckles the Canberra-based revhead.

Tough Holdens are something of a fixture in Ricky’s automotive history, having owned a VH SL/E as his first car. “I’d also owned a VH SS, and an HQ SS that I’d sold for very little money,” he sighs. But during the five-and-a-half-hour journey home, he became fond of his latest purchase.

“It was already black, with an ugly red bonnet scoop and a six-point rollcage that looked like it would have skewered you like a kebab in an accident,” he laughs. “It had an HQ 308 in it with a Supra five-speed. It reminded me a lot of my HQ SS, because it made really good noises, but it was so slow!”

Naturally, Ricky quickly grew tired of the VH’s meagre performance and started thinking about upgrades. The initial plan was to give the car a quick tidy-up and turn it into a Sunday cruiser for the family. For the first few years, he tinkered with the 308, then gave the interior and exterior a freshen-up.

“I’d always wanted to do a Group 3 tribute. I didn’t just want to do another red or white one, though, so we kept it black,” Ricky explains of the choice to give the car an HDT-inspired makeover. It still wears that paint to this day.

The worked 308 gave way to a 355, which soon found itself wearing a Vortech supercharger. With a COME Racing manifold and on E85, the blown stroker made 655hp, which would have woken the VH up nicely.

“It was a little weapon, but the crank developed a little bit of movement, and a local shop convinced me to buy an LS3. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have just fixed the 355!” Ricky laments. “The LS3 ended up being hurt; it was a costly mistake.

“I was on the verge of selling the car until I rang Paul at ProFlo Performance. I knew he never took on projects halfway through, but he reached out to a few of his Canberra customers, who assured him that I’d had a bad run of luck.”

Ricky delivered Paul the VH as a rolling shell, along with a heap of bits. The turbocharged LS3 prepared by the previous workshop looked salvageable, so the ProFlo crew got it assembled and singing to the tune of 750hp. But the Gods of Mechanical Reliability still weren’t appeased and decided to take this engine combo as an offering, so it was back to square one for Ricky.

“We decided to start with a clean slate and change everything from the radiator back,” he says. “After so many different engine combinations, I was sick of doing things several times. I told Paul to build me a 1000hp street car.”

Unsurprisingly, the ProFlo crew delivered.

The engine is now a cast-iron LQ9 bumped out to 403 cubes. Some tickled LS3 heads and a custom cam were fitted up, but the VH leaves the heavy lifting up to the GTX42 turbo.

In this guise, again on E85 and with the right numbers punched into the Haltech, the VH spat back a reading of 956hp, and Ricky took it home to terrorise Canberra streets. “We took it to Summernats 34 just after COVID with this set-up, and ended up winning the Forced Induction V8 class on the dyno!” he beams.

Despite that hard-won success, it wasn’t long before Ricky got the itch to tinker with the VH one more time. “I’d had the Weld Magnum wheels for a few years, and finally got the ProFlo crew to cut the whole back of the car out, tub it and fit a four-link,” he explains. The aforementioned 275-shod rear Welds swing from a very solid, Heim-jointed four-link cradling a nine-inch. Slung low, the VH has a truly menacing aesthetic.

The final piece of the puzzle was revisiting Ricky’s 1000hp goal. “I know it’s only a number, but I really wanted it,” he admits. “I was chatting with Paul and Sam from ProFlo; we knew the turbo was maxed out, so we entertained upgrading it, but in the end, a 100hp shot of nitrous got us the magic number!”

The VH is now a fixture at local shows and can often be found cruising Canberra streets, because as Ricky puts it, “if you can’t drive them on a regular basis, what’s the point?”

RICKY TOMS
1982 HOLDEN VH COMMODORE

THANKS
ProFlo Performance; Just Engine Management; Trims By Shaun.