The debut of Ron Barclay’s Coral HQ ute in 1990 ushered in a new decade for Australian street machining. The elegant simplicity of tweaking and refining a basically standard car was a turning point for our scene – a move towards high-impact builds with the driveability and legality often lost with the pro street style of the 1980s.     

Ron’s grandfather bought the ute new in ’74, before being owned by his father, then eventually on to Ron in 1987, so there was a sentimental attachment already to this project. Ron had priors for clean lines and stepping outside of the square – his LOPREM HQ sedan of the mid-80s featured flawless metallic brown paint and understated refinement in a time of reds, blues and blacks with in-your-face styling.

The build philosophy was simple: take something basic and transform it into something spectacular, with every conceivable or superfluous casting mark, hole and seam deleted and every surface and component then finished to perfection. The use of custom details and parts was present but restrained, while the knock-out Coral hue was chosen to retain the ute’s ‘commercial’ feel.

1990 Street Machine of The Year

Ron beat some very stiff competition to win SMOTY honours in 1990, with Howard Astill’s Rock 3, Rob Beauchamp’s Calais and Alan Fleming’s insane HG Holden panel van in the running – all very popular cars, both then and now.

As the third recipient of Australia’s most prestigious street machining award, Ron’s ute made it three in a row for HQ Holdens, but the car’s execution or design couldn’t be more different to the previous winners. Rather than throwing wild mods and a catalogue full of go-fast gear at his ultra clean hay hauler, Ron focused all his attention on the details.

“Back then I was reading the US mags all the time and watching what guys like Boyd Coddington were doing. So I built the ute like a Coddington car,” Ron says. “But I went a bit different with the colour, the Yanks weren’t even using pastels back then. My mates gave me hell over the Coral colour, but then I cleaned up at Canberra and all of a sudden they didn’t think it was so bad after all.”

Show judges loved the ute because it steered away from the chrome and braid brigade, and the readers loved that it was built on a family-friendly budget. The best way to describe Ron’s ute is minimalist. The chassis, engine, gearbox and diff were all so clean that you’d let your toddlers play with them.

Up front, the 308 was virtually stock, but it was so immaculate that you could have eaten your dinner off it, and then felt guilty afterwards that you’d made the engine dirty. Instead of chrome, Ron used a smattering of satin finished alloy to dress up the engine bay and the interior was even tidier with judicious use of cloth and carpet.

After selling the HQ in 1996 to focus his energies on a ’32 Ford coupe (SM, March 2005), he managed to buy it back in 2011 which is a fitting outcome, as this pairing continue to be the benchmark for this genre of street machine for many years yet. “If you look at show cars now, the ute isn’t that far off the mark,“ he reckons, “The only thing I don’t like about the car now is the brushed aluminium.” Ron is planning to eventually rebuild the ute.

RON BARCLAY
HQ HOLDEN UTILITY