At a dozen paces, Steve Moon’s LJ looks like a neat little Torana with a great stance and all the XU-1 trimmings. It’s not until you take a closer look that you begin to appreciate the scope of the fabrication work involved and the exquisite standard to which it’s been finished. Of course, the 1000-plus-horsepower, Harrop-blown LS is something of a highlight, too.

First published in the November 2024 issue of Street Machine

“Growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney, tough cars were everywhere,” says Steve. “I was lucky enough to live over the back fence from a well-known engine builder, Greg ‘Lawsy’ Law, so as a kid I would hang over the fence just watching him build cars. Then, as I got older, it turned into arvos and weekends in the shed with him pulling apart cars and working on them with him. Lawsy was a Torana man, and that’s where I got it from.”

Steve spent his formative years hooning around in a yellow two-door LJ, but he had to put family first and part with it when his daughter came along. Many years later, the opportunity to revisit his youth came along in the form of a green LJ coupe with a 307ci small-block, Trimatic and 10-bolt.

“It was just a nice little cruiser at that stage,” Steve recalls. “My daughter learnt how to drive in it, and after she got her Ps, we decided to send the car off for mini-tubs, a ’cage and a 434ci naturally
aspirated small-block from Warspeed.”

But these projects rarely go entirely to plan, and when the first fabrication shop he enlisted closed down while the Torana was in progress, Steve was left with an unfinished mess on his hands. So, he called in a favour from an old friend and dragged the car to Lawsy’s place, where solid progress was made with the help of buddies Evy and Paul. “Then it got pushed into the corner, where it sat for ages,” he says.

By the time inspiration struck again, Steve had decided to level things up a bit. A chinwag with LS guru Troy Worsley at Warspeed had him sold on a 440ci LS-based combo, packing one of Harrop’s beaut FDFI 2650 supercharger set-ups. With neat packaging, gobs of torque on offer from idle, and an awesome soundtrack to boot, it’s a fine way to make 1000rwhp.

Troy grabbed a Dart block and outfitted it with a Callies crank, Oliver rods and CP pistons, before affixing a set of Higgins LS7 six-bolt cylinder heads. The camshaft is one of Warspeed’s WASP profiles, ground to spec by Kelford. The mill is backed by a transbrake-equipped Turbo 400 with an SDE 4500rpm converter, while the third member is a sheet-metal nine-inch decked out with 35-spline, full-floating axles.

By this point in proceedings, Steve had made the move from Sydney to South East Queensland, so he enlisted a bit of a who’s who of the SEQ scene to help him see the project through to completion at the standard he envisaged.

“The car got pulled down again and sent off to get blasted. It was then sent to Spot On Performance for them to do the fab work,” says Steve. “Andy Coles and the boys basically stripped everything out and started again. Anything they didn’t redo from scratch, they repaired and made right. The list of mods done by Spot On is endless; from the nosecone to the arse-end, everything is custom made.”

He ain’t kidding. The extent and quality of the fab work in the car really does belie its factory muscle car aesthetic. The Spot On lads tubbed the rear to accommodate 28x12in Mickey Thompson rubber on 15x10in Weld V-Series hoops, and knocked up the four-link rear end. The firewall was hacked out of the car to position the motor as low and far back as possible, and the custom replacement firewall and matching squared-off inner guards look superb. The custom airbox and catch can on either side of the bay provide symmetry, and neat touches like the billet K-frame bolt covers and bonnet hinges finish things off.

Once the car had been dummy-assembled, it went to Ricky Fenwick to be wired, and then Spot On pulled it down again to ship it off to paint-and-panel gurus Glenn and Jason Coburn at Exclusive Customs to be made shiny.

“Glenn painted the car in a custom-mix yellow based off the original yellow from my first LJ,” says Steve of the exquisite PPG Envirobase Yellow Moon duco. With XU-1 flutes, spoiler and warpaint applied, the factory muscle car look Steve was hunting has been achieved, but like the rest of the car, the quality is dialled up to 10. “I tried to keep it looking as standard as possible so I could drive it without getting hassled,” he says. “It’s subtle, but it’s a much bigger departure from stock than it first appears.”

Kon from Wollongong Automotive Services hopped on a plane to the Gold Coast to tune the Holley ECU, coaxing an impressive 1043rwhp out of the howling LS on the High-Torque Performance dyno. As you might imagine, that kind of grunt makes the little Torana a fairly spirited performer.

The last piece of the puzzle was the trim, and for that, Chris and Ryan at Trim FX set out to achieve that factory XU-1 vibe, but again, with the quality ratcheted right up. Standard Torana seats were re-covered in Nappa leather, and the dash was also trimmed for a more premium feel. Steve steers with a standard GTR twirler, shifts gears with a B&M shifter, and is relayed information via a neatly integrated Holley EFI display. The six-point rollcage features a removable taxi bar for practicality, because ultimately, the car was made to cruise.

“Yeah, that’s what it’s built for,” Steve confirms. “We’re booked in to do the Harrigans show, and I’ll probably run it down the quarter at some stage just to see what it’ll do, but it’s mostly just a Sunday driver for me, the young bloke and the missus.”

That’s not to say that Steve’s uninterested in drag racing, however. “I’m on the lookout for a ’78 LX hatch to build up into a dedicated drag car – that’s the year I was born. Now that I’ve got a team of guys up here I know I can trust, I’ll just use the same people I used on the LJ and we’ll go again.”

Given how well Steve’s LJ turned out, you can bet the farm that the hatch will be one hell of a race car!

STEVE MOON
1972 HOLDEN LJ TORANA

THANKS
Greg Law; Evy; Troy at Warspeed; Jase, Glenn and Rick at Exclusive Customs; Andy and the Spot On boys; Chris and Ryan at Trim FX; Dal, Kent and Graham at Hi-Torque; Ashleigh Wilson; Kon for flying up from Sydney to tune it.