Early Toyota Stouts are pretty cool things, so we were stoked to see Dallas Craig had submitted this fine example for our Readers Rockets section of the mag.

“I built this 1968 Toyota Stout over the past 11 months in my shed, crawling around on the floor with Ryobi tools and using what I’ve got at hand to make it work. It’s had a Holden 202 conversion with a Yella Terra nine-port head topped with triple Weber 45 DCOE carbs,” wrote Dallas.

“That’s backed by a column-shift Toyota Dyna four-speed manual with a Dellow Conversions adapter plate and an Exedy heavy-duty clutch, and the driveline is completed by a 60 Series diff.”

There are so many cool little details on the ute, we gave Dallas a buzz to find out more:

He got it back on the road with the original four-cylinder engine, but that didn’t last very long. “It turns out the rings were well past it,” he says. “It basically had no compression with a lot of blue smoke, and that’s when a friend of mine mentioned he had a Holden 202 that already had a bellhousing on it to suit the Toyota gearbox.”

Re-using the original ‘box not only meant Dallas didn’t have to modify anything from the bellhousing back for the conversion, but he also got to retain the four-speed column shift. “That’s one of the things I love about this car, so I wanted to keep that.”

Fitting the much longer Holden six did come with its challenges, but Dallas persevered: “Getting the radiator in was a challenge, and I had to run an electric water pump because there was no room for the big one these come with,” he says.

The engine wasn’t left as a stocker, either. Dallas didn’t want to set the world on fire, but he did want a bit more poke. “It has a Yella Terra nine-port head, triple Weber 45 DCOE carbs, and a Crow Cams camshaft with 40 thou oversize pistons,” he says. He built the engine himself, only outsourcing the machine work.

He also re-wired the car from scratch, with Deutsch plugs used throughout. The interior has been re-trimmed and retrofitted with boat gauges and an Android Auto touch screen.

Oh yeah, there’s custom airbag suspension in the rear, and it rolls on custom wheels.

“I have no special tools, skills or trade qualifications, but I did everything myself, aside from specialist jobs like the machining and the stainless steel and aluminium fabrication,” says Dallas.

Outside, the patina is all real. Dallas got lucky with the body: “All I had to fix was a bit of the floor pan, which I’m grateful for,” he says. “Like I always say, you can’t un-restore them. I love that it has the original look, because it tells a story.”

The little Stout made noise for the first time just last week, and Dallas is keen to get it back on the road. “I mainly built it as a cruiser for me and my little bloke to hop in, so I’m keen to get it back on the road very soon.”