There’s not much more devastating than crashing a car, especially your dream car, a pride and joy you’ve poured thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into refining.

Such a thing happened to our good mate Matt Barnsley, best known for his work at The Render Garage. He has created countless renderings of high end cars over the years, including plenty of our cover and feature cars (see below) and good mate Heath van der Waerden’s 2024 SMOTY-winning Torana hatch.

Matt himself has a lovely LX hatch, which you no doubt would’ve seen at events like Street Machine Summernats, Meguiar’s MotorEx and others in its HDT-inspired livery. Unfortunately, this is the same car Matt had a very serious off road excursion in whilst on a drive in the slippery and wet Dandenong Ranges on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Thankfully, Matt was unhurt from the incident. The same could not be said of his hatch, and an extensive rebuild has been taking place for the last three years. He plans to debut the car at this year’s Meguiar’s MotorEx on May 2 – 3, so we sent fellow Torana hatch tragic and good mate Heath van der Waerden along to check out the progress on the repairs, and the custom touches Matt is incorporating into this new build.

Matt tells us more from his viewpoint on the rebuild below, including some neat renderings of what the final product should look like once finished.

“The build itself is heading firmly down the pro-touring/restomod path. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from high-end builds I’ve seen at SEMA over the past few years, but I’m applying that thinking to an Aussie icon using modern tools and processes. A big part of the project is the use of 3D scanning, CAD design and 3D printing, alongside traditional metalwork and body repair.

I’ve designed all of the exterior add-ons myself, including the flares, bonnet scoop, front and rear spoilers, plus a fully custom wheel design based on the original SS hubcap – reimagined in 18-inch form and tailored specifically to the car for the big brakes etc.

I’ve also got a few other ideas in the works, including custom lighting and interior touches that should interest a few people as they come to life. That said, the ultimate goal is very much to build a proper driver – something that’ll see plenty of street time, but also be capable at events like Optima-style challenges, track days, motorkhana-type events, and hopefully even Drag Challenge in stick-shift class.

All metalwork and repairs have been handled by Dale Ward from Ward Paint & Fabrication, who’s been the mastermind behind getting the shell straight again after the accident. The smash repairs are now complete, and Dale is close to finishing the remaining rust repairs. The car will be heading into epoxy primer shortly, before moving into filler and final bodywork – all done by Dale, with me jumping in where I can to help with some manual labour.

The suspension and brake setup will be fairly unique in the Torana world as well. I’m running big four-piston Brembos front and rear from a VF2 SSV Redline Commodore, with 362mm rotors up front and 365mm rotors in the rear. There’s a heap of Magnum Suspension gear going in too – upper and lower control arms and trailing arms – along with Shockworks coil-overs up front and rear shocks out back. I’ve also got a neat adjustable rear spring setup so I can fine-tune ride height similar to a rear coil-over arrangement.

I’ve set myself a pretty ambitious deadline, with the aim to debut the car at MotorEx in under five months. There’s still a massive amount to do – interior, suspension, final assembly – but momentum is really building now that the heavy repair work is behind us. Not everything will be completed by MotorEx – the goal is to just get it there looking good! The evolution will continue for a while post MotorEx as well.

I’ve named the car ‘ RSSX’ – a bit of a mix of Resurrection and ‘SS’. ReSSurXion if you get creative with the spelling.”

SPECS

• Engine: Holden 355 – VN heads, carby setup. Built around 15 years ago by Speedworks and still going strong
• Transmission: Tremec TKX 5 Speed Manual
• Diff: Strange 9-inch, 31 spline, 3.89:1 TruTrac
• Suspension: Magnum Suspension upper and lower control arms with Shockworks front coil-overs, Magnum upper and lower trailing arms, custom rear springs with adjustable perches, and Shockworks rear shocks
• Brakes: VF Commodore four-piston Brembos front and rear – 362mm rotors front, 365mm rotors rear
• Wheels: 18×8 front, 18×11 rear
• Tyres: Kenda Vezda Max KR20A – 225/40ZR18 front, 315/30ZR18 rear