The best contemporary street machines have plenty of horsepower, a slammed stance, neat trim, fresh paint and panel, and improved chassis manners.

First published in the March 2025 issue of Street Machine

Aussie and US muscle cars have long been street machining staples, but the ever-rising cost of buying one has seen many revheads look further afield. That might partly explain why full-size American pick-up builds have boomed in popularity. They’re widely available, cheap, and served by an enormous aftermarket that can see them lifted into monster trucks, restored to stock, or slammed into a pro tourer such as Wayne Lineker’s 1968 Chevy C10.

We featured the truck as a rolling chassis back in our July 2018 issue, but it took Wayne another couple of years to get it all sewn up. “It was originally meant to be a patina cruiser, but it got out of control and is probably too nice to drive regularly now,” he says.

Wayne caught the bug for these trucks after spying Del Uschenko’s Delmospeed builds on C10 internet forums. Keen to build a similarly styled Yankee truck of his own, he came across a rough-and-ready C10 that had already lived a heck of a life.

“I bought it off eBay after Jesse from Level 7 Motorsports had pulled it out of a paddock, thrown a 5.3 LS in it, and driven it on the Hot Rod Power Tour,” he says. “They had done plenty of work on it, but some things were too far gone for it to be a nice cruiser for my tastes. It had sat nose-down in a ditch for years, so the radiator support panel, the bottom of the doors and the front guards were all gone.”

Wayne tore the truck down to its bare frame, chopped out the industrial-grade, load-rated suspension, and replaced it with some top-shelf hardware from Porterbuilt Fabrication (PB Fab), makers of a huge range of aftermarket gear for US trucks (read more below). Wayne opted for PB Fab’s Level 3 Dropmember front and rear modular suspension kits for his truck. Initially, he wanted to be able to run airbags for cruising but with the option of switching to coil-overs if he wanted to go racing, so he had PB Fab set up the kits to take both. Eventually, however, he found coil-overs to be a much simpler solution, so QA1 items now live front and rear.

“I learned a lot during the build and how I’d do things differently,” he says. “I had never built a car from the ground up when I started the C10, and I did a lot of it myself in the shed.”

The chassis upgrades were needed because Wayne had no intention of keeping the little 5.3L. Instead, he’s positioned a factory-supercharged, 6.2-litre Gen IV LSA between the rails, along with a bunch of mods to improve its breathing.

“The LSA and six-speed came up brand new at a good price from a Holden dealer,” says Wayne, who worked at GM Motorsport at the time. “We were doing a lot of VF HSV GTS packages in those days, so it was easy to do head studs, a pair of our CNC heads, stick an upgraded cam in, and add underdrive pulleys for some more boost. We built it like it was being specced to make 800hp.”

While plenty of US trucks run LS donks, Wayne had to add a 40mm gusset to the LSA sump to clear the PB Fab front end. Down the back, he specced out a custom fuel tank to house a VF GTS/Camaro ZL1 fuel pump assembly.

“I wanted to do the mechanical package like it’s a VF GTS so I knew everything would fit and work like a factory car,” he explains. “This is why we used the twin GTS pumps, plus the VF GTS thermo fans and controller. Unfortunately, the radiator was too wide to fit in the front end.”

Matching the late-model theme, a brand-new 6L90E six-speed auto sits behind the LSA. “I’ve got the Lokar sports shifter for it, so it does have the tap-up and tap-down for sports shifting,” Wayne says.

The finished truck debuted at Street Machine Summernats 33 in 2020, where it took home a bunch of awards in the Street class, including Top Retrotech, Outstanding Engineering, and a Top 60 Street. Since then, Wayne says the public’s reaction to the C10 has been overwhelmingly positive. “The amount of people taking photos, giving the thumbs-up to you at the lights – it’s just awesome,” he says.

Wayne is keeping the kays down on the truck while it’s still in a show-fresh state, but he has some other irons in the fire. “I’ve got a few other cars to build, and these will definitely be drivers,” he says. With his eye for detail evident in this amazing C10, we can’t wait to see what Wayne comes up with next.

FRAME JOB

While Arizona’s Porterbuilt Fabrication offers full rolling chassis packages for Chevy pick-ups, Wayne opted for the company’s bolt-in Level 3 Dropmember chassis upgrade kit, which allows the C10’s original C-section rails to be retained – an important consideration that can make the difference between getting rego and having an expensive shed ornament.

PB Fab’s front Dropmember comes with new control arms and drop spindles to improve front-end geometry, and the CPP Mustang steering rack gets rid of the sloppy factory steering box.

Wayne paired that with PB Fab’s matching Level 3 rear Dropmember kit, with airbag mounts on the trailing arms for improved articulation.

Finally, PB Fab’s central chassis stiffening kit allowed Wayne to firm up the old truck’s guts.

WAYNE LINEKER
1968 CHEVROLET C10

THANKS
The teams at GM Motorsport and VPW; Jesse at Level 7 Motorsports; Manny at The Trim Shop; Christian at Classic Fab & Finish; Leigh at Pro Street Development; Justin at Ultimate Conversion Wiring; last but not least, my lovely wife for her support.