STREET Machine celebrated its 30th birthday at Meguiar’s MotorEx, held at Sydney Olympic Park last weekend. At our big stand we had eight awesome cars from the mag’s past and present including Howard Bell’s LITRE8 Torana, Gary Myers’s GM176 Mustang and Brian Willis’s HK Monaro.

On the Saturday night, Motoractive hosted the Street Machine Respect Awards, where editor Geoff Seddon presented four gongs, starting with Adam Le Brese’s trophy for the Ultimate Street Machine of All Time, as voted by the readers.

The other awards went to people who have made major contributions to our sport and the magazine, starting with the Mr Street Machine award. “We looked for an individual who encompassed what we were all about, someone whose example stands for so much of what we are and what we do,” said Seddon in presenting the award to Gary Myers.

The second award was named in tribute to the late Milton Adey, who passed away last year, and was presented to who we thought, like Milton, “made an important contribution behind the scenes, leading by example, serving on committees, helping out there mates.

“This time we really did have hundreds of worthy candidates to consider, but there’s only room for one name on the trophy,” said Seddon, before handing the award to Pro Street racer Mark Hayes.

The final award was for the Most Valuable Contributor to the magazine, which was awarded to long-time Street Machine photographer, Peter Bateman. The awards they received were crafted by Damien Lowe of Lowe Fabrications, who must have felt the pressure of creating high-quality trophies for some of the country’s best car builders, but he came through with four pieces so cool that we were reluctant to give them away.