There aren’t many diesel drinking machines at Street Machine Summernats, let alone under the skin of vehicles like Adam Wood’s 1948 Austin K2 truck.

While she may look like an honest but asthmatically slow girl from the outside, underneath is a very different story. Peep your head inside the interior and you’ll get the first clues, with the steering wheel, centre console and gauge cluster from an Audi A2.

“I wanted to build something I could daily drive, and I really like the pulling power of these Audi diesel engines,” says Adam. “These make 180kW standard, and with the water-to-air intercooler and the DPF delete, it’d be good for 200kW and around 600Nm I think – not bad for a car that weighs around 1400kg.”

The engine is a 3.0-litre V6 from a 2010 Audi A4, as is the 7-speed DSG transmission and diff. Adam carried over the BCMs and tech from the Audi to try and trick it into thinking it’s still an Audi. “There’s been a few bugs, I only finished it a few months ago, but the end goal is a car I can drive every day and get 1000km to a tank.”

Along with the Audi driveline swap, Adam also built a whole new chassis to plop the Austin body on to. The front end is HQ Holden, and the rear is an IRS cradle nicked from a BA Falcon with the Audi diff stuck in it.

Adam originally intended to drive the car over from Western Australia to Canberra for the ‘Nats, but a tight turnaround meant he didn’t have time to get it registered before the event. “Motorvation is on in Perth in just a few weeks, so hopefully we’ll get it legal for that and we’ll cruise it to that,” says Adam.