Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse Young SMOTY second runner-up: Anthony Crouch's XP Falcon ute

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In third place for YSMOTY 2026 is Anthony Crouch from Gatton, Queensland, with his loud-and-low XP Ford Falcon ute. What makes his achievement all the more impressive is that Anthony has zero social media presence – which is usually a vital part of securing enough votes to score a podium place. But nope, Anthony did it old-school, even deleting Instagram earlier this year in order to remove the distraction from his car-building activities!

The ute was built the way most cars were back in the 80s, with Anthony and his partner Alex doing 95 per cent of the work themselves in their home shed. And yep, the shed is chock-full of Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse goodies already!

I’ve had it for four years, and at first, I put a set of mini-tubs in it on leaf springs, but it wasn’t low enough for me. So, I spent some time thinking about how to do it and collecting parts. Then 19 weeks before Summernats 38, Alex and I hooked in – while still doing our day jobs!

Well done finishing on the YSMOTY podium, Anthony! We hear the XP was built in a bit of a rush?

You and Alex did just about all the work on the car, yeah?

The only things we outsourced was the C4, the trim and the tailshaft. We did literally everything else, including building the engine, panel and paint, and everything in between.

What state was the XP in when you got it?

It was a rough farm car. We replaced the doors and the bonnet, and I reskinned the tailgate.

How did you get the stance you were after?

I cut the whole back out and made up a rear clip around McDonald Brothers rails. There’s a parallel four-link – no airbags.

So how was Summernats?

It was awesome! It was our first time there as entrants. We just made it – Alex towed it all the way because I was so knackered. At that stage, the car had a tunnel ram on it and it was getting pretty hot – I’d only had time to drive it up and down our street before we left! So, we caught a tram from our hotel to Summernats, picked up a better thermo fan from the Davies Craig stand, took it back and fitted it at the hotel.

That got it good enough that we could do a couple of laps, and then we parked it up on the oval. It was the best weekend; we spent so much time talking to people who loved the car.

She’s running pretty good now!

Yep. I took the tunnel ram off. It looked amazing, but I couldn’t get my head around tuning the car with it on. So, I put a single carb on it, and it ran 11.4 seconds at Willowbank. I was pretty happy with that.