Assembling this year’s finalists for Eagle Auto Parts Street Machine of the Year, supported by Enthusiast Motor Insurance, was a truly daunting task. We’ve seen a year-and-a-bit of mind-boggling builds since we handed the legendary trophy to Gary and Jake Myers back in 2023, and shortlisting just 16 finalists involved some tough choices.

We ended up with a super-varied roster that mixed home-built hotties with proven elite-level showstoppers. In the end, you picked Heath van der Waerden’s self-built, LX-converted UC Torana to top them all – and by quite a margin, we might add!

Starting life as a humble ‘Shitbird’ – as the car was known to Heath and his mates – this September 2023 cover hero features an LPG-breathing 383ci Holden mill paired to a TKO manual, backed by plenty of handling-focused custom suspension work. Practicality, reliability and retro cool were key elements of Heath’s brief for the car, and he conceptualised, designed and executed almost every element of the Torry himself – a pretty damn impressive feat for a 32-year-old who doesn’t build cars by day!

Since it broke cover in early 2022, you’d be hard-pressed to visit an event and not find Heath’s hatch there doing its thing – from making the elite hall at Summernats, to sunning itself at Toranafest or World Time Attack Challenge, to circuit work at the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge, Retrospeed and even a Bathurst hillclimb. He’s racked up 30,000km between work commutes, interstate camping trips and good old-fashioned street cruising, with plenty of rorty throttle-slapping, handbrake-pulling fun everywhere he goes.

We gave Heath prior warning that he’d be receiving visitors at his Melbourne workshop on the day of our SMOTY photoshoot, but we neglected to disclose exactly who those visitors would be.

Outgoing champions Gary and Jake Myers made the trip from their Narrandera, NSW home to Melbourne in the latest incarnation of their 2017 SMOTY-winning AGROXA hardtop to present Heath with the legendary SMOTY trophy and a cool $20,000 cheque from Eagle Auto Parts and Enthusiast Motor Insurance. A special delivery indeed!

Congrats, Heath! Talk us through the emotions you felt when you saw Gary and Jake arrive with the trophy.

The Myers XA is so bright and vivid; it blew me away as it cruised up to the door. That was a sight for sore eyes – this big-hitter coming up my shitty little driveway and these motoring superstars jumping out. It was totally intoxicating, and I was joyous as hell! This award means so much to me, and the entrance the guys made was spot-on. I was instantly aware of how much effort had been made, because I knew the Myerses certainly weren’t locals!

What does your Street Machine of the Year win mean to you?

I love hot-car history, and the SMOTY previous winners list is like a chronicle of car building in Australia at the upper echelon. It marks iconic cars’ places in time and gives them a real staying power. I like that so many of them are now symbols of our sport. A lot of the cars that inspired me and are icons of their era are on the trophy. I’m thrilled to now be part of that history.

You were amongst a pretty stacked SMOTY roster, too – cars like the FORGED XY (SM, Oct ’23) and Joe Bauer’s Charger (SM, Mar ’24), for example.

There were some very big-hitter cars, and cars that I knew had had a huge impact and made waves. I was pretty intimidated thinking I might be running against super-elite stuff like FORGED, which is a huge-budget car that made a massive impression on people, and Joe’s very impactful Charger. I didn’t know if I had any chance, really, but I tried to spread the good word and see what happened.

There was a lot of orange and blue across the social feeds for a while there!

Yeah! I’ve never had anything like that happen. I knew I only had one go at it, so I tried to spread the story of the car as best I could with a bit of a call to action. I knew a lot of people connect with this car, but the response from others to just share their enthusiasm about voting was really touching.

We’ve surprised you with Gary and Jake doing the hand-over. It’s cool to see such different SMOTY-winning cars over two years.

It is. The Myers Mustang is a car with a lot of history in our scene, which is something I totally respect and love. I reckon there’s something cool in it being passed on to another car that incorporates tradition but just happens to be a fresh creation. They’ve both got a competition focus and a bit of a classic style rooted in a similar era. They could totally have been parked side-by-side at Summernats in an earlier era!
You poured eight years into building this car in this workshop, and by now a few more years refining it. It’s been in the Summernats elite hall, on the cover of Street Machine, and driven like mad over that time – does this feel like the last piece of the puzzle?

I can’t imagine any other pieces of the puzzle. This kind of recognition is more than I could have ever expected. It’s been amazing to get this level of love and support for the car and realise the impression it has made. I don’t have anything else I’m chasing, aside from regular reliable use and continuing to clock up kays.

To that end, why is it back in bits?

I’m working on the next iteration of the oil control system. It’s not a problem on the street, but during competition work, it’s kept on challenging me. This will be version three of the sump. Again, I’m working on durability so I can thrash the car reliably and explore its full performance.

Do you think that ethos of using the hell out of the car is something that the voters found appealing?
I guess so. It’s probably quite relatable when people tell stories about seeing the car on their morning commute or egging me on to do a burnout outside a Cold Chisel concert!

What are your personal-favourite past SMOTY winners?

Craig Parker’s XY and Ron Barclay’s HQ ute were certainly the most powerful inspirations for me. Colin Townsend’s FJ is another one. In the modern era, the top two would be Jasmine Green’s HiLux and Aaron Gregory’s ’51 Chev ute.

That $20,000 courtesy of Eagle Auto Parts and Enthusiast Motor Insurance is a solid bonus. Have you already spent it in your head?

I didn’t know it was coming, but now it’s going to pay for some of the bills I’ve already accumulated! About half will be spent fixing this motor issue, but for the other half, I don’t really know yet. If I don’t spend it on the Torana, two other projects willing to absorb the funds are my home shed and my 4Runner project – I want to keep progress going with that. It’ll be inspired by the Engineered to Slide HiLux but more street focused and 80s-style.

Anyone you’d like to thank?

Thanks to the many previous SMOTY winners who inspired me on this build like they inspire car builders all over Australia. A big cheers to the #MOOTS (who I’d never even met at the time), who loved and believed in the car and planted the ‘SMOTY 2024’ seed well before anyone knew what cars would even be nominated this year! Plus everyone else who has been enthusiastic about the car and taken it upon themselves to spread the good word. Thanks to Street Machine for keeping this fantastic competition going through the decades, plus Eagle Auto Parts and Enthusiast Motor Insurance for backing it and giving it some huge punch with the super-generous prize money!

Also thanks to Kieran from StreetStatik, who wanted to film and edit some stuff on the car anyway and made a rushed effort to make some videos to coincide with the competition when we found out it had been nominated. Thanks also to friends like Shannon Heraud; Peter, Stew and Ross Perry; The Render Garage; Rod at RodBilt Engines; and BnB Engine Services for help and machine work on the motor.