Video: Tony & Rex Webster interview

NSW hot rodder and customiser Michael Morris is one of those guys who just does a lot for the car community. He’s the guy behind a bunch of great grassroots events, including the regular Donut Derelicts Australia meets on the NSW Central Coast, the Taildragger Kustom Invitational and the Test Run.

He’s also started a great series of videos interviewing some of the icons of our sport. His latest effort is an interview with Tony and Rex Webster. The brothers are most famous for their work on Rex’s iconic FJ Holden, but their larger history with cars is an awesome one.

The brothers got their start in the car scene with drag racing and they take us through their very early days, with some vision of the cool FJ in its earliest days – and Tony’s EK that originally ran the FJ’s famous 186.

The boys got out of racing, with Rex taking the FJ and Tony taking the Capri. They also started their Webster Brothers Classic Body Works shop. The guys built a number of award winning cars for customers and Tony’s highly-successful Model A roadster, the Black Bitch.

We then hear about how and why the FJ was taken from a race car to an internationally successful show car. Rex takes us through the FJ’s history on the show scene in Australia, including some wild tales of the Zombie – a V8 powered, six-wheel Kombi that the boys used as a tow vehicle – blowing VW gearboxes at a frightening rate. The brothers were literally using every last cent to take on the show scene: “We were broke,” says Tony. “We were living on what we were trying to win. We couldn’t afford accommodation.”

The FJ was taken to every major show in Australia in twelve months, including being driven to the first Street Machine Summernats, where it won Top Judged.

Rex then takes us through his incredible adventure in showing the FJ in the USA, getting work at the legendary Fat Jacks to pay the bills, making enemies with the local street machine big guns and getting invited around to Ed Roth’s house for dinner!

Meanwhile Tony was building his Pro Street 1932 three-window. “I cut one of my fingers off and couldn’t work for a while,” says Tony. ” So I bogged up the entire inside of the car. Had 40 litres of paint on it!

“I bought blown Hemi to start with from Gentleman Jim Reed, but I couldn’t make a gearbox fit inside the car. So I put a blown small block in it. It was the first car I actually won any money with. Prior to that, the prizes were TVs and washing machines.”

We briefly check out Rex’s Karmann Ghia, his last big car before he got out of cars and into building high-end horse floats for many years.

Tony, however, was addicted to hot rods. He got into the engine machining for many years, but was hot rod-mad the whole time. We check out a stack of his builds, including the incredible banger-powered Model A he build for Alan Hale…

…as well as a heavily chopped and channelled ’30 tudor, a badass 1936 Ford pickup and Tony’s favourite 1930 Deluxe Sedan Delivery. Tony also helped found and run the iconic Mud Run event.

Rex later went full circle and got back into drag racing in a big way, first with a super-ratty one-tonner and then with the ex-Mal Gower Austin. Now that he is moving towards semi-retirement, Rex is looking forward to doing some more travelling for his racing, including to Perth!

And while the FJ was sold in the early 2000s, Rex kept the engine, which he Tony later bought in order to put in a little roadster for his grandson. The famous 186 cried enough at this year’s Rattletrap, windowing the block doing what it was built to do.

And Tony is still building hot rods at a prodigious rate, including his insane, blown Donavon Hemi-powered ’32 coupe that he debuted at this year’s Sydney Rod and Custom Auto Expo.