After nine years, more than 15 project cars, 435 episodes and countless shenanigans, the time has come to wrap up our YouTube build series, Carnage.

The brainchild of Street Machine’s Scott Taylor, Carnage was created to open up Street Machine to a new audience, and boy, did it do that! The channel grew to 177,000 subscribers and the show racked up over 51 million views and 5.6 million hours of watch time – or 639 years!

The show began with nothing but a dream and a worn-out, ex-Melbourne taxi FG Falcon with 576,000km on the clock! The car we now call Turbo Taxi never did run a 10 on LPG, but we got mighty close!

Next came something much more ambitious: a Mazda MX-5 that copped a twin-turbo LS swap in just a few months, before hitting the streets of Alice Springs for Red CentreNATS 3 in 2017. That build was started at All Race Fabrications and finished up at MPW Performance.

The following year, Carnage finally got a workshop to call its own in Dandenong, which allowed us to attack a flurry of new projects, including the ‘Toxic Avenger’ Ford Territory; a $1000 1JZ Volvo that would eventually run eights; and our first chrome-bumper car, a 1963 Dodge Phoenix named ‘Mr Dodgey’.

While drag racing was always the go-to way of testing our builds, Scotty and his co-conspirators also took on a variety of other disciplines, including hillclimbs, land speed racing, drifting, Hyundai Excel racing at Mt Panorama, and the Optima Challenge.

It has been a wild, exhilarating ride, but with our workshop being sold late last year, we decided to call time on Carnage and start making a wider range of video content for you guys.

A shout-out to all our current and past sponsors and supporters, including Kemppi Australia, VPW Australia, Valvoline, Ryobi, Hare & Forbes Machineryhouse, Rustoleum, Tecalemit, Haltech, Turbosmart, GCG, Raceworks, Ford Australia and Grays. Not to mention the workshops that supported us massively over the years, including Maxx Performance, MPW Performance & Race Fab, Dandy Engines, All Race Fabrications, Tunnel Vision Turbocharging, Powerhouse Engines and more. Without these organisations, we wouldn’t have been able to pull this off for nine years.

Thanks also to everyone behind the camera, but especially Matt Hull, Matt Reekie and Kian Heagney.

As for Scotty, he will take a larger role in running Drag Challenge, help us produce our new video content, and get his feet back under the desk as a senior Street Machine journo.

And the last thanks goes to you, the viewers! We loved reading the comments, meeting you all in person at events, and receiving your input into the projects and build series we did. We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we should make videos about next, so drop us a line at [email protected].

1. The 1JZ-powered Trolvo began as a $1000 unfinished project and ended up becoming one of our most violent Carnage cars. The Swedish Taxi later copped a Scotty-built 1.5JZ (2JZ bottom end, 1JZ top) and ran a best of 9.50@141mph.

2. The VS ute we called Grimace started life as a factory V6, but we fitted it with a 427 Dart SHP LS Next from VPW Australia, as well as a bunch of goodies from Proflow, RTS, Proforce and Street Pro, including intake, intercooler, fittings, rims and more. The untested ute finished third in the 8.5 Radial class at Drag Challenge ’24, with a PB of 8.49sec. Since then, it has made 1497hp at the hubs!

3. Once we got bored with our MX-5 in twin-turbo V8 form, Scotty got the bright idea of replacing the V8 with a Barra, and thus, Lightning McBarra was born! The Mazda became the quickest-ever car in the Carnage fleet, running a best of 8.22@174mph, and doing spectacular wheelstands.