ANDREW Close’s VTII Berlina wagon must be one of the toughest family trucksters in Australia, if not worldwide. The Melbourne-based lad began by adding nitrous and a tune by Sass Automotive, getting the car down to 11.2s with an otherwise stock LS1 mill.

In that form, the wagon did some serious miles, including family holidays to Cairns, Alice Springs and Perth! He then added an ASE single turbo kit to the mix and got down to 9.5-seconds on the long-suffering LS1. Sass have since come up with a new combo for him consisting of a LQ9 cast iron block, with a Garrett GTX45R turbo, AFR heads, a Crow cam and Holley intake manifold.

On the E85, the car makes in excess of 700kW at the treads! Running through a TH400 ‘auto and an IRS rear, the car has run a best of 9.07-seconds at 159mph. Andrew’s ambition of cracking an eight-second pass in the almost 2000kg street car is oh-so close. And yes, it is still a genuine streeter – one of the few that drove to and from the King of the Streets meeting at Heathcote.