THE burnout game has gone to another level in recent years, with competitors spending bulk dollars to turn their rides into mega horsepower tyre-destroyers. While this is all well good, Mark Ansaldi and his humble XF Falcon ute prove that you don’t need a house deposit’s worth of cash to have fun on the pad and be successful.

Stuffed into the snout of his skid machine is an LPG version of Ford’s Barra straight six, just like we run in Turbo Taxi. The difference is Mark’s donk doesn’t call upon either a turbo or supercharger to get it going like most burnout cars. Instead, he’s gone the normally aspirated route, using a ported and polished head with a pair of custom cams and an FG turbo intake and throttle body to get the job done; while hanging off the side of the mill is a set of Pacemaker Competition extractors. With a Haltech ECU and E85 feeding the mill, the package is good for 300rwhp, screaming to 7000rpm – and 245km/h of wheel -speed.

The gearbox is still a standard XF three-speed auto, and the rear end is its own unique affair. Being a boilermaker by trade, Mark fabbed up his own four-link Borg Warner rear end. It measures just 850mm wide from axle to axle. With a bunch of fine tuning to the set-up he’s got the rears letting go within five seconds of each other.

The ute has already racked up a bunch of tinware for the trophy cabinet, including first place wins at both Springnats and Summernats in the six-cylinder classes.

The car will have its final naturally aspirated outing at the Avalon $5K Burnout Competition this weekend, where Mark has auctioned off a ride in the ute to raise funds to support the family of the late Sarina Mitchell.

With that job done, Mark plans on throwing it in the shed for a few months to stick a 4-71 supercharger on the side of the Barra. “The plan is to make double the horsepower at the wheels and try and get over 300km/h of wheel speed out of it,” says Mark.