Seriously fast cars with Holden Ecotec V6 powerplants aren’t exactly common on Aussie drag strips – at least when compared to the straight six offerings from Ford, Toyota and Nissan. They do have plenty of potential though – just look at Jim Tatsis’s VT Commodore!

Jim has turned his unassuming V6 VT Commodore into a true street weapon. The car has been on the scene for a number of years now, and was running nines back in 2013 during the early stages of development with a 4.2-litre stroker Ecotec V6 boosted by a Garrett GTX50 turbo. However, it’s taken up until now to crack into the eights.

Last Friday night the full-street-trim VT Commodore ran an 8.79@156mph at Calder Park Raceway, making it one of the quickest street-driven V6 Commodores in Australia – if not the quickest! The engine is still the 4.2-litre stroker with a COME billet crankshaft, CP rods and Diamond pistons put together by Flowcraft Engines, but now has alloy heads and a larger Garrett GTX55 turbo. The Ecotec is backed by a two-speed Powerglide, though it retains the factory independent rear suspension set-up.

On the hub dyno, the car made a touch over 1000hp on around the 36psi mark, with Ben from D’Annello Performance tuning the Wolf V550 ECU – good enough to get the heavyweight VT into the eights!

The only V6 Commodore that we could think of that gets close to this is Craig Wright’s TERAFI twin-turbo VN, which was running high eights a couple of years ago – but not in street trim. George Voutsas’s twin-turbo HSV XU6 is also another quick Ecotec car that springs to mind, but the PB for that car sits at 9.15@147mph.