The overriding premise here assumes you understand the basic rationale behind driving a car for maximum fuel-efficiency: keep the boost down; avoid going full-throttle as often as possible; avoid idling the car for extended periods; try to drive as smoothly as possible; and avoid carrying heavy loads if you don't absolutely need to. 

Here are our 5 fastest, easiest, and most important tips for saving fuel right now when the cost of a litre of bang-juice seems to be worth more than a litre of flurpy tears. 

 1. Scheduling Your Errands

First and foremost - and this shouldn't be a shock - but the more you drive the more you'll use. If you normally have many short trips in the car this will add greatly to your fuel use. Consider parking somewhere central and walking between each stop if possible, or taking a bike in the boot and riding the Deadly Treadly... which is kind of a modern version of Japanese businesspeople riding Motocompos to work after parking their Honda City II.

2. Avoid driving in built-up areas

Fuel economy is badly affected by continual cycles of speeding up and slowing down. Short hop fuel use is especially true if you're doing lots of short trips in built-up areas with traffic and traffic lights to get through. You'll use a lot more fuel there, compared to cruising at a steady speed on a highway. 

If possiible avoid driving into packed urban areas where you'll end up stuck in traffic, or speeding up and slowing down. This is a great time for sitting on FB Marketplace on public transport instead, looking up former magazine cover cars to buy...

3. Spread the load

Diesel is horrendously costly right now, so if you have a car which runs on cheaper petrol and you don't need your diesel vehicle for work, consider swapping the petrol car in for a stint. If that car is also flex-fuel tuned, E10 is a great fuel which is cheaper to buy than diesel of 98-RON Premium Unleaded at the pump, runs 94-RON octane, and still has  10% ethanol for knock-avoidance. It's not the fuel to go setting PBs on the dyno with, but it is a good option for commuters looking to avoid paying up to $3.50/litre for diesel right now.  

4. Check your tune (not just the engine)

If your nugget runs an aftermarket ECU, or an old school thing called a "carburettor", it can pay huge dividends to check it's running as efficiently as possible. Simple checks like having a look at the data-logs (or throwing a wideband gauge into a carburettor car) to not waste fuel by running rich, checking the spark plugs aren't sooted up from too many cold starts, changing the oil, checking the tyre pressures are all even and up to par, and even making sure your wheel alignment is correct can all have a huge effect on fuel economy.

If you can safely do it and you're not heading to the track any time soon, you can also trim a bit of fuel out of the car's tune while you're driving for peak fuel economy, but you're unlikely to save a huge deal of fuel unless your car's set-up was very rich beforehand. 

5. Judicious de-modding

We never like taking mods off our car to put stock parts back on, but there are a few ways to improve fuel economy with a small amount of work. Many of us have daily drivers with mods like roof-top baskets and pods, bullbars and towbars, some have winches, there are people with oversize aftermarket wheels or big off-road tyres, and all of these add significant weight to a car. This leads to a significant parasitic loss to your fuel economy, so looking at heavy parts that are easy to remove and installing stock wheels and tyres in place of heavy aftermarket set-ups can add up to a significant reduction in fuel consumption, saving your hip pocket.

Any valvetrain which relies on using a camshaft to open and close valves has significant drawbacks for all but the most-focused, extreme use operations. Think, particular motorsports where peak power mattes more than any other metric of performance.

"Freevalve" engines are what is the next step in internal combustion engine development. These replace the traditional internal combustion valvetrain using camshafts, rockers, and more with electro-hydraulic-pneumatic actuators to operate each individual valve independently.

Welcome to the future of petrol performance.

As the world chases ever-increasing performance, efficiency, and lower environmental emissions, "cam-less" technology is progressing past a hypothetical science into actual technology used on real cars in the real world. So, how does it work and what are the benefits over using a hawg-ass cam like in your uncle Ferb's Coke can-hopping Camaro?

I'm glad you asked, Pookie (do you mind if I call you Pookie? Thanks, Pooks xoxo)

Camshafts - no matter in overhead-valve (pushrod), SOHC, or DOHC engines - rely on triangular lobes to open and close valves, which means the valves operate on a ramp rate and only achieve full open or fully closed momentarily. With actuators this isn't an issue. They also cause parasitic losses in an engine from resistance from a timing chain or belt dragging on the crankshaft.

Packaging the timing and tensioner systems to control and safeguard the valvetrain is complicted and bulky, whereas cam-less engines don't require any of that as each valve is controlled and timed by an actuator that receives its open/close instructions from an ECU. 

Individually controlling valves as a cam-less engine does, also allows incredibly precise control of ignition timing. You can extract more from each combustion by ensuring the intake and exhaust valves are open or closed for the maxium possible time, which removes issues with camshaft overlap bleeding combustion.

So the volumetric efficiency of an engine is radically improved, as you're burning the dead dinosaurs to perfection each time the spark plug is told to go fknBANG. The Swedish sister company to Koenigsegg, called Freevalve, claim a 14% improvement in fuel efficiency at part-throttle when they tested the tech by re-engineering a conventional port-EFI DOHC 1.6-litre four-cylinder to their Freevalve, cam-less, cylinder head (see here).

Due to having better control over combustion they were able to lift the compression from 9.0:1 to 10.5:1, which assists engine response and the cleanliness of the combustion. The cam-less valvetrain also allowed them to experiment with a divided exhaust manifold, which splits the exhaust entry into the turbocharger for improved scavenging (a critical metric in improving engine performance).

Being able to control individual valve performance also allows the engine to behave like it has a variable compression ratio. Compression can be bled down if combustion temps get too hot, or if there is a different parameter being monitored... like if a flex-fuel sensor starts reading a lot of ethanol in the fuel system the Freevalve engine can push compression up to get the power party started.

This tight control on the intake and exhaust gases meant the turbocharged Freevalve engine wastegate didn't actually require a wastegate as boost could be controlled using exhaust valves. This saves more packaging complications, expense, weight... 

Similarly, using actuators in place of camshafts allowed Freevalve to significantly improve the design of the cylinder head. Valve angle, combustion chamber size and shape, as well as lowering overall engine height by 50mm, shortening length (with no valve-timing system) by 70mm, and simplifying the head casting as no oil galleries were needed any more.

These are huge gains, and the proof of the cam-less tech's power-producing capabilities has been shown by Koenigsegg... as well as enthusiastic home modders like Wesley Kagan who retrofitted Freevalve tech to his NA Miata (MX-5 - see here). 

Koenigsegg's two-litre three-cylinder "Tiny Friendly Giant" Freevalve engine is rated at 600hp (447kW) making it the most powerful three-cylinder engine on the market. Unfortunately, while Koenigsegg announced the TFG was available as an option on their Gemera, low uptake for it led to them cancelling it in 2024.

So, with ECU tech improving to soaring new heights, will we see more home-swappers trying this technology out in the future?

If your only experience with Subarus is via memes, you'll probably think it's pushed a head gasket. However, the reality with turbo Subarus is the design of horizontally-opposed turbo engines means you're FAR more likely to spin a rod or main bearing. Which is only one step down the list of "Terrible Things You Don't Want Happening To Your Engine" from throwing a rod through the block.

But, why? 

First, in defence of the boxer engine layout these engines have a FAR superior centre of gravity to a conventional in-line four. They are also thought to run smoother and no Subaru engine I've been inside of needs balace shafts (you hearing this, Honda K24 fanbois?)

I've had many turbo EJ-powered Subarus over the years, going back to when I first joined the RS Liberty Club in around 2006 and met Marty, Mechanical Stig, and Turbo Yoda (among many other legends). So I've had my share of blown-up Subarus. 

The bearing issue here comes down to a failure of engine geometry, as well as Subaru loading the dice for those of us who like to add boost to our cars like an American adds cheese to any meal. 

The crank and rod bearings of an engine ride on a tiny, thin film of oil, which keeps everything spinning nicely. When that film of oil isn't there the spinning crank or rod (or both) run metal-on-metal and instantly get super-hot. The risk for any engine at this point is the spinning crank or rod will catch an edge of the bearing, spinning it in its shell and quickly leading to it failing completely. 

These are bearings, for reference.

When a bearing spins in a turbo Subaru you are throwing out the crankshaft, as well as the block, as it is uneconomical to fix the wallered-out surfaces where the spun bearings once lived. So, why does this happen?

Part of the issue is the design of the crankshaft and block, and the forces acting upon them. With a horzintally-opposed cylinder layout there is a huge amount of elliptical rotating stress forced through the rod bearings as they cycle through their travel up and down the cylinder.

The width of the bearings you can fit in a Subaru is another issue. Unfortunately the space on the Subaru crank is tight and this limits the surface area you can run in a bearing and a narrow bearing obviously reduces any margin for accepting issues like detonation, momentary oil starvation, or running over temperature.

Subaru engines are famous for being finnicky with oil quality (cleanliness), grade (viscosity), and level (mildly overfill before doing a lap of a track). If you buy a 2nd-hand Subaru or Subaru engine you're always hoping the previous owner didn't miss a service, used good-quality oil, and ideally drove more long-distance trips than short, 5-minute runs to the shops for fresh bubblegum vapes.

Heat cycles affect engines as the alloy heats and cools, as does the oil. And all of this can have an effect on bearing life - it's often easier on a bearing to do 100,000km up an open highway with almost no load compared to 10,000km of fast trips where it barely gets to temp before being shut down.

While it is a hardware issue, tuning can play a part.

With Subaru's love of running a lot of timing in their factory tunes (possibly to help meet emissions standards) adding boost to the combo begins to really ramp up the pressure in each cylinder. And this dramatically increases stress on the bearings in boxer engines. 

When you boost up a Subaru engine you're increasing cylinder pressure with every additional, delicious PSI you screw into that poor four-banger. This is why many wisened Subaru fans won't push a random engine hard without very careful set-up of the engine combo first, and they understand it is on borrowed time. 

These Subaru engines can be incredibly rugged and make great power, however they're unforgiving and don't blindly accept abuse like other Japanese engines of the 90s/00s. 

If you pull the engine down, check the bearings for wear, and go through every component to set it up to handle a big boost combo from the outset you'll have a lot of fun. If you want to slap an 88mm turbo on a wrecker engine, you're best off playing with a different engine platform, champ. 

Stretching back to the early 1960s, the explosion of racing production cars in touring cars, NASCAR, rallying, sports cars, drag racing, and more, occured across the globe. From European circuits to New Zealand rally trails, American speedways and drag strips to Aussie road courses, car manufacturers realised the publicity of winning sporting contests helped raise their profile, which helped sell more cars.

Racing, they realised, was good business. 

Let's take a walk through SOME of homologation's greatest hits: Mini Cooper S, Datsun 1600 SSS, Ford Mustang Boss 302, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R, Subaru WRX STi Type RA, Ford Lotus Cortina, Chevrolet Camaro Z2/8, Lancia Delta Integrale, Nissan Pulsar GTi-R, Plymouth Superbird/Dodge Charger Daytona, Mazda Savannah (RX-3), Ford Sierra Cosworth, Holden Torana A9X, Audi UR Quattro, Ford Falcon GT-HO, Nissan Skyline KPGC10 GT-R, Mazda RX-7 SP, BMW E30 M3, Porsche 911 GT1, Holden HDT VK SS Group A, Mercedes 190E Cosworth, Ford Galaxie R-code, Lancia Stratos, Mitsubishi Starion turbo, BMW E9 CSL, Nissan DR30 RS-X, Ford Escort RS (and later Cosworth), Mazda Familiar GT-R... the list goes on and on and on.

Pardon moi, I need a lie down after all of that.

You'll notice a lot of those cars listed above often feature heavily on lists of "the greatest driver's cars of all time" and the like. This is because manufacturers stripped them back to focus on the job at hand: being good to drive so they could win races. This is what makes them perfect for we car enthusiasts.

There is always a mythos around them, too, as these were special edition cars not seen often in regular life. There truly was an aura around them that these rare, high-performance beasts were more special than a garden variety supercar which had been purchased off the dealer's lot. Regular people who didn't typically care for cars knew these were special things. 

I distinctly remember being 5 years old and my father packing me a lunch and stuffing me into our yellow 504 Peugeot to visit a BMW dealer more than two hour's drive (each way) away from my house, despite my family not having the money to buy a BMW bonnet emblem. This was all because one of my dad's workmate who wouldn't have known a Quattro from a calculator had seen an E30 M3 race car in the window of this dealership when he drove past the day before.

Seeing Jim Richards' John Player Special race car in the flesh was the moment i really fell in love with E30 BMWs, which has continued 38 years (and many non-M E30s of my own) later. 

Arguably the greatest time period for homologation cars, on a global scale, was the late 80s through the mid-90s, which roughly aligns with Group A racing rules. This was when the governing body of motorsport, the FIA, decided to set up a global set of regulations to standardise racing classes. Group A was for "modified touring cars" and there was also Group N for "standard touring cars", replacing local classes like Group 2, Group C (Australian-only touring cars), Group B, Group C (world sports cars like the Porsche 956).

While the FIA talked about wanting to make it easier to race passenger cars anywhere in the world, and to increase the number of car manufacturers participating in racing there are many today who believe the real reason comes back to lobbying from the tobacco industry who were heavily invested in almost all types of sport at that time and wanted to improve their global reach.

Whatever the reason, these racing classes gave us some of the most iconic driver's cars and most-important tuner cars, upon whose shouldes our hobby and industry stands tall today. Homologation cars are literally engineered by manufacturers to become racing cars, so of course that means they make the perfect base for a tuner to build an awesome modified car.

But, if making race cars gave us all these absolute banger sleds to froth over for decades... what happened?

Money was the downfall.

Homologation cars cost huge sums to engineer into successful racing cars, and with the incredible pace of development in Group A touring cars and rallying - spurred on by a lot of tobacco sponsorship cash - costs to make your car faster than the other bloke stripped profit margins away from the very road cars the racing machinery was only there to help sell.

Most manufacturers were moving away from international touring car racing by the early 90s, and a push soon started to return to localised class rules featuring specially-constructed race cars that didn't need homologation. We got DTM in Germany, TOCA 2L in the BTCC, JGTC/Super GT in Japan, and Australia ended up with a 5L V8 formula after a short battle with a rival 2L super tourer class.

There was also a push, rightly so, for safer race cars. Attitudes towards deaths in motorsport had shifted greatly since the 60s, and the idea of enjoying a family day out at an event where multiple people could die in terrible crashes kinda killed the vibe. To make cars safer while containing costs, teams really needed to start with bare shells and remove the compromises the road car bases forced upon them. And that's a good thing.

With no requirement to have a racing variant in their road car line-up, manufacturers were free to pile on the luxury touches, improve NVH, strip out costly parts to bulletproof it for when it needed to do 1000km around the Nurburgring.... and these less focussed, less compromised cars still sold well. Racing variants were an expensive, niche product and the market signalled they didn't miss them.

So, the big question is: are we better off without homologation cars?

Cars are better-built and faster today than ever before so, on one hand, yes we are much better off. 

But - and this is a Nicky Minaj-sized but that would cause Sir Mix-A-Lot to pass out from fluid loss - the visceral, analogue, feedback-rich experience of driving a classic homologation car is truly a special, wondrous event to be savoured and celebrated.

It's important to note that, to get the most from the experience, you really need to keep things in perspective - there is no point comparing driving a Sierra RS500 or Mini Cooper S to your BRZ or late-model Civic Type-R.

Any classic car is a product of its time and to truly understand what makes these race-bred special editions so highly fawned-over you need to understand what other cars of that time period were like. Think of it like movies: in today's lifelike CGI and AI special effects world, The Terminator is almost laughable, but watch other movies from before 1984 to understand how Terminator influenced generations of movie-makers.  

We won't see a return to the days when scores of manufacturers would pump a decent slice of their annual engineering and marketing budgets into racing, and promoting their involvement, but this makes this era, from the early 1960s through to the mid-1990s as a special time we should celebrate. Long live homologation cars, and thanks for building us some heroes.

1. Mercedes-Benz W126

Big Benzos cost bank when new or when they're pieces of ancient art. But, once they're over 20 years old they're actually cheap to buy. As with ANY old high-end car these things can hide pleny of expensive, complicated repairs, but then that's all part of the ride whether you're buying an old Benz, a Jag, or something COMPLETELY fruity like an 80s Maserati. 

W126s represent a lot of car for not much money and, because they were in production from 1979-1991 (that's 12 years!) there are a lot of parts available out there for them. There were two body styles available (four-door sedans, or two-door coupes) with a long-wheelbase variant and engines ranging from 2.6L 6s up to the famous M117 5L V8.

Buying one to slam over some killer custom wheels would make for an epic cruiser without breaking the bank. Just get a thorough inspection done by a Mercedes specialist before buying someone else's heartache. 

2. Nissan (Datsun) Bluebird 

Many fawn over Datsun Zeds and 510s (aka "1600"), but the big brother 910 Bluebird needs some love. Light, well-built and rear-drive these might just be the classic Japanese car bargain you've been sleeping on, as they also have enormously roomy engine bays ripe for stuffing all manner of turbo four-cylinders and V6s or even V8s into.

They can rot like any 40-year-old car but generally these things are super-stout as they were built to last, having been designed in the 70s when the Japanese car industry were pushing to show their cars were the best on the planet. 

Back in the early 80s the Bluebird shocked many motorsport fans when George Fury's turbo Z18-powered brute thumped the RX-7s, BMW M6s, and all the big Aussie V8s to score pole position at the '84 Bathurst 1000. Plus, check out how sick it looks with the fat Group C touring car widebody kit.   

3. Chevy Monza

Chevy's small hatchback was released in '74 as an economy model to fight the Mustang II. The horsepower-stacked muscle car wars were long dead by this stage and GM had originally designed the Monza to run a Wankel rotary, but that never eventuated for a variety of reasons. 

They're still a light, rear-drive two-door which can be hot-rodded as well as any other American car. The Monza was also the first race car to be designed with CAD, as the crazy, V8-powered IMSA racers took the fight to Porsche's ferocious turbocharged 935s... and won. 

Today, they look awesome going around race circuits, pounding drag strips, and would be a rude amount of fun with an angry small-block V8 or turbo K24 Honda...

4. Pontiac Catalina sedan

60s cars are big bucks today, especially if they're popular models like a Chevy Impala or Ford Galaxie, but there are bargains to be had in this era if you're after a big, comfy ride with chrome bumpers. Available as four-door sedans or four-door hardtops (pillarless 4dr) the mid-60s Pontiac Catalina can be had as a bona-fide bargain today and, while they can take some work to find parts for, they offer epic amounts of floorspace for the purchase price.

With a big, lopey 389 Pontiac V8 the factory transmissions are junk, but any later model Pontiac V8 and transmission can be made to work fairly easily, and they look ridiculously cool when laid-out on air suspension. With room for a dozen of your friends these things are epic fun.

5. Mazda 929

While they went pretty round and similar to most other big cars of the 90s later on, Mazda's early 80s 929 was a big four-door luxury sled offering awesome crisp styling and bulk charm for a pittance. Today, they're pretty rare, but these things were the choice back in the day for successful sensible professionals who still had a pulse.   

Lowered with some cool wheels these things are a great way to have a semi-practical four-door with space, which would be a dream to drive on long road trips. There was a rotary version in Japan called the Luce, but unless you're ready to redo all the triangle bits I'd stick with a piston version and keep it clean and simple.

They even raced one in Group A...

We had been struggling to get the engine and transmission separated from each other, which can be quite a normal thing when dealing with older cars that haven't been apart in a long time. As it turned out there were some sticky dowel pins holding the Boxer and gearbag together, so we ripped them out together to split them on the bench, and we were keen to make up some lost time... 

Now, any old hand used to working on any sort of project will tell you the moment you start rushing you leave the door open for mistakes to creep in. "More speed, less haste" is a famous old quote, and unfortunately in our haste to get the engine and transmission apart we had a calamity...

Yes, the engine fell off the table and the old, rattly EJ is definitely pretty cooked now. But, this does create an opportunity to discuss how to secure engines if you want to lift or work on them. 

We have used a variety of methods to safely manoeuvre engines around when we've needed to lift, shift, or work on them. The main ones are:

• Using a chain bolted to points on the engine 
• Tying a used seatbelt through the intake manifold, or secured to the factory lift points
• Using a proper lifting sling in combination with a chain or used seatbelt.

You can see below the seatbelt is enough for the fairly lightweight Subaru NA SOHC four-cylinder and small five-speed transmission. Seat belts have to hold humans in place during a crash, so they're rated to more than 1000kg, and can sometimes withstand jolts of up to 2500kg. 

Heavier engines definitely need a beefier set-up, especially if you're going to be lifting them high, swinging them or jiggling them around. This is when careful rigging needs to take place, judging the weight of the engine, and how it will balance once it is lifted into the air. 

To pull the engine and transmission out of the Subaru as one unit we needed the front to rise significantly higher than the back, so pulling up from the front of the engine was key. When we fitted the Isuzu engine to Marty's Gemini he and Turbo Yoda attached a chain to the front and back of the engine, on opposite sides to balance the load and keep the iron block four-cylinder nice and level while in the air. 

Keeping the engine secure while it is in the air is key, and if we'd left the metal chain holding the engine to ride on the metal tine of the forklift it could have easily slipped or shifted. This could have led to dropping the engine, so a lifting strap was used around the forklift and the chain to keep it all secure.

Before you use a lifting strap you need to check it carefully for damage or frayed sections as these can easily snap, leading to engines dropping on the ground, onto cars, or worse onto people. 

Similarly, when you attach a chain to an engine you should use try to use factory lifting points with thick D-shackles. If you need to bolt the chain to the engine, you should use bolts with at least a 12mm head, and ensure there is at least 20mm of purchase into a solid thread in the block.

We rigged the engine to lift more from the rear, with a short chain length to avoid the risk of swinging as the engine acted like a pendulum. Keeping the engine level ensured we could drop it straight in the bay, as the shell already had the bonnet on and space was tight.

You can see below the engine sits nice and level, and is secure enough to wiggle onto the engine mounts without fear of it slipping or dropping. Don't think an engine won't slip or swing unpredictably when being moved as even workshop floors which appear smooth can hide bumps, or engines can be unsettled by the wheels on the lifting device starting and stopping rolling - all of this can start an engine swinging, which is why short strap lengths are important, and why it's key to have engines properly secured. 

So we've covered lifting and moving engines. What about once you want to work on them?

One of the key lessons from our 4DMILF disaster was we didn't have the engine secured on the table we were working on. It's easy to miss when you're focused madly on getting the damn engine and transmission apart, but still important to remember so you don't go through the same problems we now face replacing this engine (or worse, injuring someone).

If we had thrown a couple of rachet straps around the engine (front to rear, and side to side) this would have held it to the table and prevented it from falling down. Obviously you still need to be incredibly careful as the engine and table moves not to let the table flip over, or have your body in the way in case the engine does move and bangs down on the table. 

This is why rushing when doing any sort of work on a car is a bad idea as it's easy to break a hand or leg when a couple hundred kilograms of engine comes smashing down at terminal velocity. It doesn't even need to fall off the table to do damage, just rolling the engine over could easily break bones in your hand, leading to months off the tools. 

Ultimately this is a lesson to learn and an important one from a workshop safety point of view.

Youth culture changed rapidly through the 60s and while the hot rodders and car customisers of the 50s loved creating wild paint jobs it was the rise of hippies and the counter-culture movement which really showed us all how insane paint could get.

Hippies? Yes, you read that correctly: hippies. Those famously environmentally-conscious huggers of trees who loathed wasteful "gas guzzlers".  

It was in the late 60s that pop and rock music festivals became events which drew hundreds of thousands of young people together from all over the world. Woodstock, Altamont and the California Jam,  to name just three massive festivals, were replicated all over the world and became rallying points for creative youth wanting to hang out and express themselves. 

With money tight for most, the most creative groups would buy old buses and vans, then decorate them in psychadelic motifs. And everyone saw them. Media focus on hippie cutlure was at its peak in the late 60s and the sight of these lurid buses and vans packed with the controversial hippies drew widespread media attention, which in turn inspired younger people coming through.

By the early-to-mid 70s the hippie culture had withered but music festivals and youth culture were still massively popular. Young people were hanging out at rock shows, and the idea of travelling around to watch rock concerts with your friends all in one vehicle, which could double as a place to sleep, was really picked up as something people could get behind. 

The issue was, despite the vans being easier to drive and park than old buses, they were incredibly boring to look at. So the customisers stepped in. 

By '73-'74, the custom van and 4x4 culture (including dirt biking and off-road racing) were taking off thanks in part to muscle cars being killed off by high insurance and petrol costs, and this led to young people wanting to decorate their basic, slab-sided work vans to stand out and show some individual flair... sound familiar?

Fat wheels, chrome side-pipes, fuzzy dice and all the stuff people were doing to hot rods and muscle cars were easily transferred over to these new rolling billboards on wheels.

Their huge slabs sides also made them ripe for adding a splash of colour. Now, they didn't start out with top-to-bottom murals featuring vikings wielding swords at fire-spewing dragons on top of a volcano. LIke the custom cars of the 50s, things started milder and rolled up as people sought to one-up each other.

Above is a typical mild van set-up with a pop-up sunroof, fog lights, side-pipes and fat wheels. 

As the 70s rolled on and people started wanting to push the boundaries, custom painters were adding pin-striping and traditional custom car touches like panels, lace paint and fades. Then, the air-brushing trend hit, allowing full scale paintings to really blow the creativity up a notch...

By '77-'78 the van craze was in full swing all over the world, including Australia. Full-size vans weren't as popular as our home-grown "panel vans" or "panos" down under, as these were based on regular family cars like the Holden Kingswood, Ford Falcon, and Chrysler Valiant. The wildest vans were show-only rigs with insanely detailed, velvet-lined interiors and mirror-finish undercarriages, custom bodywork out the wazoo, and engines designed to score points not run numbers.

As with all trends, the pendulum never swings one way alone. By the early 80s the vanning trend was pretty much done in favour of the Pro Street and Street Machine movements, which favoured speed, race-prepped engines, and sheet-metal drag-inspired interiors over velvet trim, detailed murals, and chrome carburettors. 

The wild paint trend briefly popped up in the late 80s with graphics designs, but really didn't make a return until the late 90s and the rise of the sex-spec/MAX POWER/Hot Import Nights style of car building. 

But it was all possible thanks to the hippies. 

I'm lucky enough to have been granted access to many workshops over the years, and after almost 25 years working in this trade, I think I'm in a fairly unique place to walk you guys and gals through the dos and don'ts of behaving in sheds. So, without further ado, here are The Golden Commandments of Garage and Workshop Life:

CURSING IS AN ARTFORM

Swearing when something goes wrong is an intrinsic part of garage and workshop life. Cursing the very soul of a part which won't come undone (or go in), a leak that won't stop existing, or raging at something which has broken is a time-honoured test of our spirit we undergo on any and all car builds.  

Anyone can spit out a few F-bombs or C-bombs, but true workshop legends like Mechanical Stig understand the artform of cursing: be creative. You can't get the job you're trying to do finished when you're distracted by all the frustration and anger swirling around in your head, so take all that energy and get it out of your system by cursing the source of your aggrevation as a pack of slippery gypsies. Or a recreational botherer of barnyard animals. Or a pelican-touching, fart-sniffing, turd-taster that eats the pickles and buns off a burger but throws the meat away... ahem

You get the gist. Don't bottle the frustration up, and don't throw tools. Humans are the apex creatures on this planet, so use that big brain to come up with something humourous and spite-filled so you can clear your head and move on with your day. 

CONSIDER OTHERS

If you're in someone else's garage or a professional workshop, before you go verbally blasting the mating habits of inanimate objects which are harshing your vibe, consider whether other people need to hear this. Workshops and garages can be testosterone-fuelled places but that doesn't give anyone a free reign to act like a primate; there can be kids, partners, grandparents, or other people who don't appreciate boorish behaviour within earshot or sightlines.

It should go without saying that a bit of light riffing of others is fun, but nobody should get getting treated like a lower-class, whether they're new to the game or an old hand. And this is especially important in the workplace - our hobby is under more pressure now than ever to exist so if we hack on all the apprentices who is going to be left to help us work on our old dinosaur nuggets when we're too old to crawl around under a car on jackstands, or bench-press a transmission in?

RESPECT

Everyone deserves respect as a human being, and this is especially true when we're dealing with workshops. No matter who they are, from the person answering the phone, to the boss who owns the workshop.

We can all get upset when our pride and joy is in a shop and something hasn't gone how we wanted, but yelling and screaming at a workshop employee isn't going to get your car back any faster or magically cure the problem you're dealing with.  There's no shame in telling a shop you're disappointed at progress or the finished result, but try to remain calm and ask them to outline what happened that put you in this spot. 

If you feel yourself getting upset, tell them. Tell them so they can understand how much this means to you, and that you'll go away to calm down and call back later (or visit if you can). Nobody gets anywhere or anything worthwhile when we're upset, and these cars mean a huge amount to us, so it's understandable but something we all need to manage ourselves.

BARRIER METHOD

This is basic. If there are signs saying "do not enter" on a workshop, don't. Look for the signs, too, as you need to be aware this is normally an insurance issue, but also professional workshops don't want randoms strolling in off the street, so your first port of call should always be to the front desk until you're invited onto the shop floor.

At a private garage if you haven't been invited directly to the garage it's also nice to be polite and respect the person's house by knocking on the front door rather than snooping around the side or back.  

DON'T  BE A GRUB

Try to be tidy. Having consideration for others extends beyond not getting drunk and being boorish when it's not appropriate, and you should try to keep someone else's workshop or garage tidier than your own - not only is this polite it's easier to work in, and safer too. 

Keep your work area and tools tidy so nobody is tripping over you as they're moving around. Clean up spills when they happen to avoid slip-hazards. Think about how others are working around you - don't just start hammering the bejeesus out of the engine bay if someone is under the suspension without checking they're cool for you to do that.

Also, if you see the hand towels (or toilet paper) have run out ask someone where the spares are kept and change them. 

HOST WITH THE MOST

If you're getting Day Boyz over to your shed to work on your car, make sure you have a few things planned. Ensuring your free labour has some food and drinks to enjoy, as well as a place to sit down and take a load off their feet are all absolute bare minimum for any host to provide.

Before opening invites up to your entire social media network, work out what jobs you need done and what can realistically be done in the time you have. And do this before people turn up. There's no point inviting 20 people over if you're working in a single-car garage which can barely fit 4 people.

Consider some of your friends might be enthusiastic but not super-experienced with this work, so are they better (or are YOU better) to be running around cooking a BBQ or getting other parts? Think carefully about this so everyone has a great time. 

HAMMER TIME

Got a screw that is stuck fast and you don't want to risk rounding it? Find a screwdriver which fits the head as tightly as possible, and then give the end a solid whack or 2 with a mallet. This is often enough to shock the threads and loosen it just enough to allow you to undo it.

This works on trim pieces exposed to the weather, as well as in heavy-use areas like door strikers on old cars.

DEEP CLEAN 

Oven cleaner and a cheap gasket scraper are a banger of a way to carve thick, oily, greasy sludge off parts you want to handle. BBQ cleaner is basically the same stuff, but costs a bit more.

Oven cleaner works best if you leave the object you're cleaning in the sun so it is warm to touch, then drag it into the shade while the foam detergents do their thing. Remember to wash it off thoroughly, especially on aluminium parts, as you want to stop the acidic process, and also remember to wear PPE while using it. 

Follow it up with a heavy duty degreaser to really deep-clean parts. CT20 Truck Wash is a great one, while there are industrial degreasers which can be heated to work even better than the cheap aerosol stuff.

BOG ROT

If your project has a section of thick body filler, don't try to grind or sand it off. I have done this and the mess is incredible and it's insanely slow. Instead, head down to your local hardware supply store for a Butane torch, a good mallet and a couple of cheap paint-scrapers. 

Heat the areas of filler with the torch until you hear a crack or a pop, then hold the paint scraper along the panel (do NOT hold it perpendicular to the panel) and gently chisel the filler off in big sheets. This will knock the bulk of the filler off in large, easy to clean chunks, and you can then go  over the remainder with sanding discs to get back to bare steel.

CUSTOM O-RINGS 

You can make custom O-rings at home, even for parts which need to be fuel- or oil-rated. Industrial supply stores sell a huge variety of O-ring cord diameters and materials, which you buy in a length and cut to the size you need. A drop of superglue on each end of the cut cord and you're good to go with a custom O-ring to seal any manner of projects (like the custom fuel pump cradle in my custom fuel tank above). 

You need to cut the cord dead-on square to give the best sealing surface when you join the ends together, so invest in a brand new knife or blade for the job.   

MARKED FOR CUT

If you need to mark a spot on metal to drill a hole then you need a centre-punch. However, what happens when you can't fit the punch in place? There are paint pens like the Marxmate GripIt which can fire a shot of paint up to 50mm which will show you the centre-point, which you can then punch and drill to precision.

For deeper holes a long Phillips-head screwdriver can also be used as a centre-punch in emergencies, or using the straw from a can of lubricating aerosol attached to a spray paint can to make the spot to drill. 

 While the siren song of Marketplace and the allure of dropping a mere thousand-bones onto some biohazard nugget is so strong it seems tied to our DNA, there are some stark realities you need to confront if you want to come wading into this murky water. 

It should be obvious to anyone capable of critical thought that none of these cars are going to be ready to drive across Australia or make make big-banger power outputs. Any of these cars are projects and will need bulk time, money and elbow-grease to make into viable road vehicles once more. If that doesn't scare you off, welcome to Club Sick...

RUST VS ELECTRONIC NIGHTMARES

You can find some seriously cool old school cars around for $1k, but $1000 classic cars will have rot. No ifs, buts, or maybes. And not just chrome bumper classics, either. 

However, rust is a nightmare across all socio-economic reaches of car enthusiasm. You could spend 100 times more than this and still be dealing with rust in some way - it's just likely you'll be dealing with far, far less than in a car costing a grand. 

But are you scared more by rust or electronics issues in modern cars? There are plenty of late-model cars for sale at this price point featuring one, some, or a litany of electronics issues. Some have been drowned in floods (avoid at all costs), while others lack maintenance or are from brands and models infamous for crapping out expensive sensors.

You need to ask yourself if the solution to this car's problems was easy why didn't the former owner just do that and sell the car for heaps more mooah? Do you have the time, tools, or money to diagnose what is wrong? Faults in the ABS systems or buried in the body wiring loom can be insanely difficult to fix.

That said, I helped a friend buy a rare 1980s Maserati that had an engine bay fire for almost beer money. Several weekends of cleaning the bay, replacing hoses, and gutting the interior to replace the trashed wiring loom with a good 2nd-hand unit from a wrecked car had the old twin-turbo V6 back on the road for not much more than this budget. (Being an 80s Maserati it was almost instantly back off the road having broken down, but that's not the point of this story).    

A final note on rust is that it hides, just like an electrical issue. A paint-depth gauge will warn you of inch-thick body filler, but the only way you'll know if this old nugget is truly rust-free is to de-skin it (remove all outer panels).   

REGO

You're not getting any. No, none. Forget it. So, why is it unregistered? Does it have mechanical issues and, are they simple or catastrophically difficult to cure (like a dead engine or trans)? And, if they're easy to fix, why is the seller offloading the car cheap instead of fixing them?

Can you afford the cost of rego? Almost all cars in NSW will cost more than the purchase price to put a full year's rego on, and this might be a reason why the car is being sold unregistered, and could point to whether it has had any maintenance money spent on it during the former owner's time with it. 

You also need to carefully inspect the car, including all the legal ID numbers for the car (and check them on a PPSR database). Is the car or engine stolen? Don't spend $1000 buying a car you legally can't own. 

MISSING PARTS

There will be plenty of promising buys online for $1000 because the owner didn't know how to fix them, or have time or the money to do so. Can you? Maybe.

You need to give the car a close inspection to see if the missing parts have been hacked out using nothing but rage and the bite-force of a foul-tempered Doberman called Gerald (and I mean, fair, wouldn't you be pissed if you'd been named Gerald?). Sometimes what appears like a few missing trim panels or electrical connectors could hide a loom that's had parts ripped out with scant regard for anyone wanting to put the car back to running, driving condition. 

Similarly, try to see if the engine starts, or at least turns over. Is there a transmission or a differential under the car? I was nearly suckered into buying a car which was promised "drove when parked" until I actually jacked it up and discovered there was no transmission, flywheel, clutch, or tailshaft - this made the car not worth the asking price or the seller.

MILEAGE 

Whatever you buy will have likely the same mileage as if it had been driven to the moon and back. Weekly. That doesn't mean it is ready for scrap, as plenty of well-engineered base cars can go hundreds and hundreds of thousands of kilometres on their original mechanical hardware. 

You should perform a few additional checks to see if the mechanicals are healthy, the body shell isn't too fired (do the doors and boot or bonnet open and close easily?), and does it need major suspension components entirely replaced? If it's done a few hundred thousand clicks (or more) it should have had all of its shocks and bushes replaced a few times, and probably control arms too.

Other parts which do wear out over time include door locks, the ignition barrel, body weather sealing rubbers, window guides, motors, and seals, as well as engine bearings and transmission and differential internals (bearings, rings, idlers, and more). 

ECONOMIC VERSUS STATUTORY WRITE-OFFS

One reason you need to be careful checking numbers on these sorts of cars is because you don't want to build a sick project car out of something listed as a statutory write-off. That means it can never be registered again in your state. Dream, over.

An economic write-off will be listed as "repairable" on state paperwork. Any VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) marked with a "Statutory" write-off is not allowed to be re-registered even after a thorough inspection, as it is deemed as being "unable to be repaired properly".  

You also won't be able to insure the car, so even if you're building a race car there's no coverage if it gets nicked from your house or is destroyed while being trailered to the track (unlike Laid-Up Cover from some insurers like Shannons). Never say never - this is why we have insurance - so it's something to bare in mind before you spend all your time and money building something that you will also be unlikely to be able to sell easily.

Internal combustion engines rely on the principle of "suck, squish, bang, blow" as described above. Air comes in, is compressed (with a fuel), ignited, and then evacuated. So it stands to reason if you want more power you need more air. 

Adding fuel without matching the air will just make the tune rich, and the car will bog. It's air, and how the engine processes it, which is the key to making horsepower. And this is where people who say "turbos are the replacement for displacement" need to pipe down and let the adults talk. 

Turbos ARE displacement. Turbochargers, superchargers, and nitrous all ram additional air into the engine effectively increasing its displacement. The engine doesn't know if it's a 2.6L or a 26L, it's just processing a volume of air being rammed into it with giddy abandon.

If you keep ramming air into your engine, it will eventually stop making power. This is where the efficiency the engine can process the air comes into play. Otherwise known as "voumetric efficiency" (AKA, "VE"), engines which can perform the suck, squish, bang and blow process with greater amounts of air will make more power. Period. 

That's a universal truth about engines, so write it down.

If you want to understand VE, look up the hullabaloo created when Honda dropped the S2000 on us. Here was an NA four-cylinder making 120hp-per-litre and it was so crazy it may as well have cooked you dinner and washed your dog at the same time. 

If you want to process more air in your engine, and you don't want to go through the laborious, expensive process of improving your VE by lightening the valvetrain, improving air flow, and enhancing fuelling and spark timing, then you need to take more drastic steps. 

This is where you choose to make your engine bigger for increased swept volume, or decrease it and use RPM.

By increasing the bore and stroke of your engine (often called "stroking" an engine), you increase it's capacity, thereby increasing the amount of air you can ram into it (in overly simplistic terms). This can have its own drawbacks, with cylinder wall thickness, rod/stroke ratio, and more, which can affect reliability, redline, boost limits, and more.

We're into the mathematics side of engines here, as bore and stroke ratios, con rod ratio, piston pin height, crank or rod counterweight, all come together to advise whether an engine will hang together as you push its envelope.

Or you could start squeezing it hard.

The other option is to maximise the bore of the engine, but reduce the stroke. Colloquially known as a "de-stroker", this work improves piston speed by reducing the length a piston has to travel through the cylinder bore. This then allows you to (theoretically) spin the engine faster. 

In *VERY* general terms, increasing an engine's ability to RPM has the effect of increasing the amount of air you can jam into it. 

Look at the 9000rpm, 6L V8s used in NASCAR which run a bore/stroke ratio of  approximately 106.3mm (4.185in) by 83mm (3.25in), compared to a 6L LS that revs to only 7000rpm and uses 101.6mm (4.00in) by 92mm (3.622in) bore/stroke. 

All engines are a compromise, in terms of size, weight, RPM, and so on. And so whether you stroke the engine out, or make it rev like a Van Halen guitar solo, you're going to find there will be a point the engine won't work any better by going further.

You'll also have to pick what you're using the engine for. There's no point in putting a super-fast-spinning, lightweight high-RPM combo into a big, heavy daily driver, while a time attack car isn't served that well by a low-revving torque monster. 

But, the one thing which doesn't lie is that an engine's ability to pump air controls its ability to make horsepower.

Below are the four most important things to get right when selling a car. We've used these points for countless cars we've had to move on, and they've always worked a charm.

Take Banger Photos

Too many people upload nonsensical photos to their ad, and then wonder why nobody is enquiring about their car for sale. They need to be well-lit, with a clean car (yes, wash and vacuum), and showing the whole car. At the very minimum you need the following angles: both front three-quarter sides, both rear-three-quarter sides, engine bay, and interior. 

Good photos show you care about the car and give the prospective buyers confidence that you're not hiding anything with the car's condition. They will respect you've taken the time to go out and photograph the car for the ad, which helps them trust that you care about the car. 

When you go to take the photos (ideally as soon as possible after cleaning the car), a phone camera is good enough but try to choose a nice, neutral background like a well-lit, empty corner of an outdoor carpark. If you have to take photos at night, try to illuminate the car as best as possible, even using the headlights of a friend's car - you want to show the car from as many angles as possible. 

If you're selling a project, clear plenty of space around it so you can see as much as possible, and remember details matter. If your car is modified remember to take detail pics of the modifications as they might well make the difference for someone to pick up the phone and enquire about the car.

Research The Market... Thoroughly

Understanding how to price your car fairly is a key part of selling your car. Nobody wants to sell their car too cheap, but pricing it way over the odds is guaranteed to light your inbox up with low-ball offers, and little else.

Try to find comparitive ads for the same car and as close to your year/make/model/spec-level as possible. Ideally you can find cars in the same colour, similar mods and mileage in your local area so you can price your car accordingly. You will have a much harder time selling your car if it's the highest priced example for sale and you can't clearly tell people why.  

When researching prices don't just rely on one website: look at FB Marketplace, eBay, sales websites, and speak to anyone you know who sold a similar car recently. Part of the reason for being so thorough is because modified cars appeal to a pretty small window of people, as a buyer for your car needs to share your exact taste in cars and modifications. In some cases you can be better off putting the car back to stock as this can net you a faster sale and better price. 

Write A Proper Description

We live in the age of TL;DR, but if someone is going to buy your car you need to give them the very basic information to interest them: year/make/model, what spec it is, what the mileage (kilometres or actual miles), any and all modifications, how long you've owned it, how much registration is left, and any known faults.

You don't need to write every single detail of the car's history, but you should give any potential buyer a good idea of what they're buying. Things like if it was your daily or weekender, whether you imported it or not, how kuch paperwork it has, how often you serviced it (or who it was serviced by), and the like all helps give a prospective buyer the feeling they're not taking a huge risk buying your car as it won't seem like you're hiding anything. 

Be Honest

Having the buyer trust you and the car you're selling is paramount to not only a good sale, but to avoid being low-balled like crazy by someone who is thinking they're going to have to completely rebuild the market-priced car they're buying off you. You don't need to explain every tiny fault with a car, but you should be honest so the buyer can trust they're not buying a lemon... and if you're selling a total soggy nugget then they know what they're buying. 

If you've explained major and minor faults to a prospective buyer it also gives them less room to haggle on the price, if you've priced the car inside the market value for your example. Hiding faults with a car doesn't actually benefit anyone, as you're unlikely to be making life-changing money by failing to disclose faults with your car. 

Ultimately, we're all car enthusiasts and we should look out for each other as much as possible. It's a small world; you'd hate to be ripped off if the shoe was on the other foot.

Sell, Don't Swap

Today we see a lot of people offering to swap their car for one we're selling, sometimes with cash on top, and sometimes asking for cash from us as part of the trade. In our experience this has never worked in both parties' favour.

Someone always gets the worse vehicle in the wash-up, and it's highly unlikely you're going to be lucky enough to have them want to trade you a car you've been dreaming of owning. You're almost universally better off selling your car and then going and finding the car you want, rather than the car randomly being offered.

Swaps nearly always take longer to facilitate, and lead to rushed decisions. If someone really wants your car they'll find the money and sell that car they're trying to offload. Stay the course, sell the car.

Having spent 25 years buying, building, driving, wrecking, and blowing up cars (good lord, I am old), here are some of the key ways to avoid blowing your engine up like a goose (ie: don't do what I did).  

Health Check

When you get a new project, or you pluck it's new heart from the clutches of a wrecking yard, It's way too easy to tear straight into trying to make it run. Many of our favourite enigines (including Barras and LS V8s) are well over 20 years old, and so you can't expect to slap one into a car, boost it up to double the horsepower, and then have it last for another 20 years. 

Before trying to get your car to make noise go right over the engine looking for simple problems like cracked vacuum hoses, wiring that is brittle (and therefore needs replacing), and fluid leaks. You should also pop the timing cover off the engine and turn it over by hand to check the condition of the timing chain or belt and the tensioner, as these are wear items and will need to be replaced at some point - it may as well be sooner rather than later.

RPM

Taking an engine to redline is a lot of fun (hello Hondabois and classic BMW M-car drivers), however this is one way you radically increase the risk of killing your engine. Paul Rosche, the noted engineer who gave us some of the greatest performance engines of the 20th Century, once said to me that the strain on an engine exponentially doubles for every 250rpm past 8000rpm.

That means you're putting four-times the strain through an engine at 8500rpm compared to 8250rpm, and that strain will do damage. The bearings in an engine are actually wear items and by spinning an engine to its redline, you're accelerating the wear on those parts. If you're doing it with a second-hand engine you don't know the intimate history of, then you're risking your entire engine.

It isn't just enough to know you've chucked in fresh oil and a new filter. Friends of mine much smarter than me took to installing oil pressure and oil temperature gauges so they could see how their 2nd hand engines behaved before they sent them to the moon. They also did compression tests to have a good understanding of how tired the engine was, before they even put the car on the road - one simple check can tell you if the engine you've just bought is a dog, or a superstar waiting to change your life.

The wrong oil

As engines wear with age they actually need to have their oils changed to suit. Hang around old-timers who play with pre-80s engines and you'll often hear them talk about how engines would "free up" over time, as they got more kilometres on them and would apparently run better. Part of this comes down to engine tolerances being looser back in the day, as well as the lack of modern ECUs/fuelling/ignition systems meant having less control over how an engine ran (when was the last time you needed to take a car in for a "tune up"?)

You can kill a high-mileage engine super-fast by using the same oil it was specced with when new. As the engine wears and tolerances grow, moving up one grade of oil to a heavier option is often one way to prolong engine life. If you're unsure what oil to put in your car, ask a trusted engine builder. You might be fine with what you have currently, but this is one quick, easy way to avoid a spun bearing (and curing that requires a new crank at least). 

It is also important to realise that a 5W-30 oil from the 60s has radically different chemical make-up to a current 5W-30. A lot of classic muscle car owners are killing camshafts and lifters because oils today miss important additives like zinc, which help lubricate mechanical parts, but are left out of modern oils as current-tech engines simply don't need those additives.  

Oil control

If you're a fan of corners (let's face it who isn't?), then you know sticky tyres and modern suspension mods allow you to rail through bends faster than we've ever been able to go before. However, chucking your car merrily though corners on a stock oil pan comes with some fairly heavy risks. 

As with running old oil or the wrong grade of oil, you need to ensure your engine has a constant, properly pressurised stream of oil being delivered to all its reciprocating components. The single biggest impediment to this is a factory oil pan and windage tray - if it has one. 

Few engines of the 90s featured complex baffling systems to stop oil slosh, and their windage trays were often designed to prioritise cost efficieny over preventing oil aeration (and that frothing does bad things for the oil). If you're going to drive your car hard consider safeguarding your motor with a gated oil pan, high-volume oil pump, an upgraded windage tray, and potentially an oil accumulator.  

Cylinder pressure

Here is a big one for everyone wanting to do a "stock bottom-end" build, or push a used factory turbo engine hard. Cylinder pressure will kill a lot of engines, and normally it takes a while before the problem shows its head. Once it does, however, then you'll be buying a new engine, or embarking on a full tear-down rebuild. 

"Cylinder pressure" is a dynamic beast, changing as the engine runs through its four stages of the combustion cycle: suck, squish, bang, and blow. Cylinder pressures are at their highest during the squish (compression) and bang (combustion) process,  when the piston is literally fighting against the compressed air and fuel miture sitting in the combustion chamber. 

In overly simple terms, think about an aluminium NA engine. These were designed with a certain cylinder pressure in mind but you, Johnny Modder, have come along and strapped a bus turbo to the side of your engine in the aim of turning tyres to smoke, and you want to push 35psi through it because you've read that's what the cool kids on the Internet do.

The more boost you jam into this engine, the more force you're pushing into the cylinder and onto the head studs. This is why so many people running high-boost set-ups upgrade their engines with stronger aftermarket studs, as the factory bolts will stretch under the increased cylinder pressure.

A lot of early adopters of turbo LS1 combos found they were turning their round cylinders oval (killing pistons) as the additional pressure from turbo boost was deforming the cylinders. The 2.5-litre Volvo "whiteblock" engines are also renowned for having weak cylinders that are perfectly reliable at the stock 300hp, but will almost certainly fail once you add boost.

How do you fix this? Simple, keep the boost sensible. 

So, why do modern engines seem to make power much easier than older engines? There are several reasons for this, but it mostly comes back to engines being far more efficient, and better controlled.

While we think of overhead-cam EFI turbocharged engines like the Nissan RB and SR, Toyota JZ, Ford Barra, Honda B-series as "modern", engine design has evolved massively since they hit the market. Most of these engine designs date back 40 years or more, so today they're as old in tech as the carby big-block V8s they took over from. Feeling old yet?

The computing power and amount of data capable of being read by modern ECUs has allowed engineers to design better engines as we understand far better what is actually happening inside these engines as they run. Think of the ECUs used in 90s cars as only being able to see 24 colours, but modern ECUs see in 4K resolution, and now replace "colour" with "data" and you get an idea of how far ECUs have come, and how modern engines are so finely timed and fuelled.

If you know precisely what the engine is doing you can extract every ounce of power out of it, and this allows engineers to put the engines together with much finer tolerances.

Tightening emissions laws have driven manufacturers to chase more efficient engines, which has benefitted enthusiasts as these engines make power easier than old school engines which had to fight for every horsepower they made. If you look up the specs of a lot of modern cars you'll notice a lot of modern engines have high compression ratios and run quite thin synthetic oil, and these both help enignes be responsive and spin more easily.

Lower compression ratios make for a lazier engine and thicker oil will drag more than a lightweight oil. However, with old tech ECUs (or mechanical injection and carburettors) people couldn't tune engines precisely like they do today, as they didn't have such fine-control over fuelling and ignition timing, while wideband sensors were rare and MAP-based tuning was just a concept.

All of a sudden our modern engines can spin faster, safely, and the oil technology has improved to match with it. But so has the technology in fuel systems, coil-on-plug ignition systems, the low-resistence serpentime multi-rib front-drive belt systems, and the big one: turbochargers.

If you're not deeply invested in the automotive aftermarket you might not realise how much turbo design has evolved in the last 15 years alone. To put that in perspective, I'm talking SINCE 2010. 

Lightweight billet compressor and turbine wheels, better blade angle design, wastegate efficiency (and precise electronic control), and better bearing design for the centre cartridge have revolutionised how fast turbos spool and how much power they can make. All of these improvements mean the (now more efficient) engine doesn't have to push as hard to make a single PSI of boost, improving performance. We're doing more with less. 

Modern piston and con rod design has also evolved as thinner, lighter piston/rod combos are no longer the domain of race engines, while piston-to-bore clearance, bearing clearances, and even more tightly controlled piston-to-valve clearance have all improved engine efficiency, which benefits emissions but also allows engines to work easier; they're not big, lumbering dinosaurs anymore.

With modern ECUs being able to read more data and have more control over an engine's operation it has also allowed engineers to push technology like active cam control and cam phasing, as well as valve and timing changes, and even adjustable intake manifolds. All of this helps enthusiasts enjoy more potent engines that make a wider spread of power.  

The metal engines are being made from has improved out of sight. We've had aluminium engines since the 50s (and in some rare, super-exotic cases, even earlier) but modern metal processing and engineering means the blends of aluminium alloys used in modern engines offer far superior tolerance to heat cycling, high cylinder pressures, vibration, and strain from RPM. 

Some of our favourite turbo hero cars use cast iron blocks as this was the only way to hold the cylinders in their correct shape when dealing with boost. Only 15 years ago it was fundamentally understood any turbo all-aluminium (barring super exotic aftermarket block/head combos) were on a borrowed timeline as, eventually, the cylinder pressure would oval the bores, lift cylinder heads or fatigue the block and break the crank. 

SImilarly, manufacturers now design deep-skirt blocks that put the whole crank tunnel in the block itself radically stregthening the main cap area.  Look at the pic above to see the difference between a typical 1960s passenger V8 (Holden 308), and a late-90s passenger V8 (5.7 LS1); we've now got dense, light alloy blocks (vs cast iron), 6-bolt main caps (vs 2), better cylinder head sealing, and that's ignoring priority mains oiling and other race car tech which has found its way into production engines. 

Honda's K-series backs up these claims. These storied transverse four-cylinders make rude power NA, let alone once they're fed delicious turbo boost, and they're able to do so thanks to the engineering progress we've made over the last 30 years. And it it isn't just the quality of the design and the parts being used.

Production tolerances, thanks to improving the quality of the design, the quality of the parts being used, and the precision of the machines building the engines, have all been tightened up out of sight compared to old engines. 40 years ago it wasn't uncommon to hear of someone having a lemon car where the engine suffered catastrophic failure through some silly manufacturing mistake, but this has largely been eradicated today.

All of this is great news for people at home wanting to build fun, fast street cars at home. We can turbocharge common, easy-to-source NA engines, control them with precision, and make more power than supercars had in the 90s.

And we can do it ourselves as the base equipment the manufacturers are giving us are so much better designed and built than they used to be. 

From bodgy Subaru RS Turbos, to nugget E30 BMWs, decrepit V8s, to my out-of-control pound puppy Pontiac, I've done the hard yards so you guys can learn from my mistakes.

Knowledge is key, organised knowledge

If you haven't worked on this model of car before, take a bunch of reference photos and videos before you start pulling it apart. Have a cloud-based service to them save them, and in a file structure. I use Dropbox but there are a bunch of ways you can do this: the important thing is to not just have 2764 images in your camera roll with no key to what they are. I'd suggest something like [base car folder]/2025 rebuild/mechanical work/engine removal - you can add other folders alongside "mechanical work" like "respray", "interior", "suspension rebuild", "brakes overhaul", and more.    

Workshop manuals exist for almost all bar the rarest nuggets, so get onto Google and find yourself as many manuals for your specific make and model as you can find, and remember that overseas market cars may have key differences to yours (LHD vs RHD could change the steering system, and more). I will often take notes on how a particular part of a car came apart so I have a record of what order parts need to be refitted, and how some complicated systems are assembled - the time it takes to write this stuff down will pale into insignificance compared to the time lost as you struggle to remember how it all fit together several months (or years later).

When browsing the Internet for parts or for information I tend to bookmark as many pages as possible within a folder system for the project. This has become increasingly important as I have two E30s BMWs, an E34 5-series, plus my Pontiac I'm working on so I need to keep all my information organised. 

Use the right products

Organic schmutz needs soap and water. Oil and grease requires solvent cleaners. When it comes to cleaning up dirty projects most people start with hosing the car down, but you're actually often better having a good look at what you're trying to clean, because all that water and soap won't do much against years of grease and oil.

With really old, grimey cars you're often better served by applying cheap Oven Cleaner to the heaviest grime, and then washing that off just to see what you're dealing with. Heavy degreasing truck washes won't shift grease like an aerosol option, but they're much friendlier on the budget and can be a great option when paired up with properly caustic options like Oven Cleaner. 

If you're dealing with a classic car that is covered in bulk grot, you'll most likely need heavy mechanical assistance to actually shift the worst of the grime. Cheap flathead screwdrivers and paint-scrapers and gasket-scrapers are brilliant for dislodging the most stubborn grot and even caked-on mud. Be careful with Oven Cleaner around aluminium parts as you'll need to de-activate it with soapy water otherwise it will corrode the alloy. 

Having a few bottles of supermarket All Purpose Cleaner and a tub of a paste-style household cleaner (Aussies can use Gumption) will also work wonders on your interior, or for mossy, mouldy surfaces.

Cleaning up OEM bolts, brackets and assorted metal pieces is best done with a cheap ultrasonics cleaner. Just remember to change the bath solution regularly so it cleans most effectively, and don't forget to use a good-quality heat-activated cleaning agent.   

Find space however you can 

When you pull a car apart you will find the parts will consume more than double the space. Giving yourself room to work is absolutely fundamental to being able to complete all the tasks you'll find you need to do to take a car from "meh" to "MAAAAAAAAD". When space is at a premium you'll have to be smart and strategic about how you tackle jobs, but I have seen people build amazing cars in single-car garages in apartment blocks - the key is to look around for how people work in confined space and use their ideas. 

When space is at a premium, or you're working in borrowed space, you need to have a plan to tackle your jobs so you don't get in the way of other people. Hiring large workshop equipment to get jobs done (like swapping engines) without soaking up heaps of your precious space buying a large, bulky tool you'll only use once or twice. Being efficient with your space also means it is easier to find parts when it comes time to start putting the car back together, and you'll probably find these parts won't be damaged or broken from having been left in a pile you've tripped over a dozen times for a year or more.

Similarly, having tools or storage on wheels so you can empty your space out to work on your car is another great idea i've seen, while I currently use height and vertical storage options in my single-car apartment garage. You'll never regret having more space.

Don't lose days buying supplies 

Spend the time and money investing in some sprays you can keep in your garage, and try to have three cans so you know you should have plenty on the shelf when you're in the middle of thrashing on your nugget. This is important as the amount of time lost having to run to a parts store to get a can of specialist spray will blow your mind.

When you start a project you should have good-quality degreaser plus an acetone option (AKA carby/throttle body cleaner) and a liquid form of brake cleaner will be friendlier on your budget than buying cases of aerosol cans. A basic penetrating oil is a must, but also a specialist hardcore option for those fasteners that simply will not play ball, while a butane torch and freeze-spray are also mandatory.

Similarly, you should have Contact Cleaner for electrics, All Purpose Cleaner for cosmetics (ie: so you don't get filthy), and a giant tub of hand cleaner so mum/wife/etc doesn't yell at you for getting the towels dirty. You should give serious thought to picking up a good-quality gardener's scrub for your hands so they don't get completely ruined by all the chemicals, rust, dirt, grease, oil and other harmful chemicals you're going to be using - you've only got one set of hands so take care of them. 

It's not a bad idea, as your project rolls on, to keep some high-temp bearing grease (for lubricating parts), anti-seize (for doing the same to fasteners), thread-locker (for doing the opposite), Superglue (to hold cosmetic parts together), petroleum jelly or rubber grease (to lubricate O-rings) in the cupboard. A tube of gasket goo can also save bulk time when you're faced with a hurdle to overcome.

Look after yourself

Working in the garage it is way too easy to lose track of time. However, you're a human so you need to eat and stay hydrated so the bare minimum is chomping down on some fruit and remembering to drink plenty of water (not just stuff with an alcohol content).

Remember to stretch. Project cars will see us lifting heavy objects, rubbing bodypanels down for days, or contorting ourselves into cramped spaces for hours at a time. Give your body its best chance to do what you need it to by taking regular breaks and stretching your muscles out. Doing this (and not drinking a million beers while working on the car) will also help you stay sharp, focused and ready to come back into the garage each day.

Being kind to yourself also requires you to walk away from a task when you're struggling. Overcoming these battles is great to show your tenacity, but our projects are meant to be fun and so you should take a break and go touch grass when you feel like you aren't winning. The only thing I've regretted from walking away from a task I was struggling with was not doing it sooner as, most times, it was solved minutes after I came back from my break with fresh eyes and a clear head.  

3-cylinder: Ford EcoBoost "Dragon"

We have done a lot with three-cylinder engines on the show over the years, and while people tend to sleep on them in favour of swapping in a larger four-cylinder, there is real charm and fun to a hard-revving three-pot. Ford's turbocharged DOHC EcoBoost three-pot unit has been available since 2009, with the post-2013 998cc (codenamed "Fox") produced between 74kW and 103kW. 

The real sauce is the 2017-on update to this engine, codenamed "Dragon". Now boasting 1497cc and 150kW this new-gen three-cylinder boasts both port-injection and direct-injection fuelling, while the block and cylinder head are now both aluminium. As these engines are offered in late-model small Ford vehicles, like the popular Fiesta, they're common and would provide an epic upgrade for an older FWD vehicle.

4-cylinder: Toyota 2TR-FE

This twin-cam 2.7-litre four-cylinder replaced the storied 3RZ-FE in-line four-cylinder in Toyota's commercial range. The 3RZ is renowned for being a large-capacity four-cylinder that took boost on board like MOOG takes tofu kebabs, but the 2TR is the new evolution of this platform.

Producing either 118kW (single VVTi) or 120kW (dual-VVTi) in naturally aspirated form, they're sold in rear-drive format and pack a boost-friendly 9.6:1 comp (single VVTi) or 10.2:1 (dual VVTi). The great news is because they're sold in Toyota commercial vehicles like the HiAce, Coaster bus, Hilux, and Surf, they're everywhere and not going to break your bank.

5-cylinder: Volvo B5234

If you're a fan of Audi rally cars from the early 80s, or you want to emulate the soundtrack of your local real estate agent in his RS3, then you should look into swapping one of Volvo's epic B52-series 5-bangers into your ride. Volvo sold their DOHC turbocharged 5-cylinder B5-series engines (also known as the "whiteblock"), in a range of capacities and power levels (147kW-184kW) through the years, but I singled out the 2.3-litre B5234 here because it has more cubes than the smaller variants but doesn't seem to suffer split bores under increased boost pressure like larger capacity variants. 

They were also used in some Ford models as a Duratec Turbo, but the Volvo variants are most easily found and normally for spare change. There are complexities if you're going to swap one into a RWD car, mainly around engine mounting and customising a sump. Because these engines were FWD they don't have a "hump" on the sump and therefore you'll need to budget for oil pan customisation if you want one in a rear-driver. 

6-cylinder: BMW M30B35

There are stacks of awesome 6-pot engines, and I nearly ran with the Toyota 3.5-litre 2GR-FE V6, but my love for 80s BMWs won out and I had to throw in an old, rattly NA single-cam otherwise known as the M30. Made between 1968-1995, these old M30 donkeys were available in a range of capacities, but it's the '88-'94 3.5-litre M30B35 that is the one to retrofit into classic rides as they have rude charm, great aftermarket support, and are silly strong.

While they typically only made between 155-162kW in aspirated BMW did release a couple of turbocharged examples called the M102 and M106, though these are rarer than chickens with lips. Today it's easy to add forged pistons and rods, head studs, a good ECU, bus turbo, and E85, to make tyre-obliterating power, while retaining the classic BMW straight-6 howl. The side-benefit is these monsters will bolt into a huge number of classic BMs.   

V8: Mercedes M119

This is an odd ball option, but we're spoilt for choice when it comes to awesome bent-eight engines to put in project cars: you can have Nissan VK-series, Toyota UZs, LS, Ford Modular, Audi 4.2L, BMW S65, Hellcat Hemis, Ford Godzillas and dozens of others. Outside of Europe, however, few people understand how awesome the Mercedes M119 is. 

An evolution of the legendary M117 single-cam V8 that ran from 1971-1991 and came in 4.5L-5.5L capacities, the M119 actually debuted in 1989 and offered 4.2-litre, 5.0-litre and 6.0-litre sizes that produced up to 280kW in production models. However, the infamous 400km/h Sauber C9 Group C sports racing car made over 700kW with a twin-turbo set-up that retained factory block, crank and head castings. In short, the 5.0L M119 can be built into an absolute powerhouse and, as they came in a huge range of late-80s and 90s Mercs, they're widely available. 

 Obviously, once you've slapped down the dollarydoos you'll be riding high on excitement to get this bucket of bolts running, but there's a few things you need to check before you bash a battery into it and swing off the starter motor. This is especially true if the car has sat around for a while without starting or moving. 

This is my good mate Drummo and the '67 Holden HR wagon he scored a bunch of years back. It had sat in a wrecking yard in Toukley on the NSW Central Coast for longer than it had been on the road.

When it came time for us to try to crank it into life a few years ago there was a bit of procedure to go through to ensure it wasn't going to chew itself to bits - we got it running (despite the lure of delicious adult cold snacks and BBQ meats) and so you can definitely get your nugget firing.

First things first, you're going to need a good, brand new battery, a battery charger, a small jerry can of fresh petrol, new spark plugs and ignition system parts (see below), a fresh fuel filter (and fuel pump if its an EFI car), plus new oil and oil filter are a good idea too. A case of throttle body cleaner and degreaser, rags, stuff to clean an engine up, plus basic hand tools are all needed, plus a timing light.  It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not too much stuff.

After a car has sat for a few months the oil will have drained back to the sump and components which require lubrication will potentially be dry. Metal on metal is never a good time, so the first order of business is to ensure everything is slippery and ready to party.

Below is the old Holden 6-cylinder in Drummo's HR wagon, but this is after we splashed a bunch of fresh mineral oil through the valvetrain. The idea was to lubricate anything that relied on a film of oil to spin, and we also gave each of the rockers a wiggle to ensure there weren't any catastrophic mechanical issues that would kill the engine as soon as we fired it (bent pushrods, loose rockers, etc).

If you're getting an abandoned car running check the dipstick to make sure there is actually oil in the engine. So long as there is oil in there, pull the spark plugs out, and whip the rocker cover off so you can see the valvetrain. If the engine is really crusty and dry it's likely the piston rings will be stuck to the cylinder bores, so it's a good idea to squirt some auto trans fluid (ATF) through the spark plug bores. 

Once you've poured some oil through the valvetrain (and potentially the bores), stick a socket and breaker bar on the crank bolt so you can turn the engine over by hand. I also like to pull the accessory belts off the power steering, alternator, water pump and A/C compressor (if it has them) just to reduce the parasitic drag for when you're barring the engine over by hand. 

When you spin it over the engine will likely have a few sticky points as the rings free up. You'll want to spin the engine until it turns smoothly by hand. If it doesn't, you should stop working on this engine and get ready to pull it out and tear it down to fix it properly. 

Ideally you can put an oil pressure gauge on the outlet of the oil filter housing and spin the engine over on the starter with no plugs and no fuel fuel in it, just to get the oil pressure up before you kick it in the guts, but that isn't always possible.

It can also be common with old V8s to modify a 2nd hand distributor so it can be fittedto a drill, and that is used to spin the engine over at speed and get the oil system primed. This is most common on fresh builds, but making an oil priming tool is easy and a quick way to safeguard starting a long-abandoned motor. 

I madew the one pictured below to prime the oil pump in my Pontiac V8 and it worked exceptionally well for something knocked up in a few minutes out of an old distributor, a cheap socket and an eBay MIG welder. 

Sometimes old engines that have sat for a long time will require the carburettor to be pulled down and cleaned out with throttle body cleaner (also known as aerosol acetone). This isn't always the case and you should remember carburettors will need gaskets to put them back together, and you may have to deal with stripped bolts if you try to pull these systems apart, so have a good look at the carb and work out if you think it is in good enough condition to get away without rebuilding.

If you can't rebuild the carburettor you could get by removing the carburettor and spraying a flammable aerosol down the throat of the intake. The engine won't run like a banshee, but it will cough to life and you'll be able to hear if it's knocking like a Jehova's Witness after a bag of Columbian high-grade, and therefore ready to be relocated into the nearest skip bin.   

Once you've got the engine spinning you should put a timing light on the engine to make sure the engine will actually fire. You don't need the engine to be running to use it, but it can be a good idea to have the battery connected to a charger so you don't flatten it while you're cranking the engine - this will also let you make changes to the engine's timing so you know it will run properly once you do kick it into life. 

Have a look at the spark plugs you've pulled from the car. I normally suggest smashing a set of fresh, cheap copper spark plugs into the engine. Old ignition systems struggle at the best of times, so I'd be prepared with a new rotor button, ignition leads, distributor cap, and points (if your car is a genuine old school classic). 

You want to give the engine its best chance to fire and run properly so, while you can superglue ignition parts together so it runs, sometimes it is easier to buy some of these parts up front and be ready to swap them out. I did precisely this with the BMW E34 535i project I have had sitting around at my parent's place (sorry guys) for a few years now. 

All up it cost a few bucks to give the engine a service and replace some common wear parts in a morning, but it meant i wasn't chasing rough running problems when I did put a fresh battery in and crank the big M30 6-banger to life. 

One of the key parts I replaced was the rotor button. This is a wear item in old ignition systems, just like distributor caps, ignition leads and all those other parts. 

Now, below is one of my E30 BMW projects and this was a bit of a stickier situation. This engine had sat around for a couple of years before I got to fitting it into this car, so it required a bit more work than an old carburettor-fed V8 - injectors get sticky, valve tolerances are tighter, there are sensors to consider, timing belts to replace, and more.

Having sat in a dry workshop the stock Bosch injectors were gummed solid and had to be fully rebuilt before the engine would fire. EFI cars which have sat for a long time will normally also need a new fuel pump and fuel filter before you can even consider cranking them into life. 

If you try firing the car and you get grinding noises or a high-pitched whir you might have a starter motor with a sticker stator. This is where the toothed nose of the starter motor shoots out to engage the flywheel or ring gear, as its meant to, but then can't disengage once the engine is started. 

Sometimes this can be cured with a swift hit from a hammer on the body of the starter motor. Other times you may need to get your starter rebuilt. Either way, if your engine is running that's mission accomplished here and you can now get onto all the other fun jobs to make the car move like checking wheel bearings and brakes, working out why you have 4 neutrals in your transmission, and more.

I agree there are plenty of crappy mini-trucks around, there are just as many bodgy cars of other styles too. 

Being one of the last styles of vehicle to use a body-on-frame construction, with simple chassis designs and construction techniques makes mid-size utes (as opposed to full-size jiggers like F-series Fords, Chevy Silverados, or Dodge Rams) the perfect vehicle for novice fabricators to get a start on. 

The simple construction means it's easy to swap a bunch of cool engines into these vehicles, while the range of body styles, chassis lengths, and drivetrains (4x4 versus 2WD for the main) means there are plenty of ways to use factory hardware to build a highly individual ride before you get to fabricating one-off parts. 

It was almost a right of passage for young tradies near me to buy their first four-cylinder ute to get to worksites and immediately wind the torsion beam front-ends right down. Pair that to some heavy lowering blocks in the back (with a flipped leaf pack for those truly commited to the Low Life) meant you instantly took a daggy grandpa ute and made it a tar-scraping sled for beer money, and you did it in a morning.

I've got a lot of mates who built mini-trucks but I have to give a shoutout to OGs like Alex Anderson (RIP "Alex Who") as they seemed to knock out cool rides like the ute below (now owned by Mike Finnegan) and they were never scared of driving them huge distances.   

Look at the chassis below and you can see how easy it is to chop it up and rebuild it however you want. Swap those leaf springs out for a custom four-link - the brackets are available and cheap to buy online. If you know someone with a welder you could have it done in a day or two, depending on the style of rear-end you're going for. 

With the cheap purchase price of utes and body parts like tubs, many mini-trucks were the entry point for budding fabricators who weren't scared to chop up their rides to build something cool. They weren't scared of wasting money because it wasn't a deal-breaker to find another chassis and swap that in if something truly catastrophic happened. 

Today some of the top custom car builders in Australia are guys and girls who came through mini-trucking ranks, and now they're building seven-figure show-winning and pro touring machines out of epic classic muscle cars. 

The fact four blokes could take a running, driving ute and have it down to a rolling chassis in a fairly casual morning (despite none of us being highly experienced on this particular model of ute) shows just how simple they are to work on. If you're looking to get into a project car you can do a heck of a lot worse than a late 70s or early 80s Toyota Hilux.

Forget the dribblers on the Internet who talk rubbish about mini-trucks. Most of those booger-eating bin-dwellers forget that it's really easy to bleat on the Internet, but much harder to go out and put your money and time into a project car that you can, later on once all the elbow grease has been burned, will drive you out for delicious kebabs. 

I've been writing for car magazines (and mostly modified car magazines) for more than 23 years now, so I've seen the car scene change an incredible amount but one thing hasn't change: the fact I'm a broke-ass MFer who has champagne taste on a tap water budget. A lot of motoring journalists are in the same boat as me, and we often talk about what makes a rad project car so, here are some cars I reckon the lads missed off their list:

Mazda SP20 Astina - under $5000

The final Mazda 323 was available in sedan (Protege) or hatch (Astina) form, and the range was topped by the SP20 model. Powered by a two-litre in-line four-cylinder with enough grunt to pump a solid Ronnie Rollback, the lightly sports-flavoured SP20 is a fun, well-built car that has a lot of standard features (power windows, in-dash 6-stack CD player, Nardi steering wheel, alloy wheels) that can be purchased for well under $5000 these days. A yellow SP20 Astina was the first new car I bought and it was reliable as clockwork and more fun to drive than I first realised. These cars have since become a staple of cheap, cheerful transport among my friendship circle in the years since, and they are fantastic first cars as they're easy to work on and there are plenty of uprades available.

BMW E34 535i (manual) - under $10,000

European cars have an unfair reputation of being as reliable as a politician's promise, but I've owned more than a dozen European cars in my 25-year driving history and I can say, hand on heart, that as long as you service them on the dot they're fine. The beaut part of everyone freaking out about reliability means classic Euro cars can be had for an absolute steal, and the E34 BMW 5-series is an A-grade example.

I got this factory 5-speed E34 535i for $6k unregistered. Despite it hailing from 1989 it has working power windows, ice-cold A/C, a strong 150kW NA SOHC 3.5-litre in-line 6-cylinder, sweet-shifting 5-speed manual, great handling, and fairly safe crash rating. Even the electric sunroof and cruise control work perfectly. I've got 18-inch M-Parallel wheels to go on it that I scored for $1500 with brand new tyres, plus a second-hand custom exhaust system for $500. This should see me, even with painfully expensive New South Wales rego, on the road for under $10k.

Mitsubishi Mirange (with heaps of sick mods) - under $15,000

At this price point I'm taking a HARD left turn. I met Marty, Turbo Yoda and Mechanical Stig (among many other legends) on the RS Liberty Club, where we'd happily trot through the internet to buy $500 and them bomb them with several times that amount in mods. In fact, if this were 2009 I'd have put a Gen 1 Series 2 Liberty GX in this spot and hand-on-heart recommended you beautiful people spend $14,500 on sick mods for that absolute dunger of a car. However, you can't build a sweet turbo Subaru Liberty for $15k any more... but you can build an epic FWD sleeper Mirage for that amount. 

Taking a page out of Marty's playbook, grabbing a late '90s Mirage and slapping a super-cheap 4G94 four-banger and turbo on a log manifold in it, wiring a basic Haltech package in, and sending plenty of ethanol to it would be a recipe for EPIC amounts of fun on a ridiculously small budget. Heaps of aftermarket support, easily reshelled into another $500 Mirage if ambition overcomes talent, and dunger enough to avoid too much police attention... where is the downside? 

A '70s Holden project - under $20,000

Once you've got 20-gorillas stuffed in your filthy savings account, you're half a chance at making a bona-fide classic car work as a project. The key here isn't the price of the entry point of buying the car and dragging it home; it's having the tools and the workshop consumables to actually make progress on it. Stuff like welders, welding gas, grinding discs, PPE, welding wire and tips all cost actual pesos, let alone the metal you're going to need to weld into it... which you will given all old cars are made from cheese and failure.

If you're an Aussie reading this your $20k budget will handily get you into a 70s Holden Kingswood - most likely a ute. These are BRILLIANT cars to learn how to do classic cars on, as they're simply built, have EPIC aftermarket support, and will look cool as once you sack them in the weeds and slap some fat wheels on them. They drive like wheelbarrows with flat front tyres but you don't get into old tin for their driving dynamics.

Side note: the car pictured is my first car, an HJ Monaro GTS I bought for $3k in 2000. You won't buy even a rusty HJ Monaro for $30k today, I just wanted to run a picture of a car I miss dearly.

Mk6 Golf GTI - under $25,000

We've hit that point where you can buy a car that is sensible enough to make it seem like you have your life in order, but also fun enough to embrace the drooling degenerate who enjoys Royal Nasho runs on a quiet Thursday night. When it comes to Golfs you can upgrade them like a made-to-order kebab, so they're an easy pick for go-fast thrills, but they're also well-built with very comfortable interiors dripping in convenience features like power windows, radar cruise, sports seats and more. 

Golfs can get a bum wrap today but I remember the days when Nissan Silivas/200SXs were regarded as cars only owned by perverts and other undesirables. These machines can transport you to work and date nights reliably, but then take you to a track day and run numbers, too. Come to the dark side, we have cookies.

Nissan R33 GT-R Skyline - around $75,000

At this price point you're going to be buying some contemporary exotica, and of the cars in that description I'd humbly suggest Nissan's supercar-slaying 90s rocket is the best purchase you can make. Sure, GT-R Skylines have an appetite for eating tens of thousands of dollars just staying on the road, but if you buy the right GT-R and don't modify it into a race-only debt-sled you stand a great chance of being able to sample a piece of 90s engineering that will enthrall and terrify you in equal measure. 

A Honda NSX or FD RX-7 is a better point-to-point sports car, but there is an engagement you have with GT-R the others never had. And, while the Internet loves to lambast the R33 as the "boat" GT-R it's actually the GT-R you want; it doesn't have the dash of a VN Commodore and oil pump gears made of fairy floss like the R32, and it's not overpriced thanks to gullible Americans thinking the R34 GT-R is the second coming of Jesus.

An old sh&#tbox- around (probably over) $100,000

Around 30k you can buy something infinitely sensible that will be reliable transport for years to come... or you can buy a project which will be epic once you've dumped a whole house deposit and the better part of a decade into it. These are life decisions at play here and i can say, having done the latter, I don't regret it.  

If you think of it as annual expenditure, building a $150,000 car over a decade is only $15,000 per-year. Break the car build down into sections because that means you're buildig an engine, then a trans and a diff, then you're onto saving for paint, then a trimmer. Once you split the sections of a build up you realise the bills aren't insurmountabile, and you can pay them (especially if you take on multiple jobs). 

I can say this as someone who walked this path, the road is long and tiring but the feeling of rolling your finished build down the road after years of toil is almost impossible to describe. It's worth the late nights, skinned, knuckles, and stress.

But they actually began as an important protest against draconian speed limits. 

The original name for these protests was the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. They were named after Erwin "Cannon Ball" Baker who set a slew of speed records before WW2, crisscrossing America in feats of daring and in the face of wild danger.

The whole shebang was the brainchild of automotive journalist Brock Yates. It all kicked off in a customised Dodge van called Moon Trash II on May 3, 1971 when Yates, fellow Car & Driver Editor Steve Smith, Yates's son,and Jim Williams loaded into the van and drove from the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan (central New York City) to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles as quickly as they could. 

That van, pictured below, which looks ripe for transporting air crew to their flight is Moon Trash II. Could you imagine racing 2500mi across America in that, over 50 years ago?

What began as a celebration of the American Interstate Highway System and the protest against federally mandated 55mph speed limits on those roads quickly drew in others who relished the challenge of crossing the continental USA faster than anyone had before. The fact it was all as illegal as punching a nun only added to the thrill. 

While it has become a symbol of rebellion, freedom and fun, there were only ever five original, sanctioned Cannonball Runs: May 3, 1971; November 15, 1971; November 13, 1972; April 23 1975; and April 1, 1979. 

Stories in Car & Driver and Time magazines became legendary as the public, thirsty for the freedom of the road, latched onto the racers as patriots and heroes who railed against a stupid, kneejerk rule being imposed by a draconian government. 

And then there was Dan f*#king Gurney.  

Gurney is worth a whole blog post here on his own. One of America's greatest racers he was a four-time F1 race-winner, Le Mans 24-hour-winner, twice the runner-up at the Indy 500, a successful racer in NASCAR/Trans-Am/rallying/touring cars, a legendary race car designer, the first person to wear a full-face helmet in F1 and the first person to celebrate a race win by spraying champagne (after his '67 Le Mans win), he was the golden child of American motorsport. And he won the Cannonball Run. 

Driving a Sunoco Blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4 "Daytona", Gurney and Brock Yates smashed the Cannonball record in 1971, running coast-to-coast in just under 36 hours. After being severely delayed by snow in the mountains Yates woke up somewhere in Arizona to Gurney holding the V12 Ferrari somewhere north of 280km/h. 

All up five movies have been made about these legendary cross-country races, but they completely overlook the real motivation behind the real life events. The Gumball Rally has some great car chase action (especially the scene leaving New York and the LA race) but the others are just fun slapstick. 

And these movies have inspired a new generation of coast-to-coast racers. 

In the early 2000s the legend of the original Cannonball Runs saw a new breed of racer wanting to test just how quickly America could be crossed. These modern runs, which have pulled the record down to under 25-hours has seen average speeds of over 100mph (160km/h) and have no affiliation with Brock Yates or the Founding Fathers of the cross-country sprint. 

If the history of the original runs sounds cool to you, I HIGHLY recommend grabbing a copy of Brock Yates's book about each of the original five Cannonball Runs. 

I've got a long history working on old nuggets (you can watch the MCM video on my '64 Pontiac HERE) so here are some tips I've learned when working on old junk.

TAKE PHOTOS

Even when you know the car you're hurling spanners at, take some photos of what you're working on so you have a visual reference in case a previous owner (or shop) has modified the car and left you facing a sparkling stitch-up (like the rear brakes on MOOG's Hilux.

Removing parts from the car as a complete system, where possible, is also a great way to not lose track of all the springs, clips, pins and other silly things old cars are made up from. When doing this, however, make sure you have access to a quality vice that's securely mounted, as you may find some of these bolts are difficult to undo, which leads me to...

STOCK UP ON QUALITY WORKSHOP SPRAYS

Cleaning decades of schmutz off the car and using penetrating sprays is par for the course with old cars.  As cars are used over decades the fasteners holding them together will bind up with dirt, grot, and sometimes rust, so you'll need to carve through all that grease and grime, firstly, and then use a penetrating spray to help cleanly undo these parts. 

If you go in blind, you run the risk of snapping off and stripping the thread out of bolts and nuts, which can set you back days. Once you remove the fasteners you should also consider using taps and dies to chase as many threads on the car as possible - cleaning these up will make the car impossibly easier to put back together and work on in the future as you massively reduce the risk of cross-threaded or stripped bolts and nuts.

 DON'T BE SCARED TO USE SCIENCE

Fire near cars is bad. But sometimes we need the power of heat to undo stubborn fasteners. To remove the Pitman arm on MOOG's Hilux I had to use a combination of heat from a butane torch to shrink Pitman Arm, along with spraying the splined neck of the steering boxitself with CRC Freeze Spray (CLICK HERE). The theory is that cold will contract metal and heat expands it, and this can work on all sorts of fasteners. 

If you do this you should definitely give the threaded sections a good clean with degreaser and a wire brush (or tap/die), just to make sure there's no damage left behind. 

HOT WASH IS THE WAY

If you're used to working on late-model cars it's unlikely you're ready for how dirty old cars are. In fact, there's a whole additional step involving cleaning up parts before you reinstall them (or swap them out), which you should do.

Regular aerosol degreasers are OK at cleaning up really grimey old parts, but nothing beats a warm degreaser in a bath for proper grease-busting power. Talk to your local chemical supplier to find out what is a good washing degreaser that isn't going to strip the fingerprints off your hands (some can do this, even when wearing gloves), and grab some stiff-bristle brushes, a large tub, and PPE, then get to washing all the parts, bolts and nuts you remove so they're ready to be reinstalled all nice and fresh.  

WORK WITH FRIENDS

Having a friend on hand to assist you is a key to working on old cars. Sometimes you can tap them in when you've used up all your brain or arm muscle, but they can also offer alternative insights into how something may come apart or go back together. 

Mostly, it's important to have someone to rage with about the stitch-ups you encounter, or to sympathise when you smash your knuckles into cold steel undoing a stupid bolt. Frustration shared is frustration halved.

Don't fret if you've never heard of the Veskanda C1. This circuit racing monster was built in the mid 1980s to take on sports car racing, up against turbo Le Mans Porsches, powerful GT-class cars, and hand-built tube-frame prototypes, and it was so fast it ended up being forced to race in Europe. 

It began following the epic FIA Group C sports racing cars come Down Under for the 1984 Sandown 1000km event. Cars like the Rothmans 956 Porsches could crack 400km/h and show any closed wheel (and most open-wheel) racing machinery a set of tail lights around a track, and they were in Australia for a proper race, finally. 

Local lad Bernie van Elsen had Adelaide's K&A Engineering (Harry Aust and Dale Koennecke) build him a closed-cockpit sports racing car to CAMS Group A Sports Cars, FIA Group C and IMSA regs. It was called the Veskanda (Van Elsen Special K AND A). At least it wasn't called the Norblett Dog Poop GTP6969, I guess...

Based around a Lola T400 F5000 single seater, it had an aluminium monocoque with lower wishbones and in-board coilovers up front, while the rear ran multi-links and coilovers. The big secret is the C1 featured full ground-effects aerodynamics, which glued it to the track way better than even F1 cars of the day.

This, for the record, is a Lola T400 - not quite the slow nugget you may have pictured.

Power initially came from the 520hp 5L Lola-Chev V8, but this was updated to a 590hp 350ci Chevrolet as class capacity rules were relaxed for 1986. Even the 5L motor had enough herbs to dominate the Sports Car class when the Veskanda debuted midway through the '85 season with John Bowe driving.

Bowe was just a pup at this stage, having come through single-seaters and just started his journey towards his place as a touring car legend. And he was fearless in the brutally fast Veskanda.

In 1986 the Veskanda was one of the most powerful racing cars on Aussie circuits. JB scored pole at every round, set the fastest lap in every race (a class record each time), won every race, and set outright lap records at Calder Park, Amaroo, and Surfers Paradise - records which still stand over 30 years later.

This thing didn't just win; it demolished.

On top of this, the Veskanda wasn't just "Fast For An Aussie Car". Against 956 Porsches, Saubers, TWR Jags, March, Lolas and all sorts of ground-based missiles of Group C racing, the Veskanda proved it had the speed to run with the big dawgs at the FIA WEC round at Sandown in 1988, where it used a 650hp 6L Chevy V8. While it couldn't match the outright pace of the Mercedes Sauber C9s and Silk Cut TWR Jaguars, it also had a fraction of their budget and support.

The issue was that, by 1988, the local sports car series had collapsed under dominance of big dollar cars like the Veskanda and Bap Romano's WE84/Kaditcha. And it left these amazing pieces of machinery nowhere to race.

As the World Time Attack Challenge has brought ridiculously fast Aussie-built cars back onto the world stage, it should remind us of some of the most mind-bendingly fast tinware we've built Down Under - and cars which raced long distance events, carving through traffic in all weather and with people challenging them for track position.

Still, the question of whether the Veskanda is faster than the RP968 time attack Porsche is one i would love to see answered. Nothing can take away from the fact, however, it is the fastest wheel-to-wheel race car Australia has produced.

When we're smashing lap times at the track we get lightweight, strong forged alloys which can hold the G-forces as we corner hard. When we're on a snotty fire trail, we still need top-quality wheels: they need to be strong so they won't bend when we hit a rock, and they need to be able to carry our 4x4's weight.

We were stoked to feature some beaut Aussie ROH Assault wheels on our recent Amarok build [CLICK HERE], and they've just added wheels for the new-generation Amarok and Ranger to their girthy catalogue. 

These wheels don't just look great on 4x4 vehicles. Their alloy construction comes with a lifetime structural warranty and they feature a load rating of up to 1500kg, making them super-strong and perfect for off-road rigs with a GVM upgrade.

The Assault wheels we chose for our Amarok are available in five- and six-stud PCD formats, so they suit some properly heavy duty four-wheel-drives, including Toyota LandCruisers. While we chose the Assault wheels, they have a huge range of designs and fitments on their website, like the new ARC wheel below.

Wrapped in BF Goodrich K03 or Michelin LTX tyres, these wheels from ROH, - an iconic Aussie brand - make your noble off-road steed ready for the trails, beach, snow or tar.

It is important to note from the outset I'm not claiming it to be the best tuner car. When I say "the most iconic tuner car I mean that if you ask a random person what a "tuner car" is, the first car they'd say is an R32 Skyline GT-R (or "Godzilla").

They've been built into some of the wildest road and race cars; won countless tuning competitions; became famous for the tuning potential of the RB26 and the capabilities of the R32 platform; and became infamous in the USA where they were banned from importation for many years. The lore around them, the all-conquering monster from Japan who stomped V8s and supercars alike, reaches far beyond car enthusiasts.  

The R32 GT-R transcends import laws. Millions of kids who'd never seen an R32 Skyline in the flesh grew up racing these beasts on simulators like Gran Turismo. And they were among the fastest cars in that game, making them hero machines long before many of us could drive.   

20 years ago hard-tuned Japanese imports ruled the roads in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Power outputs soared, and these road-registered race cars were soon the most feared machines to spot on the street, even for sportsbikes.

You could park the latest Ferrari, Porsche, or Lamborghini anywhere on an Aussie street and if a heavily modified GT-R turned up the supercar would get zero attention. Long before they became collector cars these were outlaw speed machines.

While they made their bones demolishing corners, Aussies have seen street-registered GT-Rs outrun anything with licence plates. The last 15 years has seen the record for the quickest and fastest road-registered GT-Rs smashed into the low-6-second bracket; and that's faster than any of the V8s doing the rounds on Aussie roads right now. 

JUN II, seen below, reputedly made over 3000hp and was still driving all four-wheels, before it was retired in favour of a new, faster, safer build. It's time of 6.37@224mph is unlikely to be beaten by another road-going Skyline any time soon.

Surely this cements the R32 Skyline GT-R as the most iconic tuner car? If not, what is? Maybe a car linked to one of the highest-grossing film series of all time?

Our R32 GT-R is going through a loving rebuild right now (which is celebrated HERE WITH AN ALL-NEW POSTER), but it's obvious it spent many years being treated like a complete nugget. The GT-R is such a storied, legendary machine it's hard to believe these were just cheap cars to hack into fast track sleds, but that's definitely what happened to ours at some point. 

Thankfully, a follower reached out with a small slice of the Skyline's history in Japan...

Read on below to see the trail of history one reader uncovered, with accompanying auction reports. Have you ever traced the history of a car you've imported?

2018/Nov KMAA "First record I found is from November 2018. KMAA auction is now Mirive-Osaka. You can tell it seems to have been sitting outside with the bad paint all around and moss around the bumper. Here it was still missing the dashboard but running."

2018/Nov Osaka (KMAA) "Second attempt of selling the car. They actually requested the auction exterior and interior wash... and the car got sold for 899,000JPY"

2019/Dec JU Nara "Car was auctioned again with 10km difference but now on plates. This means someone got the car through the 2-year inspection but I have a feeling that [the inspection may have been generous]."

2020/Jan Mirive Osaka (three attempts) "Finally the car showed up again in Osaka. Now repainted and with dashboard. Most likely the state in which you guys got the car. Car was removed from the auctions before selling. They tried to sell it three times in three weeks. One of the more detailed sheets.. People are often saying auction sheets are useless and should not be trusted... while they should be taken as guideline, I feel this is a good example for a very detailed inspection."

Over 20 years ago Ford Australia dropped an all-new turbocharged model on Aussies with the XR6T. Powered by the formidable DOHC 4-litre "Barra" engine it quickly became one of the hottest cars on Down Under roads as it made the big four-door Falcon capable of keeping up with Japanese turbo imports. 

The same as arch rivals Holden had the Holden Special Vehicles arm to sell hotted up Holdens, Ford Australia's Ford Performance Vehicles division had been turning out tweaked up V8 Falcons (mostly wearing gauche body kits) and they soon realised just how good an FPV-tuned XR6T could be... and the perfect way to promote this new model was to go where everyone loved a turbo, rear-drive performance car; drifting.

Based off their new F6 Typhoon (sedan) and Tornado (ute) models, the special build was called the DriF6 and was spearheaded by FPV's communication manager, Andrew Maclean. At that time Amac knew young people were getting into drifting like MOOG gets into tofu burritos, so he set about piecing together a car which wouldn't just look the part but could manji with the best Chasers and Cimas.   

However, because FPV weren't digging into Ford's global motorsport budget they had to build their side-winding Falcon as an epic after-hours budget project. Thankfully, the bare bones of the F6 Typhoon made it a P.K Ripper for this work. 

Boasting a 270kW tuned up version of the Barra, the production F6 had a better intercooler and tune over the factory XR6T, plus it scored a twin-plate clutch to go with a Tremec T56 six-speed manual (no auto was offered on BA-II F6s). There were also big Brembos, a new suspension tune, a mild bodykit, and 18-inch wheels to make the F6 one of the best four-door performance cars on sale anywhere in the world at that time.

So, the DriF6 had some awesome underpinnings. How did it do? Unfortunately, not that well. The absense of any sort of budget meant the lightly modified, former development F6 (which had been used for crash testing before FPV rebuilt it into the drift car) needed a whole bunch of sorting and development that FPV just didn't have the time or funds to do.

After getting a bunch of media opportunities the car was taken to a couple of events where it tried headbutting the concrete walls, and was then sold off by the time the next model came along and had styling updates that made the DriF6 look old.

Where is it now? The good news is the legends at MAXX Performance have bought the car after it somehow ended up in New Zealand. They've brought it back to Australia and are working on bringing it back to its former glory.

Photos of the DriF6 are rarer than chickens with lips, so I've nicked a bunch of pics from the legends at Street Machine. You can read the full write up from Street Machine HERE on their site.

Over 20 years ago Ford Australia dropped an all-new turbocharged model on Aussies with the XR6T. Powered by the formidable DOHC 4-litre "Barra" engine it quickly became one of the hottest cars on Down Under roads as it made the big four-door Falcon capable of keeping up with Japanese turbo imports. 

The same as arch rivals Holden had the Holden Special Vehicles arm to sell hotted up Holdens, Ford Australia's Ford Performance Vehicles division had been turning out tweaked up V8 Falcons (mostly wearing gauche body kits) and they soon realised just how good an FPV-tuned XR6T could be... and the perfect way to promote this new model was to go where everyone loved a turbo, rear-drive performance car; drifting.

Based off their new F6 Typhoon (sedan) and Tornado (ute) models, the special build was called the DriF6 and was spearheaded by FPV's communication manager, Andrew Maclean. At that time Amac knew young people were getting into drifting like MOOG gets into tofu burritos, so he set about piecing together a car which wouldn't just look the part but could manji with the best Chasers and Cimas.   

However, because FPV weren't digging into Ford's global motorsport budget they had to build their side-winding Falcon as an epic after-hours budget project. Thankfully, the bare bones of the F6 Typhoon made it a P.K Ripper for this work. 

Boasting a 270kW tuned up version of the Barra, the production F6 had a better intercooler and tune over the factory XR6T, plus it scored a twin-plate clutch to go with a Tremec T56 six-speed manual (no auto was offered on BA-II F6s). There were also big Brembos, a new suspension tune, a mild bodykit, and 18-inch wheels to make the F6 one of the best four-door performance cars on sale anywhere in the world at that time.   

So, the DriF6 had some awesome underpinnings. How did it do? Unfortunately, not that well. The absense of any sort of budget meant the lightly modified, former development F6 (which had been used for crash testing before FPV rebuilt it into the drift car) needed a whole bunch of sorting and development that FPV just didn't have the time or funds to do.

After getting a bunch of media opportunities the car was taken to a couple of events where it tried headbutting the concrete walls, and was then sold off by the time the next model came along and had styling updates that made the DriF6 look old.

Where is it now? The good news is the legends at MAXX Performance have bought the car after it somehow ended up in New Zealand. They've brought it back to Australia and are working on bringing it back to its former glory.

Photos of the DriF6 are rarer than chickens with lips, so I've nicked a bunch of pics from the legends at Street Machine. You can read the full write up from Street Machine HERE on their site.

The same as arch rivals Holden had the Holden Special Vehicles arm to sell hotted up Holdens, Ford Australia's Ford Performance Vehicles division had been turning out tweaked up V8 Falcons (mostly wearing gauche body kits) and they soon realised just how good an FPV-tuned XR6T could be... and the perfect way to promote this new model was to go where everyone loved a turbo, rear-drive performance car; drifting.

Based off their new F6 Typhoon (sedan) and Tornado (ute) models, the special build was called the DriF6 and was spearheaded by FPV's communication manager, Andrew Maclean. At that time Amac knew young people were getting into drifting like MOOG gets into tofu burritos, so he set about piecing together a car which wouldn't just look the part but could manji with the best Chasers and Cimas.   

However, because FPV weren't digging into Ford's global motorsport budget they had to build their side-winding Falcon as an epic after-hours budget project. Thankfully, the bare bones of the F6 Typhoon made it a P.K Ripper for this work. 

Boasting a 270kW tuned up version of the Barra, the production F6 had a better intercooler and tune over the factory XR6T, plus it scored a twin-plate clutch to go with a Tremec T56 six-speed manual (no auto was offered on BA-II F6s). There were also big Brembos, a new suspension tune, a mild bodykit, and 18-inch wheels to make the F6 one of the best four-door performance cars on sale anywhere in the world at that time.   

So, the DriF6 had some awesome underpinnings. How did it do? Unfortunately, not that well. The absense of any sort of budget meant the lightly modified, former development F6 (which had been used for crash testing before FPV rebuilt it into the drift car) needed a whole bunch of sorting and development that FPV just didn't have the time or funds to do.

After getting a bunch of media opportunities the car was taken to a couple of events where it tried headbutting the concrete walls, and was then sold off by the time the next model came along and had styling updates that made the DriF6 look old.

Where is it now? The good news is the legends at MAXX Performance have bought the car after it somehow ended up in New Zealand. They've brought it back to Australia and are working on bringing it back to its former glory.

Photos of the DriF6 are rarer than chickens with lips, so I've nicked a bunch of pics from the legends at Street Machine. You can read the full write up from Street Machine HERE on their site.

The same as arch rivals Holden had the Holden Special Vehicles arm to sell hotted up Holdens, Ford Australia's Ford Performance Vehicles division had been turning out tweaked up V8 Falcons (mostly wearing gauche body kits) and they soon realised just how good an FPV-tuned XR6T could be... and the perfect way to promote this new model was to go where everyone loved a turbo, rear-drive performance car; drifting.

Based off their new F6 Typhoon (sedan) and Tornado (ute) models, the special build was called the DriF6 and was spearheaded by FPV's communication manager, Andrew Maclean. At that time Amac knew young people were getting into drifting like MOOG gets into tofu burritos, so he set about piecing together a car which wouldn't just look the part but could manji with the best Chasers and Cimas.   

However, because FPV weren't digging into Ford's global motorsport budget they had to build their side-winding Falcon as an epic after-hours budget project. Thankfully, the bare bones of the F6 Typhoon made it a P.K Ripper for this work. 

Boasting a 270kW tuned up version of the Barra, the production F6 had a better intercooler and tune over the factory XR6T, plus it scored a twin-plate clutch to go with a Tremec T56 six-speed manual (no auto was offered on BA-II F6s). There were also big Brembos, a new suspension tune, a mild bodykit, and 18-inch wheels to make the F6 one of the best four-door performance cars on sale anywhere in the world at that time.   

So, the DriF6 had some awesome underpinnings. How did it do? Unfortunately, not that well. The absense of any sort of budget meant the lightly modified, former development F6 (which had been used for crash testing before FPV rebuilt it into the drift car) needed a whole bunch of sorting and development that FPV just didn't have the time or funds to do.

After getting a bunch of media opportunities the car was taken to a couple of events where it tried headbutting the concrete walls, and was then sold off by the time the next model came along and had styling updates that made the DriF6 look old.

Where is it now? The good news is the legends at MAXX Performance have bought the car after it somehow ended up in New Zealand. They've brought it back to Australia and are working on bringing it back to its former glory.

Photos of the DriF6 are rarer than chickens with lips, so I've nicked a bunch of pics from the legends at Street Machine. You can read the full write up from Street Machine HERE on their site.