Living The DREAM
GRANT MAHONEY HAS BEEN DRIVING THIS CAR IN HIS HEAD SINCE HE WAS A TEENAGER. NOW HE’S BUILT THE REAL DEAL
FOR custom car fans, Grant Mahoney’s extensively modified HQ Holden wagon is a welcome blast of fresh air in this era of obsessive nut-and-bolt restos. Not that Grant is totally adverse to restorations: “My previous project was a matchingnumbers HX Sandman panel van,” he says. “So I couldn’t stuff around with that too much, could I?” he laughs. “So I figured I’d sell that and get stuck into my dream custom wagon.”
The project started not with a car, but with a pair of HQ guards. “I was staring at the guard flutes on the Sandman and thought I could do better,” says Grant. “I was bored after finishing the HX, so I got some guards and made my own flutes. Then I needed a car to bolt them to!
“I’d been planning this car for years – it’s all the things I wanted to do when I was 18,” Grant says. “All these ideas have been spinning around; the wagon is almost exactly as I first imagined it.”
Grant grew up watching his dad Bryan fix and flick cars that he’d bought at auction, and of course he played around with cars himself too. Then adult stuff took over. “I had company cars, had kids, worked to get us to where we are,” he says. “And now I’m into cars again!”
The HQ was bought only a couple of years ago for a mere 300 bucks. “It was in a backyard out at Reservoir,” Grant explains. “The family had had it from new and it ended up being used as a parts car. The mum eventually wanted it gone so she could grow more tomatoes. I saw it on Gumtree, thought it deserved a second chance and grabbed it.”
The wagon was little more than a bare-bones shell, and Grant set about resurrecting it in his humble two-car garage with glee. After some rusty floorpans were replaced, the body was pulled off the chassis and wire-brushed back to bare metal, strengthened with HZ braces, modified to suit Grant’s airbag plans and coated in satin black.
The body went up on jack stands and Grant spent more than a few weekends flat on his back so that the undercarriage could be tidied up in a similar manner to the chassis.
To get the extra-low stance he was after, Grant raised the trans tunnel and boot floor. The rear end was mini-tubbed so he could get the rubber sitting just where he wanted it.
The fitment of the airbag system was planned with military precision. A cradle supporting the
GRANT IS PROUD OF THE FACT HE DID MOST OF THE WORK AT HOME, MODIFYING AND PREPPING THE BODY FOR PAINT
twin air tanks, compressor and electronics drops into the underfloor area. All this airbag gear shares space with the battery, spare wheel and windscreen washer bottle. What if he gets a flat battery, you ask? Grant ran a couple of girthy battery cables to the front and set up a jump point for emergency or maintenance charging.
Plenty of thought and effort went into the interior, too. The bum-holders are four WB seat frames with the headrests removed, split by a full-length custom centre console. The dash is also WB, although heavily modified and fitted with a carbonfibre-look cluster and Speed Hut gauges.
“The interior colour is buckskin,” Grant says. “Anyone can do black. For the outside I also considered a few colours – green, orange – but I decided on this lovely burgundy. It’s a classic combination that’s sort of inspired by prestige European cars. It’s the colour I had in my head when I was 18.”
Grant is proud of the fact he did most of the work at home, modifying and prepping the body to the stage where it was ready for a final block-down and paint, those two tasks taken on by Adam at Hi-gloss Bodyworks in Knoxfield using Debeer paint in that lovely Merlot Pearl Metallic.
Just about the only other task he farmed out was some trim work to Croydon Motor Trimming. “I can’t sew a stitch,” Grant admits.
The driveline is pretty simple. Up front is a detailedto-the-max Chev crate motor that runs to a TH400 auto and a nine-inch diff with 3.25 cogs and a Truetrac limited-slip centre.
The sensational HQ wagon has racked up 3500 kays since it was finished last summer, doing exactly what Grant built it to do: cruise. “Why would you build a cool car and then not be able to drive it?” he reasons. “It keeps me off the street and out of trouble. And the wife always knows where I am!”