SHQRP-DRESSED MAN

YOU need to have a special vision to commission a build of the size and scale of SHQRP, and Peter Sharp is exactly this kind of rad cat. What is even more impressive is that he has done this while living in Hong Kong, a world away from the sleepy township of Taree.

Having already restored an HG Premier and deciding to move on from his motorcycle hobby, Peter began the SHQRP project one night as he was browsing ebay.

“I’ve always loved the HQ, and in 2009 I found two Monaro coupes on ebay,” he explains. “This car came from Coffs, and I bought another car from Wyong. The Coffs car was in better condition than the car from Wyong, so we put all the good parts on the Coffs car and sold the Wyong car for what I paid for it.”

While the end result is epic, Peter wasn’t initially out to build the most radical, street-beating HQ two-door that could be dreamed up.

“The wide-body came about because I wanted big wheels,” he says. “However, I didn’t want them sitting under the car with a tubbed look and the associated impact that would have on the rear seats, so this is how it morphed into the car it is today. We thought about how I wanted to use the car and the engineering required to make that work, and then found solutions that worked stylistically to suit.”

So, after eight years, is Peter stoked?

“This car became what it is because of Graeme and his crew’s skills,” he asserts. “Graeme’s great because of his creativity as well as his tenacity to find solutions to problems.”

DOOR HANDLES “The door handles are a popper on top of the door, which is a machined part welded into the door with a flush-fit button. Inside that pocket there’s a pin that connects to the latches, but it has a nylon sleeve with a spring to make its activation nice,” explains Graeme. “It is loosely based on old minitruck techniques, but made much nicer”

WINDOWS “All the glass is stock, but the side glass has been sanded to change the shape so it fits better, as stock HQ glass doesn’t fit great,” said Graeme. “The door weather seals are stock, but the top moulding on the door and rear-quarter weather seal is custom. We went to the wreckers to find something close, then we’d order new ones and cut them up to make them work”