“IT DID PRETTY WELL ON THE DYNO: 685NM WITH A HEALTHY 350 HORSES"

You have to admire how this project came about, and owner Damien Di Martino admits he was in a bit of trouble. He'd rashly promised to build the car in time for his sister-in-law's wedding, which set a dangerously tight deadline. The Valiant came a very close second in our popular vote. Damien takes up the story...

This car was a 30th birthday present to myself – it was the right time to get something interesting in the shed. It was black when I bought it and was a good runner, but after a couple of years I wanted to personalise it and decided to give it the full strip and rebuild treatment.

It was a pretty comprehensive job. We stripped it back to bare metal, pulled the motor, gearbox and diff out and rebuilt all that.

The motor is a 318 Fireball. A previous owner had a 440 in it at some stage, but we decided to stick with the 318 and warm it up a little. We ported and polished the heads, threw in some forged pistons, added a stage three cam and a double pumper four-barrel Holley up top. Ignition is by MSD. That set-up was matched to a set of extractors with twin two-and-a-quarter inch pipes and a set of Magnaflow mufflers.

I really wanted a strong cruiser, not a drag car, and had it set up for low-end grunt. It did pretty well: 685Nm at the rear tyres on the dyno, with a healthy 350 horses. It's a reasonably light car, so that's plenty.

Behind that it has a rebuilt Torqueflite 727 transmission with a 2800 stall torque converter, which seems to suit it well. The 355 diff was rebuilt along the way and the package pretty much meets my expectations, though it can be a bit of a handful in the wet. You've got to be extra light on that accelerator.

Mechanically the car has been kept as simple as possible, so there's no air-conditioning or power steering. Plus, I've fitted an electric radiator fan, so there's minimal drag on the engine.

The big debate was over the colour. For me the whole theme of this car was mostly old-school with just a hint of modern about it, such as the paint. Once I saw a Poison Ivy green colour scheme on a modern Holden, I knew that's what I wanted. My painter, Nick Cuzzupi, was dead against green – he'd