Harry’s Cafe de Wheels
7:30pm
Hungry and desperate to clear the remnants of tyre rubber from my tear ducts, myself and photographer Easton grab some dinner. Luckily, if you’re in Sydney, this means that the immersion into car culture doesn’t need to stop – you just go to Harry’s Café de Wheels.
Set up in the late 1930s, these world-renowned pie and hotdog stands have served everyone from Richard Branson to Elton John. They’re worth a visit just for the signature ‘Tiger’ pie (delicious meat wrapped in fluffy pastry with mashed potato, mushy peas and gravy on top) but Harry’s in Liverpool, West Sydney, also acts as some sort of epicentre for petrolhedonism.
Even on a cold Wednesday night, the car park is full of cars and owners incontinent with creativity. In minutes the Trackhawk is sandwiched by a diverse spread of cars. At one end, ‘Rat Piss’ – a 1948 rat rod Chevy Maple Leaf truck that was pulled out of a shed and put together by its owner Jeff and his daughter. It’s now his daily. Next, a 1923 Model T – effectively a V8 attached to a bucket. “It’s pretty wild,” Tony, the owner says. Weighing only 890kg but having 600bhp, I don’t doubt him.
Then there’s the one-off 1975 Toyota Celica GT, aka the ‘Japanese Mustang’. The owner has had it since new but where a 1.6-litre, 90bhp four-cylinder used to live now sits an 840bhp, tri-fuel Ford V8 running off race fuel, LPG and nitrous. Finally, the pièce de résistance: the Lebanese Harleys. With both owners and bikes dripping in precious metals, it’s not hard to see why Australia’s gold rush has ended. Finished with 26in front wheels, 305-section rears, turbos good for 200bhp and £80k sunk into them, they’re works of art. And highly illegal. “But it’s a passion, bro,” their cagey owners say, “so worth the risk.” But there is somewhere where everything I’ve seen today is legal…