STAGE WRITE
THE inaugural Rockynats takes place in Rockhampton on 26-28 June, and it’s going to go off. In fact, I reckon it’ll be bigger than the V8 Supercars in Townsville. In particular, I’m looking forward to the no-prep eighth-mile street racing in Quay Street. I’m sure there’ll be some insane street-registered and driven cars levitating the front wheels off the bitumen on street rubber. One thing’s for sure: Rockhampton will be overwhelmed with the influx of revheads. Just about everyone I know has already bought tickets, booked their accommodation ation and will be driving their street machines, hot rods or choppers to the event. It’s going to take an act of god to keep me away.
I rarely watch Supercars on TV anymore and wonder how it’s going to survive with no Holden Commodores. It was sad to hear Holden has dropped the rebadged
Opels from its line-up, but it came as no surprise; in September 2019, 9 Holden had its worst monthly sales figures since 1948.
I really am baffled as to why GM and Mopar don’t see Australia as a viable market for limited runs of right-hand-drive V8 Camaros and Challengers. They could be sold for $60,000 for the base model and $75,000 for the topof-the-range model; they’d shift thousands of them here. Aussies love their rear-wheel-drive V8s and I reckon there would be customers queued up at the counter. It would be like the old days, where you put your deposit down at the Holden dealer and had to wait months for your new car to arrive.
In the US, Ford, GM and Chrysler are doing limited runs of cars like the Dodge Challenger Drag Pak, which was released at the 2019 SEMA show. Only 50 are being made, and they run 7.50s off the showroom floor. How can they justify doing a limited run of 50 cars in the US and not consider doing, say, 5000 right-hand-drive V8s for Australia? It doesn’t add up!
I don’t know how many Mustangs have been sold in Australia, but we must have the highest number per capita here in Mackay. If I go to the supermarket, there are three in the car park. Even grandmothers drive them. The V8 Coyotepowered pony cars are as cool as an iceberg, and with a bit of tweaking go like a bat out of hell. hell But not all Mustangs were born equal.
One of my friends rang me about his Mustang Ecoboost. Wish he’d asked me for advice on what to buy before shelling out his hard-earned cash on the turbocharged four-cylinder ’Stang. His car was in the dealers for the umpteenth time and they told him the fragile motor was terminally ill. His warranty was null and void because he’d put an exhaust tip on it, and the car was going to need an expensive new replacement engine. He rang me to ask about options.
One option was to buy another Ecoboost to swap in and then sell the car to some other poor sucker, but he loves his Mustang so was very reluctant to do that. His second option was to get a written-off V8 Mustang from the wreckers and transplant the internals to turn it into the car he should have bought. But that would cost more than an Ecoboost swap. Another alternative was to buy a Coyote crate engine to repower the pony car, but it was out of his price range.
The fourth option came when I called David Sheehy at CPV Tuning. He suggested throwing in a turbo XR6 mill. Now what a wicked conversion that would be! We’re not aware of anyone who has swapped a Barra into a latemodel Mustang, Mustan but it makes perfect sense and could be done for $5K-$15K depending on how much work you did yourself.
The variable-timing, twinoverhead-cam Ford sixes are being chucked into just about every make and model of car these days. Some think it’s blasphemous to transplant a Ford six into a Holden or Chrysler, Chrysler but to me that’s what street machining is all about. The Aussie-built Barras can reliably make 3hp per cube and can be a bargain at the wreckers. A turbo Xr6-powered late-model Mustang with a properly sorted rear end could easily be a nine-second streeter. And as it’s a Ford engine in a Ford car, even the purists would think it’s kosher.
Modifying late-model cars will be the future of street machining. The price of second-hand Mustangs has dropped and they’re now an affordable basis for a tough street car. Hopefully a seed has been planted. I’d love to hear from a reader who has already swapped an XR6 mill into a late-model Mustang.
ROCKYNATS WILL SEE ROCKHAMPTON OVERWHELMED WITH AN INFLUX OF REVHEADS. JUST ABOUT EVERYONE I KNOW WILL BE DRIVING THEIR STREET MACHINES OR HOT RODS TO THE EVENT