Hangin’ Tuff

THE MEANEST CARS AT SUMMERNATS LOITERED WITH INTENT ON TUFF STREET

SKID Row may have eaten into the stretch of Summernats real estate that’s long been known as Tuff Street, but the fact that your senses are now assaulted by the unrelenting sound of blown bent-eights and air that’s thick with burnout smoke seems appropriate.

After all, Tuff Street is the place to be if you want to scope out the toughest mechanical monsters at Street Machine Summernats. These cars push and indeed exceed the boundaries of what can be done with a street car, which is why judging is divided into three classes: Street Tuff, for street-registered cars that might be mini-tubbed; Pro Tuff, for more hardcore pro street-style cars with full tubs; and Comp Tuff, for dedicated race cars.

Tuff Street cars aren’t judged on their interiors and undercarriages like their Elite brethren, because there’s an understanding that they are built and used for a certain purpose. As Tuff Street judge and past winner Mark Hayes put it, “They could have a full Nick Scali interior and it wouldn’t matter one bit.”

Cars that were on the judges’ radar at Summenats 35 included James Souvleris’s newly rejuvenated, insanely tough, blown methanol Hemi-powered GONUTS VY ute; Matt Bell’s Tuff Street-staple FAT G Monaro; BYE Performance’s blown and tubbed Ls-swapped BMW 328i, REFINED (SM, Jun ’22); and Jake Myers’s iconic Mustang, to name but a few.

However, in ascending order of toughness, the class winners in Tuff Street this year were Nick Knight’s HQ sedan in Street Tuff, Frank Russo’s 100 per cent street-legal tubbed and bigblocked VC Commodore SL/E in Pro Tuff, and George Sotirovski’s profoundly mental blown and injected LX hatch in Comp Tuff.

And the overall winner? That was Frank’s VC Commo. “It was overwhelming, to be honest,” Frank beamed. “I wasn’t expecting to win that gold trophy. The car is all engineered and registered; you’ve got to get it right, I reckon.”

We reckon Frank got it right, and so too did the Tuff Street judges.