GARRETT MATTHEWS – HQ ONE TONNER

GARRETT Matthews hails from the South Island, home of Rangiora’s awesome Muscle Car Madness show. His Ls1-swapped Tonner, DSPRNG, put on a great show, despite kissing the wall and bending the custom tray something major! He’d had to rip off the car’s timber rear deck to be allowed into Australia, replacing it with plywood sheeting once he made landfall.

Looks like your Tonner’s seen a bit of action. How’d it come to be?

I bought the car as a $100 rig seven or eight years ago, and started with a 283 small-block Chev, then just kept improving it. It’s had about seven motors to get to this stage, with different mods along the way. There were 283s, a 305, and a 406, all with different cams and stuff. Then we went to the LS and it started getting serious!

What’s the combo now?

Llama Engineering in Wellington built the short block, and me and my mates did the rest. It’s a TBS blower and twin-carb manifold with Quick Fuel carbies, and it runs a Kelford cam. There was lots of modding and fab to get it all together.

Aside from smooching the tray on the barrier, have you had a ball?

It’s been awesome. We love the people here, and the weather’s been too good for us – we got pretty sunburnt! The cars here are just next-level. This was just built to look the part, and performance came with it, but it’s nothing compared to those cars out there [on the pad]. It’s got a stock crankshaft, and the limiter’s set to 6500rpm, so that’s the limitation of the car. It’s five years old and unopened, and we do a lot, so it’s due for a freshen-up. It’s better to do it now than wait until it goes bang. We’ll set the limiter to 7500 or 8000, just to get on par with the guys here!