Street Machine

I’D LIKE to start out this month by extending my sincere condolences to the family, friends, team and workmates of Sam Fenech, who we lost in a tragic drag racing accident at Willowbank Raceway recently. The outpouring of grief and appreciation for Sam’s life has been incredible, a testament to the high regard in which he was held. As one of Australia’s leading engine builders and the proprietor of Westend Performance, Sam was someone we often looked to for content for Street Machine. SM scribe Mark Arblaster was among Sam’s many good mates, and you can read his tribute to Sam on page 10 of this issue. Having being forced to bow out last year thanks to a bout of the spicy cough, it was with great anticipation that I attended Street…

ON THE evening of Saturday 7 January, the world lost Sam Fenech in a tragic drag racing accident at Willowbank Raceway. Sam had owned and operated Westend Performance in Western Sydney for the past 25 years and built it into one of the largest high-performance machining and engine shops in Australia. If you’ve had a motor built by Sam, chances are you became mates for life, such was his warm and humble nature. Upon reflection, you would struggle to find a person who has made a bigger contribution to street machining and drag racing on such a personal and business level, having built literally thousands of high-performance engines. Around 25 years ago, I was towing my car to Summernats, and the Clevo in my F-truck stopped dead on the Cumberland Highway at Liverpool.…

2023 SM CALENDAR IS GO! YOU may have noticed that our 2023 calendar wasn’t attached to the 2022 Yearbook issue like it normally would be. Unfortunately, the costs associated with printing the calendar have skyrocketed, so we couldn’t include it with the magazine this time around. But don’t worry, it still exists! We’ve printed off a small batch of calendars that can now be ordered through our merch store for $9.95, which is the cost price for us to produce and mail them. Like all our other calendars, it’s a 13-month deal with a hot feature car front and centre each month. You can order one now at shop.streetmachine.com.au, and we’re hoping we’ll be able to once again offer the calendar with the Yearbook mag as usual in 2023. NO PREP KINGS…

THE Laurie Starling Memorial Scholarship Award began in 2015 as a way to financially assist up-and-coming young car fabricators and designers and help them further their careers. Named in honour of the late car crafter and Street Machine Summernats judge Laurie Starling, the scholarship comprises $4000 as well as a heap of tools and equipment from Milwaukee. This year’s scholarship was awarded to 25-year-old Sydneysider Dean Fiumara, in recognition of his efforts with his fledgling design company, 3DFX Engineering, where he has worked on projects for PAC Performance, Memphis Hell, Lowe Fabrications, Empire Elite Performance Parts and many more. The award also considered Dean’s work as a fabricator and designer for Lowe Fabrications. Our recent cover car KING GRP A, Ray Elia’s wildly modded VN Commodore SS Group A tribute (SM, Dec…

IT’S A GENUINE 1971-72 VH CHARGER R/T THAT WAS A SPEEDWAY CAR AT SOME POINT CHOPPED 2022 was a ripper event filled with awesome machinery, and amongst it all, we spotted Jed Coinu’s ex-speedway VH Valiant Charger R/T. Naturally, we had to find out more about how a young buck had come to own such a cool old thing and got it running again for this awesome event. What’s the story behind the Charger? It’s a genuine 1971-72 VH Charger R/T that was a speedway car at some point. I found it in a regional Victorian town while on a camping road trip for New Year’s Eve. It was sitting out the front of a panel shop and no one was there, so I left my phone number, got a call back around…

LAST issue we began our wander through the formative years of David Dann’s motorcycle and car journey. The skills and knowledge gained from those earlier projects have borne fruit in a series of full rebuilds over the past four decades, a number of which have traversed the path less travelled. “I’ve long been my own worst enemy, undertaking projects on cars that are rare to our shores and often with oddball drivetrains, that I then of course have to make as powerful as possible,” David laughs. “Any normal person would simply build a 10-second bigblock Chev, an LS or the like, with parts you can pretty much buy at your local 7-Eleven. But not me – I have to do it the hard way!” 01: DRIVING a 400-cube 1968 Pontiac GTO…