THE RUST WAS SO BAD I
PROBABLY SHOULD’VE FOUND
ANOTHER SHELL AND STARTED
AGAIN, BUT BEING FACTORY
BLACK I PERSISTED
T
HE motivation for Stephen Barrie’s LX Torana build was
pure and simple. “I built the car in memory of my brother-in-
law, Robert, who was a mechanic as well as an enthusiastic
and creative inventor, and manufacturer. We were always
going to do a project together, but he passed away from
cancer. It was devastating. So, I said to my wife Helen:
‘Life’s too short; we need to start that project.’”
With that, Stephen set his sights on an LX SS Torana hatchback- the same model he had as his first car. It took yonks to find the
right one, though it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“I bought it subject to registration, but it didn’t pass, with a lengthy
list of items to be fixed. Then as the bloke took it to the mechanic,
the engine blew up!” Stephen laments. But he stuck with it and the
price was promptly renegotiated before the LX was shipped from
Melbourne to Canberra.
Thankfully, there was one saving grace. “As it was painted orange,
the owner didn’t realise that it was factory black, and neither did I
until one of my fellow Canberra Torana Club members checked the
tags – it’s rumoured that only a handful of factory black hatches
were produced!”
With fresh enthusiasm, Stephen began work on his new
acquisition. “The more I looked, all I could see was rust bubbles
under the paint. I figured I may as well strip it all down, blast it and
see what I’m left with.”
Stephen owns and runs Sodablast Canberra; a handy thing
when doing up a car. “The rust was so bad I probably should’ve
found another shell and started again, but being factory black I
persisted,” he sighs. Replacement panels were sourced before the
Torry headed to Bruce Ingram to be patched back together. This
included new floors, as well as an enlarged trans tunnel to suit the
six-speed Stephen was keen on.
It’s difficult to think of that rusty, clapped-out Torry as being the
same car that now graces these pages, but as most stories go,
things got well out of hand. “I didn’t plan to build a high-end show
car, it just turned out like that,” Stephen admits. “It became a money
pit and went to the point of no return. My wife dubbed it the Black
Bitch, as it was like I was having an affair!”
Each decision upped the ante, and Stephen’s not a half-arsed
kinda guy. Take the engine for instance. With the dead 350-cuber
ripped out, he set about sourcing a beefed-up Holden V8 as a
replacement. Yet not just any old eight – nope, he wanted a stroker
with stack injection. Kit Hunter pieced together the 347rwhp, VT
roller block, which is packed with a Harrop 355 stroker crank and
a COMP cam, with the cast heads flowed to 600hp. Above is a
DC&O injection manifold topped by eight glistening alloy 50mm
stacks. “There’s lots of bling – my mates don’t call me Captain
Bling for nothing!” Stephen laughs. “If it wasn’t black or shiny, it
didn’t belong in the car.”
Behind is a Tremec Magnum T56 manual with Centreforce clutch
and Quick Time housing. A Mark Williams 3½-inch tailshaft linksFIRST!STEPHEN bought his first LX (above) when he was 17 years old.
“I lived in Yass and there was a guy who updated his cars
every couple of years, so it was like brand new,” he says. “It
was a genuine SS LX hatchback in Royal Plum, running the
Holden V8. It was in original condition, with the hubcaps on it.
“I had it for around five years and during that time they were
starting to make the A9Xs so I had a complete flare kit put
on it. I also bought a hatch-hutch so we used to camp in the
back of it. My girlfriend just loved it – my mates would be in
a three-man tent and it’d be raining, and we’d be up high and
dry with the stereo blasting!
“I ended up trading it in for a Commodore, but it was one of
the best cars I ever had.”