ENGINE: It’s all neat and tidy
under the bonnet, even though
none of the wiring has been
hidden; even the battery is in
the stock position. Mark wanted
to be a little bit stealthy and
painted the bulk of the engineblack. The CHI single-plane
intake was machined down so
that everything would fit under
the bonnet. Mark says he might
have sacrificed 20hp or so, but
when you’ve got almost 650 to
play with, does it really matter?A
LOT of the cars we feature in SM are comprehensive rebuilds
where the owner has taken a worn-out old car, completely
stripped it and then spent years turning it into their
interpretation of the perfect street machine. But sometimes
it’s easier to get something that’s already had a lot of the hard
work done and then tweak it to your own personal tastes.
Often it can lead to a bit of a stigma, where the car will always be
referred to as “so-and-so’s old car”, but in the case of Melbourne-
based Mark Psihountakis’s XW GT, that was never really an issue.
“I bought the car from Sydney about 10 years ago,” Mark begins.
“It was already painted, the interior was there but I put new carpets,
new roof lining and door trims in. It was a Top Loader car with a
400hp 351ci Clevo, but I fully transformed the car into what it is now.”
What it is now is a very tough street cruiser, and while Mark says he
didn’t really build it with drag racing in mind, it should be capable of
a mid-10-second pass thanks to the transformation of the driveline,
an overhaul that became necessary after the old 351 developed a bit
of a rattle in the valvetrain. “I drove it for about 12 months before the
engine shit itself, so I took the car to Competition Engines and built
MARK’S XW GT