XY UTE
WAYNE’S XY ute was meant to be a tidy tow rig
to haul around his other HT Monaro drag car, but
ended up a beautifully detailed magazine cover car,
nabbing the front page of Performance Street Car,
Oct/Nov 1993. Gorgeous purple paint and polished
Auto Drags hint at the attention to detail lavished
on this build, while a tough but well-mannered
351ci Cleveland was the chosen powerplant for
good streetability.
“The XY ute was a great find,” Wayne remembers.
“It was in such clean, rust-free condition and a
classic shape that I thought it’d make the perfect
tow car for my drag car. Of course I got carried away
and the painter did such a great job that it became
too good to haul a trailer. It became a clean streeter
and show car, and we still have it in the shed. We’re
currently giving it a revamp and rebuilding the
motor, so it should be back on the streets soon.”Volkswagen is amazing, but being a VW some
people don’t appreciate it – it doesn’t make it
any less of a car, and not all Beetle builds are
about patina. We slowed things down when we
started a family, paring back our involvement in
the show scene and getting out of drag racing,
but we used what we owned and kept cars
as more of a social outlet. Not that we rested
on our laurels mind you; I was involved in the
builds of Bill Murfin’s Billet Monaro and Al
‘Bundy’ Lucas’s SMOTY-winning HQ, so I kept
my toes in the water with those cars and also
with the Queensland division of the Australian
Street Machine Federation.
Is there anything you miss about those
foundation years of Aussie street
machining?
The cost to build a car and the value for that
money. I added up the bills at the end of building
GAS69 and it came to 24 grand. Finding quality
tradesmen back then was easier too; don’t get
me wrong, they still exist now, but are just so
much harder to locate. In the early days we all
had mates who knew or were great tradesmen
in the automotive fields, so projects just fell into
place when we worked together. There weren’t
many solo builds – on our own we weren’t
awesome, but put a bunch of us together and
we accomplished great things.
If money, time and motivation were noobject, what would Wayne Pagel build as
his ultimate car?
Definitely another GAS69. I would build a new
version of that Monaro using the quality of
modern parts and processes. I’d of course paint
it black and there’d be no mistaking its heritage- wheels, injector hat, the lot. I’ve already had
artwork done as to how it will look, which is
a cleaner, crisper version of the original; the
hardest part these days is finding a donor HT
Monaro shell, but you never know what may be
around the corner, so I will keep the fire burning
on that idea just in case I get the chance to build
it. I still own the plates too, so that’s a major piece
of its identity taken care of. s
THERE WEREN’T MANY
SOLO BUILDS – ON OUR
OWN WE WEREN’T
AWESOME, BUT PUT A
BUNCH OF US TOGETHER
AND WE ACCOMPLISHED
GREAT THINGS
RIGHT: Wayne, his wife Sandy and his son Reece all
have stand-out rides to their credit and work together
to lighten the load for each other’s projects. “Sandy
has been instrumental in getting our cars finished
over the past 30 years,” Wayne says. “Reece has
grown up with cars, so he has a solid grounding in
what is involved to finish a project. He has worked his
arse off at two full-time jobs and extra part-time jobs
to achieve what he has for a bloke his age. I couldn’t
be prouder of the pair of them”