Ohiden Stampalia is no stranger to last-minute construction of Smyrnatus, and his latest creation is undoubtedly the wildest.
of the Street Machine Summernats 32 He, Anthony Page and a couple of other good mates found a farm HJ wagon and drove it 7000km to Canberra for the ‘Nats’. Although Aiden didn’t drive the LX for this event, there’s plenty of cool last-minute stuff to grab him.
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The 1976 LX sedan is originally from Bali, sold new there and then makes its way back to Australian soil in the hands of one of Aiden’s colleagues. This meant that when Aiden bought it, he got an LX with plenty of free ventilation. “Basically the whole floor pan was rotted, but since I planned to build a whole chassis for the car, I didn’t care anyway,” he said.
Aidan did exactly that, completely rebuilding Tori’s guts from the ground up. “I built the entire chassis myself, and I fabricated everything new in the radiator panel,” says Aidan. Made it myself,” he said.
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He completed a bunch of fab work before putting the car into storage until August last year. That’s when he realized he had to start cracking the whip if he was going to get Torana to the ‘Nats, and the building really kicked into gear from there.
Fast forward to the week of Christmas and Eden’s plans took a nasty turn, when the Dodge NASCAR engine destined for the Torana found itself lunched on the engine dyno after something came loose. “I thought we were all gone when that happened, but my teammates weren’t going to let me give up that easily,” he said. “A mate of mine said he’d let me borrow the LS1 from his VU ute, so here it is now with the 6/71 in it.”
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The car was painted just nine days before the off date for the ‘Nats, and more curveballs piled up as they got closer. “We found out a few days after we left that we needed a bonnet and exhaust for any outings, so we hacked off some Pacemaker exhaust bits for what we now call the ‘Pacemaker’ exhaust, and Found an old bonnet that had a blower in it. The hole we painted at the last minute,” said Eden.
The bonnet was painted on New Year’s Eve and the boys didn’t hit the road from Perth until 2am on the Monday morning of ‘Nets Saturday, driving through the night to Canberra in time for the Burnout Masters Wild Card Shootout. had reached Thursday afternoon.
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Despite the mad rush to get the car done, Aidan says the Torana performed well all weekend. “I caught fire in a shootout that cost me some damage, but the car itself ran mint all weekend without any problems,” he says. “It has no real insulation so it fills with smoke quickly, and for some reason when I put the brakes on the pad it veered to one side, but other than that it was fine.”
Aidan made it to the Burnout Championship final at the weekend, and says he has big plans for Torana for next year’s ‘nuts.
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“Obviously it was a bit burnt over the weekend, but the plan now is to go over it, paint the bottom and hopefully get it into the top 60 at the show hall next year,” Eden said. Will go,” Eden said. “We’re going to go through the car and tweak it, and get that Dodge Nascar engine in it.”
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