Wild Cherry

WITH ITS 550RWHP LSX, MANUAL GEARBOX AND TRAY-LOAD OF CLEVER TRICKS, DARYL O’SULLIVAN’S HK UTE DEFINES AUSSIE PRO TOURING

- IAIN KELLY

DARYL O’Sullivan didn’t mean to create an Elitelevel car when he began the build on his HK ute – it just happened that way. “It was built to be driven, but these things can get out of control,” says Daryl of the handmade, all-steel, air bagged pro tourer known as ABADHK. “It was just meant to have the rust fixed, be painted and have an LS swapped in. But as we did things, it just led to the snowball effect and everything was elevated.”

We last saw Daryl’s HK ute (which he bought as his first car at the age of just 15), in the November 2018 issue of SM, where it was resplendent in raw metal. This allowed us to see many of the amazing yet subtle modifications done to the iconic Holden by Chris Wells and his team at BMV Engineering on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

To start with, a smoothed Y-frame was welded into custom narrowed chassis rails to form a full chassis, and the sills were extended through the bottom of the front guards. Other work included a welded-up tailgate; front and rear roll pans; the door quarter-glass getting the heave-ho; filled-in cowl vents; custom wheel tubs in the smoothed tray; a full sheet metal floor; smoothed engine bay; and a bespoke fuel tank and filler packed under a door in the custom tray floor.

Welding the front end to the rest of the car to form a solid monocoque was partly for aesthetics but also for a solid engineering platform, given Daryl’s desire to rack up plenty of road miles with an angry LSX V8 up front.