Not The KINGSWOOD!

TED BULLPITT WOULD BE MORTIFIED BY JAY JORGENSEN'S nitrous-huffing. LS-POWERED HK KINGSWOOD

- ANDREW BROADLEY

THERE are few things in this world more iconically Australian than a Holden Kingswood. TV's Ted Bullpitt would have you believe that the humble Kinger is the finest car ever to grace Australia's highways and byways, but as he's something of a purist, we're not sure Ted would approve of Jay Jorgensen's example. We certainly do, however, and if you don't mind, we'd like to tell you a little bit about it.

When Jay came to own the HK, it was an original six-cylinder car wearing its factory Ermine White paint, but it was a bit of a mess. It had been disassembled for a resto, so it was the automotive equivalent of a 1000-piece Lego set without any instructions.

"It was all in pieces, with rust in the usual spots - around the windows, beaver panel and lower guards. Nothing too bad, though," Jay says. "Most of the original Goya Red interior was there and in decent shape, though I did get the front bench redone. I got an old-school local painter to do the custom Bahama Copper paint, then put it back together with the original 186 and drove it around for two years. Then I decided to do the transformation and put a V8 in it."

Jay nabbed an LS3 as a runner from a local wrecker and had Aaron from ASG Motorsports treat it to a rebuild. Once it was dropped in the car, Jay cruised the Kinger for a while until he melted a piston, so he then had good mate Dan Ward build a forged bottom end retaining the factory crank but adding Spool rods and slugs, along with a VCM 13 camshaft and a set of CNC-ported heads from ASG to spice things up a little.