EVIL INTENT

> PETER NUSSER'S XR UTE PACKS 1250 HORSES' WORTH OF TURBO-BARRA HELL, AND IT'S HEADED STRAIGHT FOR DRAG CHALLENGE

- KIAN HEAGNEY

LIKE many, it didn’t take much for Peter Nusser to catch the Drag Challenge bug and start scheming a way to take on the five-day leviathan himself. But it required a major revamp of his beloved XR Falcon ute.

“I went along to the last five-day event with a mate as a spectator, and straight away I wanted to build a car to take,” Peter says. “Turbo stuff looked to be the way to go, so I started looking into doing a Barra conversion.”

Peter comes from a Ford family and has owned the ute for around 10 years, saving it from a date with the crusher. At the time he got his first taste of Drag Challenge, the XR was still rocking its 600hp, 363ci Windsor, which sucked methanol through a 6/71 blower and had run a PB of 10.2. “It was more of an old-school muscle car build,” he says. “Gary Myers had a 6/71 blower, so I had to have one on my car someday!”

Peter put his motivation for a Drag Challenge weapon to good use during the COVID lockdowns last year, kicking off the XR’s turboBarra makeover at the workshop he co-owns with his brother, Azzi & Nusser Service Centre in Wodonga, Victoria.