DESIGNATED DRIVER

IT MIGHT BE AN ELITE-LEVEL STUNNER, BUT THIS 580HP EH HOLDEN FROM MASKELL’S CUSTOMS & CLASSICS WAS BUILT TO DRIVE

- JAIN KELLY

HAVING the loose fruit in your pocket to buy your dad the car he’s always wanted is something many street machiners would love to do, and Heath Madgwick actually got to do this for his father, Jack. However, the big reveal didn’t quite follow the Hollywood script many might expect.

“My mother and I bought it for my dad as a birthday present surprise, as he’d always dreamed of owning an EH but could never afford one,” Heath says. “We gave him the car on his birthday, and he was over the moon when he laid eyes on it. But he had a bit of a poke around it, took it for a drive and came back a few minutes later and told us he didn’t think much of the car’s driveability; he’d forgotten what a ’64 Holden is like to drive! I took it down to Greg the next day and we had a chat about building it as a real driver.”

The Greg that Heath mentions is none other than Greg Maskell of Maskell’s Customs & Classics in Shepparton, the bloke responsible for a flood of killer hand-built cars and restorations.

“The EH was tidy, but Greg and I had ideas on how to make it better, make it fit in with the other cars we have in the family,” Heath says. “Dad actually bought another small-block EH about eight months ago that is pretty impressive, and I have a couple of blown HG Premiers; one has a little 900hp, 434ci SBC, the other has a 427ci LSX stroker making over 1000hp. I also have an 800hp, 548ci big-block in my ute, UP1T.”

With a shed full of heavy hitters like that, you can understand how an HR front end and 192ci red with triples wasn’t going to cut it for Heath and Jack.

However, as it turns out, Heath and Greg had more strongly held opinions than Jack on how the car should progress, leaving Jack to come up with the car’s name: NOSAY.