ARMS RACE

MARIO BUSLJETA'S MONARO IS A SIX-SECOND-CAPABLE NUCLEAR WARHEAD WITH A BIG-BLOCK UP FRONT, TWIN TURBOS OUT BACK, AND CLOSE TO 3000HP ON TAP

-  LIAM QUIRK

MARIO Busljeta remembers the exact moment he was inspired to build a wildly overpowered street machine. It was back in December 2019, when he saw Daniel Szabolics's insane HQ Monaro on the cover of Street Machine. His eyes were suddenly opened to the possibilities.

"I thought, 'Shit, a street car with that kind of horsepower would be neat!"" Mario exclaims. "Initially I wanted to build an HZ wagon; I even bought the car. But my sons David and Marinko, and Andy and Damo at Adelaide Motorsport Fabrication, convinced me that doing all the chassis and fab work to something so plain wasn't the right idea. They encouraged me to build a muscle car, so I bought an HQ Monaro."

The coupe Mario bought was already a stout streeter. It had been freshly painted in the silver-and-orange GTS combo that so many Queys rock, and boasted a twin-turbo big-block under the bonnet.

"I drove it around for a few weeks, knowing in the back of my mind that we were going to build it into something more serious," Mario says. "In that time, I got so sick of the hot air from the turbos in the engine bay coming out through the cowl scoop, across the windscreen and in through the windows."

Thankfully for him, the team at Ad Mo Fab had a solution. "I called in to see the car one day and the boys had done the rear clip," Mario recalls. "I took a look under the car, saw how much room had been opened up and knew immediately we were going to rear-mount the turbos."