Fresh Cream

IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE IT FROM THE OUTSIDE, BUT DELUXE ROD SHOP'S LATEST BUILD ISN'T JUST A BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED HUMPY. IT'S A FINELY DETAILED PRO TOURING MASTERPIECE

-  IAIN KELLY

TRENDS in modified-car culture ebb and flow, but something that has never waned in popularity is a finely detailed street car packing later-model engineering.

Steve and Kathleen Alldrick's Deluxe Rod Shop is renowned for building such exquisitely finished, re-engineered masterpieces. Their track record of unveiling cars at events like Street Machine Summernats, Motor Ex and the Victorian Hot Rod Show speaks volumes for the quality of their work, but even Steve was taken aback by how their latest build was received when it broke cover at Summernats 34.

"I really thought people would think it was just a nice old Holden," he laughs. "We were unloading it in the Elite Hall on the Wednesday and had all these people like Mick Fabar and Peter Fitzpatrick coming up telling us they thought it was the best car we'd ever built."

The car in question is Kevin Baird's FX Holden, which appears at first glance like a stocker riding on plus-sized wheels. However, there is a mind-boggling amount of engineering hidden under the handmade panel skins.

"Kevin waited a year to get his car into the shop, and when I went to look at it I ended up poking holes all through it, and he was like, 'Oh'," Steve laughs. "He'd got it from country SA and paid okay money, but it was just rooted. Kevin is a farmer, and the FX was so bad he was selling cows to pay for all the metal we had to put into it!"

Once the humpy was parked in Deluxe's Yea, Victoria headquarters, the team wasted no time in gutting it and setting out a plan to get rid of the rot and work on some mechanical upgrades. "The goal was to have it identifiable as a humpy Holden, so it started off that Kevin wanted the rust fixed, a 202 chucked in and a Rod-Tech front end fitted," Steve explains. "That became a 308, and then a small-block Chev. I told him how much we'd have to cut to fit the SBC and that an LS is 40mm shorter."