GREEN WITH Envy

THAT’S THE REACTION DARREN YOUNG’S NEAT-AS-A-PIN, 355 V8-POWERED HD HOLDEN TENDS TO INSPIRE

- CARLY DALE

AS DARREN Young surveys his uberslick 1965 HD Premier, a smile creeps across his face. “To have built almost every part of this car myself has been very rewarding,” he says. “I’m pretty chuffed with how it has turned out.”

The fact that it’s gracing these pages proves we agree. And while Darren’s skills as a qualified panel beater and spray painter are apparent throughout, it’s the memories made and experience gained during his Holden’s long transformation that matter most to him.

Darren’s adventures with the HD began 18 years ago, when he chanced upon it for sale for next to nix: “I jumped on it – it was a massive $2400,” he laughs. “The car was painted gold, so I gave it a quick change of colour over the next six days to a solid shade of green.”

Powered by a 202ci with Trimatic and with a lowered stance and a set of mags, the HD soon became a sweet turnkey daily.

Over the following seven years, Darren turned up the wick by adding an SC14 Toyota supercharger, before a rebuild of the old red motor saw the blower swapped out for a cheap AR70 turbo. “It went hard,” says Darren of the hairdryer-assisted combo. “But the supercharger looked lonely on the shed floor, so after a lot of nutting out, she became twin-charged, running the turbo through the carby, which was on top of the SC14.”

The home-built monster never saw a dyno, though it was good for a mid-eight on the eighth-mile. But the twin-charged affair proved temperamental: “It was somewhat unreliable, blowing head gaskets quite often,” Darren admits.