BAD TO THE BONE

THANKS TO HIS SON, ANDY, THE LATE MARIO COLALILLO’S 39 PLYMOUTH COUPE IS BACK ON THE ROAD AND STILL ONE OF THE BADDEST HOT RODS IN THE COUNTRY

- BORIS VISKOVIC

GETTING this 1939 Plymouth coupe back on the street was the father-andson project Andy Colalillo sadly never a got the chance to do with his dad, legendary hot-rodder and customiser Mario Colalillo. Not that Mario, who passed away in 2018, had been sitting around watching the grass grow after retiring the car from drag racing duties; he was just too busy building incredible custom cars like 'King Cad' (SM, Sep '03) and 'Wild Cad' (SM, Oct '10), while always thinking about what he was going to create next.

There's no doubt some of that has rubbed off on Andy, who has a pretty impressive collection of cars himself and carries on the Colalillo tradition of building super-cool hot rods and customs. That legacy looks set to continue with a third generation of Colalillo, Andy's son Will, who absolutely loves going for rides in the Plymouth now that Andy has got it clocking up the kays once more. "The car that brainwashed me as a child is now brainwashing him," he laughs. "Getting this done for Dad, but also to have this car have the same impact on my son at a young age, was a big motivator - this build was a mission I had no option but to accept!" When we featured the three-window Plymouth coupe in the August 2002 issue of Street Machine, it was essentially a Wild Bunch race car that Mario drove on the street.

At the time, its screaming, 6/71-blown, fuel injected 377ci small-block Chev had pushed the car to a best of 9.7 seconds at a stonking 150mph, but a couple of years later, I witnessed it run a string of 9.0-second passes at Sydney Dragway as Mario desperately tried to crack into the eight-second zone.

"The car's got a lot of history, particularly for NSW I don't know how many hot rods are still around that have been raced at Castlereagh," Andy says. "Dad raced it at the opening of Eastern Creek, at WSID, at Oran Park - pretty much all the tracks in NSW. Beyond what the car is just to me, there's a bit to the story," says Andy.