HOT FUZZ

MAT LLOYD TURNS THE POLICE-SPEC VK CHARGER HE BOUGHT WHEN HE WAS 15 INTO A MUSCLEBOUND MONSTER

- BORIS VISKOVIC

WHAT I've always found interesting about the cars we feature in Street Machine is the back-story: how the owner found the car, why they built it the way they did and what influenced them. To me, that's more important than how many thousandths of an inch the engine was bored out or what the diameter of the sway bar might be. So once I started reading Mat Lloyd's tech sheet about his stunning VK Charger, I knew it was going to be a cracker of a story.

Mat's relatively young at 31 years old, but he's had some good influences in his life. When his older brother Mike brought home an XY GT replica, Mat knew he had to get a muscle car as well. Since he couldn't have a GT, and Monaros were too expensive, the choice was simple.

"Both my dad and his brother had R/T Chargers growing up, so as a young fella hearing stories about my uncle building engines and my dad racing them on the street, I didn't really stand a chance," Mat says. "I mean, what's more Australian than a Vitamin C Charger and a Vermilion Fire XY GT?"

Mat got this Charger when he was 15 and still in high school. And make sure you're sitting down for this part - he paid just $3000 for it. That may seem like a pittance, but to Mat, that was his entire life savings from working at his grandparents' garden centre and there were a few other expenses, since the car was located in Mt Barker, SA, over 2000km as the crow flies from Mat's place in Wanneroo, Perth.

"I saved up the money to send my uncle over there to have a look at it," Mat says. "It was $660 to get it brought over on a truck, a couple of hundred bucks for a tow truck in SA, and I had to get a taxi to take him around for the whole day. I was sitting at school while it was all going down, having mad anxiety about whether it was working out."