RAW ANIMAL

THE BEAST LURKING WITHIN PETER TSEKENIS’S EIGHT-SECOND, STREET-DRIVEN XY IS A NATURALLY ASPIRATED SMALL-BLOCK MAKING OVER 1000HP

- CRAIG PARKER

IT ONLY took Peter Tsekenis two years to go from making his drag racing debut to commissioning a 1000-plus horsepower small-block that pushed his street-going XY into the eights.

Bill Kaglatzis from BK Race Engines is the brains behind the brawn in the bay of this fast Falcon. “It’s not every day a customer walks through the door and says, ‘I want to run an eight with an NA small-block; what do I have to do?’, but that’s exactly what Peter did,” he says. Naturally, Bill was happy to accept the challenge, even after Peter ratcheted the difficulty level up to 11 by insisting he didn’t want a dedicated race car – it had to stay streetable.

Peter had acquired the Raw Orange XY in 2015 and was initially happy with its 460hp, 383ci stroker. He even managed to rekindle a few old friendships when he started doing weddings in it. But after watching his mate Tony bushfire the street with his 408ci True Blue XW (complete with smiling bride and groom aboard), Peter came to the conclusion that the XY needed more grunt.

In a quest for power, Peter fitted the car with a few different engines as it began to see more track time.

Along the way, race-car fabricator Peter Cleary was engaged to mini-tub it and add a rollcage. “The car looked the part and ran 9.4, but it was never consistent,” says Peter. “At the track I saw that Bill from BK Engines’ cars were consistent and ran good numbers. I reckoned he was the guy I needed to talk to.”