HEAVY ARTILLERY

NATHAN YOUNG TOOK THIS XB HARDTOP FROM A TIRED EX-DRAG CAR TO A FULL-FAT DRAG CHALLENGE TITLE CONTENDER

- ANDREW BROADLEY

WHEN you gaze upon Nathan Young's mental 1500rwhp XB Falcon coupe, a very extreme example of one of Ford's most iconic Aussie muscle cars, you could be excused for jumping to the conclusion that he's a dyed-in-the-wool Blue Oval devotee. Not so, as it turns out.

I'm not one to take sides; I'm not a Ford guy by any means, Nathan explains. I've also got a Nissan GT-R and a Valiant, and I've owned a VF GTS, too. But an XB coupe has always been my dream car.

So when this hardtop popped up on Facebook Marketplace, Nathan went to take a squiz at it at his earliest possible convenience. What greeted him was an ex-drag car that had been tubbed and fitted with a ladder-bar rear-end and Lexan windows. It was missing plenty of hard-to-find bits, but Nathan looked past its shortcomings and reasoned that it could form the basis of his dream street/strip build.

It was pretty bare and basic, but the plan was always to turn it back into a street car, Nathan says. All Street Performance & Fabrication guided me through the whole process and the best way to do things, but ultimately left it up to me to make the decisions. Joel from All Street has an XB coupe as well, and he was able to help me out with sourcing the parts we needed to turn it back into a streeter.

Nathan's brief to Joel was simple and concise: He wanted a streetable, 2000hp-capable street/strip weapon; something that could take on the rigours of Street Machine Drag Challenge. I was inspired by Frank Marchese's XW, he says. I wanted to run a Ford small-block motor to retain some sort of originality. So we went with a twin-turbo 'Clevor' - a Windsor block with Cleveland heads.