INCH PERFECT

BRETT RUSSELL HAS POURED 36 YEARS' WORTH OF BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS INTO HIS BIG-INCH PRO TOURING TORANA - AND IT SHOWS

- LAIN KELLY

AY back when VL Commodores were brand new, Farnsey had an epic mullet and Crocodile Dundee was showing off his weapon in New York, Canberra’s Brett Russell bought a very sad LX Torana hatchback. The young bloke had a thirst for speed, and he spent the next 36 years evolving it into the big-block Chevy-powered monster you see on these pages.

“The Torana was a weekend race car that was due for the crusher,” he explains. “I found out it was for sale through word of mouth, so I went to have a look at it. Everything ahead of the firewall was gone and its entire floor was cut out, I think to get the diff mounting locations. There were no panels, and the only thing on it was the Panhard rod, which is still on the car.”

Young Brett’s original intentions for the trashed hatch were for a strippounding monster, but his local ACT drag strip was in the process of being shut down. This led to a rethink, which gave us one of the first street-legal, big block-powered hatchback Toranas.

“I got it for $500, and because Summernats was coming up, I decided to build a tough streetcar,” Brett says. “The firewall was 25cm back, so I pulled that out, unpicked the bits of the factory rails left, and then I got a front-cut from the wreckers to repair it. I decided to go full-chassis, which was all engineer-approved.”