ORIENT EXPRESS

A SCREAMING TURBO 1JZ MAKES THIS CRUSTY HK WAGON GET UP AND BOOGIE

- STORY MARK ARBLASTER

ONE of our favourite cars from Street Machine Summernats 38 was the HK wagon of Canberra local, Paul Trembearth. This super-cool family truckster not only boasts awesome patina, but it also rocks the unusual choice of a turbocharged, six-cylinder Toyota 1JZ, backed with a four-speed auto. The conversion has been done so well that it's almost as if the car was sent to Toyota for the fit-up!

“I like different,” says Paul of his classic Holden's potentially controversial powerplant. “My kids love it, the missus loves it, and people just spin out when I open the hood; it's proper wow factor!”

Paul traded in his bridgeported, rotary-powered Mazda 1300 for the HK, and while he's added a bunch of his own personal touches since buying it, the 1J transplant was carried out by the car's previous owner, Justin Green, a former boilermaker from the NSW Central Coast.

“It was interesting how this car came about,” says Justin. “Years before I started, I'd been looking for a 1JZ engine for a Toyota Stout mini-truck build that I was a few years into, and I wasn't able to just buy a 1JZ off the shelf for it. A Japanese-car wrecker only had a whole Toyota Crown in Sydney, so they offered to cut the front off it and stick it on a pallet.”

Justin's goal was to build a street-legal, 1JZ-powered Stout, but he had to rethink things after his engineer informed him he could no longer sign off on that engine swap in a mini-truck build.