STREETS AHEAD

THE Street Machine team and wider modified car community were shocked and saddened to learn that one of the legends of our sport, Rob Beauchamp, had passed away in May following a two-year battle with cancer, aged 67.

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After building a tough HK Holden wagon that he raced at Surfers, Rob broke through nationally when his tough HT Monaro featured in the August-September 1982 issue of Street Machine. It was a stand-out car at the 5th Street Machine Nationals, nabbed a stack of tinware, and ran into the 12s, before being sold to Wayne Pagel, who took it to even greater fame as GAS69.

The tagline 'The Best' on the cover of our June 1986 issue introduced many to Rob's LX Torana sedan, after it had scooped the pool at the 7th ASMF Street Machine Nationals, including winning Top Street Machine Overall. Rob had already made waves with a carbied version of the car two years earlier, but the rebuild for '86 mixed his obsessive attention to detail with raw toughness to create an instant legend. Combining sharp paint and panel with a full interior, polished aluminium, wheelie bars and Enderle injection, Rob's LX blurred the lines between street and strip. "Every time I went to the track, I'd see something that I'd want to feed back into my own cars," Rob told Owen Webb on the Ride it Out Summernats podcast in 2020.