BIG W

MICHAEL LICCIARDI'S BLOWN WB CAPRICE IS A TOUGH-AS-NAILS TRIBUTE TO HIS FIRST CAR

- STORY IAIN KELLY

EVEN for those strange types whose veins don't course with petrol, everyone remembers their first car. It doesn't matter if it's a clapped-out old rust magnet that stops more often than it starts; that first ride symbolises so much — an initial taste of proper freedom, independence, and the start of adulthood.

Michael Licciardi certainly has fond memories of his; having grown up in a family of gearheads, his first car was far cooler than most of ours. “I had a burgundy '81 Caprice with a 308 and limo gears,” he says. “I had a soft spot for Statesmans back then, and I was looking for an HX, as my dad had one with a 454 in it when I was growing up. Even as a 13-year-old, Dad's Statey was everything to me, so I hadn't considered a WB, but Dad found my first one.”

The Caprice might not have been his first pick, but Michael soon fell in love with his square-shouldered WB and set about making indelible memories with it, starting him off on a path he still walks today. “I had that car for seven years and loved it to bits,” he says. “We put S/S Cragars on it and lowered it, and that was my daily driver to get around in. I couldn't afford fuel, so we put it on gas, and that made it even slower. It was my wedding car, and I drove myself to the wedding. Then a year or two after that, we had my first daughter, so I replaced it with a VQ Caprice.”

Some 15 years later, Michael's kids were growing up and he noticed some free space in his shed. It took two shakes of a lamb's tail for him to decide it was time for another WB Caprice.