1972 HOLDEN HQ UTE

THE SOUND IS epically thunderous – loud enough to make Motor Trader’s bones shake and ears bleed. The ground trembles too and, somewhere, MT can imagine scientists frantically checking seismic sensors to see how bad the earthquake might be.

Except it isn’t an earthquake, and MT is not standing on a ruinous fault line in the Earth’s crust.

In fact, MT is standing outside a smart new shed, behind a very nice home, in the small town of Tarampa, about 80kms west of Brisbane.

And the bone-rattling rumble is coming not from some catastrophic geological event but from a 1972 Holden HQ one-tonne ute being backed out of the aforementioned shed by its owner, Mark Meesen, from MTAQ member business, Tarampa Smash Repairs.

The noise is being generated by a monstrous 540ci V8 packed into the front of the ute – a raging beast of an engine that, Mark says, generates 650hp at the flywheel.

Of course, this is a 1972 Holden HQ one-tonne ute in name only: not a single HQ rolled out of the Holden factory with as ferocious a growl as this one.

“It was a V8 automatic with power steering,” says Mark of the car’s original incarnation. “I paid $2500 for it and initially I had plans to do it up to sell it.

“Then I got busy doing other stuff and it was only after we started building the engine, and realised it was too powerful for the car it was going to go into, that I decided to use it in the one-tonner.”

And so began an epic project that would not only involve modifications to nearly every aspect of the ute, but also the spending of an awful lot of money and the working of more man hours at Tarampa Smash Repairs than Mark can possibly remember.

“The cab is pretty much original,” he says. “The body too, apart from the rear cab panel which was removed and replaced with a fabricated flat section making the exterior flush and also giving more interior space behind the seat.

“Also, HQ GTS flutes were welded into the front guards and it did have an HZ front which I changed back to HQ.

“The whole cab and chassis was sandblasted and the chassis was slightly modified and beefed up in a few spots, but it is reasonably original.

“Everything else on the car has been modified. We did the interior, the dash, put in a full roll-cage, race seats and harnesses. We made the tray from 3mm plate steel and it tilts up on gas struts to allow access to the diff, fuel system, tank and battery that is underneath.

“As for the engine – it has had too many modifications to list. It’s a brand new aftermarket block and everything that went into it had to be bought to suit – so every part in the engine is brand new. Everything was done at our workshop apart from the gearbox, diff and the engine, which was built by Terry Archie, a friend of mine.”

“All up, the car cost about $50,000 in parts and it was built over about 15 months.”

 After completing the ute in 2009, there was clearly only one thing that Mark could do with it – sling it down the track and test it in the rubber-burning challenge of the quarter mile.

“When I decided to build a car with a big engine it just came naturally to think that I’m going to have to race it,” he says with a smile.

Not surprisingly, the ute’s performance is a standout.

“I’ve raced it a few times,” says Mark. “With normal tread tyres it ran an 11.8 (seconds) at 120mph (195kph). With the slicks it has now it should be able to do a 10.6 at around 130mph (209kph). I haven’t raced it for a while but I’ll probably take it out in the next couple of months.”

Over the next few years, the ute will likely be joined by other bone-jarring, big block behemoths: for Mark, cars are more than just a job.

He says he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do for a career when he was younger. However, with a dad and two brothers who were mad for cars it was only a matter of time before he was bitten by the car bug, and bitten hard, leading not only to a career in the industry but the steady accumulation of four-wheel classics.

“I didn’t know what to do when I left school,” he says.

“But I got a job as a spray painter and really took to it.

I had a lot of pride in my work and I’ve been involved in the industry ever since.

“And I started to buy cars,” he adds with a grin. “A few years ago I had 19 but I’m down to eight now, including a ’57 Chevy, a 2003 CV8 Monaro. a 1976 F350 and a 1970 Buick Riviera. I’ve always had a soft spot for Buicks.”

The Buick Riviera is, he says, likely to be his next big project, and if the ute is anything to go by it’s going to be quite something when it’s finished.

As for the ute . . . well . . . after a period of dormancy, Mark is about to take it racing again to ‘make some noise.’

And when he does, those sensitive seismographs are likely to pick up more tremors in the Tarampa region.

Scientists beware.