1977 HZ Holden 'SANDBARRA' Ute ... Street Machine

Love it or hate it, the SANDBARRA gets attention where ever she goes. As featured in Street Machine, November 2018, SANDBARRA is one man's brain child to combine a HZ Holden ute with a 'Barra' Turbo 6 Falcon engine. What appears as a nut and bolt restored Sandman ute, morphs into something quite different when the bonnet is raised. Gone is the Holden 202 and in its place sits a Turbo Ford 6 cylinder power plant.

The idea started as a father/son project, the plan being to tidy up the old HZ ute, blow in a bit of white paint and lob in a turbo LS. Then things got real interesting.

The blend of a Sandman ute with a Barra engine easily morphed into the SANDBARRA moniker. Even the stripe is a blend of Ford GT at the front and Sandman at the rear. The SANDBARRA logo was custom designed with heavy inspiration from the Ford Superoo replaced with a turbocharged Barramundi.

The car made it's debut at the WA Hot Rod & Street Machine Spectacular in June 2018. Taking a little over 18 months to build, SANDBARRA was stripped to a bare shell and nut and bolt rotisserie restored. The engine was freshened up with new billet oil pump gears and stud kit as well as some fresh valve springs, new timing chain, new tensioner and new gaskets for good measure.

The factory shifter and console are used so you can either let the box do all the work or flick the shifter across and bang through the six gears manually. The rest of the interior is pretty much GTS spec in the factory Chamois colour to tie in nicely with the Savannah Ivory Beige paint with the only change being a boost gauge in place of the clock.

It's even got A/C and a heater tucked up behind the glovebox, which is only about three inches deep now, but it adds the benefit of removing the blower motor from the engine bay.

SANDBARRA has been fully engineered and built as a reliable and legal cruiser for the street with the owner consulting an engineer for the entirety of the build process. And the result is a car you can jump in, with air conditioning and a six-speed, and drive every day of the week.

Job done. Now SANDBARRA's for sale and located in Mandurah, WA for your inspection. (Ref. 5178)