The Summernats ute

This one isn’t a customer’s car and it isn’t finished. It’s our showcase build for Summernats NZ — the one where the brief is to push the shop as far as it will go, and every bit of it gets done in-house.

A finished car only ever shows you the last coat of paint. What it can’t show you is whether the chassis under it was bought or built, whether the diff came out of a catalogue, or how many times the body came on and off before the gaps were right. So while this one is still in bare metal, here is what’s actually going into it.

A 100mm chop

The roof comes down by 100mm, which is the change everything else has to answer to. Take that much out of a roof and you shorten the door apertures, alter the angle of both screens and move every reflection down the side of the car — get it wrong and it reads as a mistake rather than a decision. Mocked up on its wheels, the proportions are the point of the whole build.

A diff built, not bought

It runs a custom 9-inch, fabricated here rather than adapted from something else. The housing was cut, jigged and welded up on the table, the bearing ends pressed in, and the brackets TIG’d on to suit where the car actually sits — which, on air suspension, is a good deal lower than Holden had in mind.

It’s the least visible part of the build and it took some of the longest. On a car that will spend its life being crawled under at shows, that seemed like the right way round.

Chassis, floor and tray

The chassis is heavily modified, and the body came off so the chassis and tray framing could be built to suit the new ride height and the wheels. The tray floor was cut out and rebuilt rather than patched, and the shell has been back and forth between the hoist and the stands for fit-up more times than anyone has counted.

Still to come

A blown V8, custom paint, a full custom interior and a long list of one-off details — all of it done here rather than sent out. Simmons rims are mocked up in the guards already, deep dish with polished lips.

There’s plenty of work ahead. The goal is simple enough: build a ute that shows what this shop can do, and makes an impact when it rolls into Summernats. We’ll put the finished set up here when it’s done.