Chu88Y'S $20k Showstopper

Damien 'Chubby' Lowe has been a pillar of the Commodore community since the early 2000s, bursting on to the scene with a breathtakingly clean VB that set the bar for street driven show cars and has influenced those that followed.

Known by it's plates, CHU88Y, this exceptionally tidy Commodore quickly became iconic in the scene and forged Damo's reputation for building clean and particularly well thought out Commos.

It was in every way a street car and as Damien is somewhat disdainful of trailers, he drove it to every show it appeared at including Motorvation in Perth! Unfortunately, it was on the drive back from Perth that Chub hit a pot hole, damaging one of his rims and cracking a strut tower. After thousands of kilometres of driving, the car wasn't as competitive as it used to be so he decided it was as good a time as any to pull it off the road and give it a bit of a makeover.

As a man about the Commodore scene, Damien is of course a Summernats veteran and has attended every single one to date. With the 25th anniversary on the horizon, he had to have a car but he quickly realised that getting the VB ready in time would be a pretty tall order. Always keen for a challenge, he decided to turn the 202ci VH he had laying around into a full blown show stopper.

The rules of engagement were simple; 4 months and $20,000 to turn Gran's Sunday runabout into a Summernats champ. The entire build is detailed on the Street Commodores forum which you can get to by clicking here.

With such a short time frame, a few good mates were enlisted and Chub got to work.

Since the car was cream to begin with, a full colour change seemed like too much of a hassle so the colour scheme began around that.

Before long, the 202ci was out and in it's place sat a good ol' 5L, scavenged from a VS and given the usual Chubby treatment.

Everything went to plan and as January 2011 rolled around, hopes were high that this budget build would make it's way to Canberra under it's own power. Of course when it comes to cars, nothing ever goes quite to plan and a couple of electrical gremlins saw the all but finished VH travelling south on a trailer.

As it wasn't running, the car couldn't be judged. That didn't stop Chub from setting up in the Shannon's Pavilion and from what we've heard, it received a pretty positive reception.

He tells us that "the judges that still came and looked at it said it was very nice, and that it was a shame it wasn't running."

We would have to agree as it would have most certainly come away with some sort of accolade.

Chub has since got it all up and running, with a dodgy distributor to blame in the end.

We recently had Damo and his stunning VH in our studio as it is destined to grace the cover of issue 195 of Street Commodores. Having recently had a couple of copies arrive in our office, Street Commodores editor Liam Quirk decided to go pay Chub a visit and show him what we came up with. One of the Performance Garage crew members tagged along and chucked together the quick video below, of course including one of Chub's signature skids!

So there you have it, proof that for $20,000 you can build yourself a full blown show car... if you're Chub! Issue 195 of Street Commodores will be on shelves on the 18th of April so if you want to see exactly how he managed it, pick up a copy for a full feature on the car and a detailed rundown of the build. You can also check out his build thread on the Street Commodores forum.