Ray Elia's Recipe For The Ultimate HSV Street Car

Ray Elia might be best known for his jaw-dropping VN Group A replica - his amazing innovation and vision brought to life by Chubby from Lowe Fabrications - but I bet you didn’t know that when he’s not building some of the toughest Commodore street cars the nation has ever seen, Ray kicks back and blows off some steam by building some of the toughest Commodore street cars the nation has ever seen!

Yep, Ray has got a sickness. He’s addicted to modifying cars, but being brought up in a car-crazy family, you can hardly blame the bloke.

Having known he and his brother Tony for quite some time, I don’t know if there’s been a single instance where I can recall either of them driving a car that hadn’t been modified or customised in some way, and while their tastes might have matured from the Autosalon days and import vehicles that we bonded over, their unwavering commitment to all things custom remains.

Take Ray’s latest street car for example - a HSV VZ Clubsport that any self-respecting muscle car enthusiast would love to punt around, even in standard form, as a daily drive.

But not Ray.

With the VN finished and out in the public eye Ray started to get the itch to cut up a perfectly good car, so in the space of a weekend he rolled it in to Chubby’s shop to have a narrowed IRS diff’ fitted, allowing the rear wheel tubs to be widened and deeper dish wheels fitted, along with airbag suspension for good measure!

“I just build what I like,” he says matter-of-factly. “I go through stages - I got addicted to the VS era for a while and built a GTS-R, then shifted to the VZ era and built this one,” he explains of his motivation.

“We set this one up to eventually put a supercharger on it. It’s got a cam’ and over-the-radiator (OTR) intake, a TruTrac diff’ with 3.9:1 gears, a manual Turbo 400 with a 3,500rpm converter. It’s a fun car to drive on the street, it absolutely bakes the tyres!” he laughs.

He calls his street cars ‘slappers’ - an ironic reference to the fact that they are indeed full builds that receive resprays and retrims, and aren’t merely ‘slapped together’. “I enjoy building cars. In fact, I think I prefer building the slappers better than the big builds!” he admits. “We always start with a good quality car - we’ll build HSVs rather than sticking a bodykit on a base model.”

And with potential buyers circling the VZ, Ray is already eyeing off his next build. “I’ve spoken with Chubby, I want to build a VS GTS-R with an LSA engine conversion. Tubbed, of course,” he says through a beaming smile.