Retro-Styled XD Pano Wins The Internet - And Our Hearts

Some cars are more than the sum of their parts. This XD pano’, with its eight trumpet intake and bright yellow paint, is one of them.

It’s pretty hard to look past Nev’ Shears’ bright yellow XD panel van, and that’s just the way he likes it. Built entirely at home, the pano is an ode to one of his first loves - an XE van that he owned over three decades ago.

“I’ve had a million cars since then - XY Falcons and Toranas, you name it! But I’ve been searching for a windowless van with that same tailgate configuration as my XE for years and I finally found one! The guy wanted way too much money and he knew I wanted it,” explains Nev’ of how the pano’ came to be his a few years ago.

He toiled away during COVID lockdowns, repainting the car himself and piecing together the rather exotic driveline.

“I bought an XY years ago and it came with a complete XA GT driveline, so that’s the running gear in the van. It’s been sitting in my storage shed for 25 years! It’s a 351ci Cleveland that we’ve converted to roller cam’ and fitted Pavtek CNC 2V heads to,” explains Nev’ of the combo’ that went over to make around 450hp at the flywheel, and propel the pano’ down the quarter at Street Machine’s Drag Challenge event to a PB of 12.1sec@111mph.

Poking through the bonnet, the Weber carby intake is a talking point for sure. For the event, the pano’ runs shorter stacks with air filters, but for the track it’s loud and proud with longer trumpets poking proudly through the bonnet.

“Drag Challenge reminds me of the old days,” reminisces Nev’; “just tough street cars and old school cars,” he adds. “We probably could have gone faster with EFI and computers but we proved you can do the event with a carby V8 and still have fun,” he smiles.

“I really just wanted to cruise around in the car with my cousin from Townsville and enjoy it for what it is. Our first ever pass in the car was Day One of Drag Challenge at The Bend! We didn’t lean on the car too much, we were ‘one and done’ guys,” he adds.

Nev’ plans to continue racing the Falcon, eyeing off an 11.5sec slip as well as clocking up some more miles on the street and enjoying the car.