Vid: Crazy Hot Rod Collection

Photos by Mark Boxer

 Mario Colalillo is a legend in the Australian hot rod & custom scene, with a Performance Garage dating back to the good ol’ days.

 Walking through his shed is like taking a trip down memory lane, surrounded left and right by cars that were drooled over en masse back in the day and that haven’t deteriorated one bit.

Recently we were given the chance to meet the man himself and have a look around, an offer we absolutely jumped at!

PG: How did it all start for you Mario, what got you into cars?

MC: I was reading hotrod books when I was at school. In the early days we all started out building old Holdens and raced them at Brickies. We'd always be going out on Saturday and Sunday nights, then end up racing at Brickies. Street racing was a big thing back then.

PG: What was your first decent car?

MC: It was an EH Holden, I built it up from scratch and raced it at Castlereagh back in the early days. It was a full body prep, mild custom grille, lowered, triples, 4-speed, it was a pretty hot deal in its day.

It was competitive enough to get out there, flip some skids and learn about drag racing. I was racing out there just before it shut. Back in those days, bronze was a really cool colour with black trim, so that's what it looked like. The rims were cut and reverse dished and chromed. 

PG: What was the turning point of you going from being another car guy to being a high ranking car builder?

MC: Back when I was 17 I'd just finished building the first EH and I was pretty full on reading American hotrod books. I found my ‘39 Plymouth under a tree, bought it off the old bloke, dragged it home and blasted it, stripped it and started building it. It took a really long time to build!

 It ended up being a very well known car in the rodding scene. It was running Halibrand wheels, Jag suspension and a tunnel ram small block. It was a very tough hotrod in its day. I raced it too, but then years later after doing all of the rod events I got into the racing a bit harder and stripped it down to build it into the full pro-street car it is today. It never really had a name to it, but it was known as BLOWN39.

 PG: What is your favourite car to date that you've owned?

 MC: That's a tough question, but I guess the Plymouth is something that's been there since I started, that's the car I’m most sentimental about, it's all steel, I'll never let it go. To this day it still holds a lot of records; it's one of the toughest full metal jacket hotrods in the country.

PG: Probably one of your most recognisable cars would be WILDCAD. It has been over in the US for two years now and is still cleaning up but tell us, what was it like first taking it over there?

MC: It was unbelievable! The reception to that car was beyond what you could think, they were running to it. The car made its own mark, ya know?

PG: Who has been your main influence?

MC: I'd say in hot rodding, it'd be Larry O'Toole, especially in Australian hot rodding. There were a number of cars he featured that really inspired a lot of great ideas in car builds. He went to America regularly to the hotrod nationals every 12 months and he'd always have it featured and it put you right on tap with what was going on in an Australian book, so people were building cars in Australia with guidelines and it was very educational on doing suspension work, chassis work, body mods, ya know? That was very instrumental in my early hot rodding career, so yeah, Larry O'Toole played a very big part without a doubt.

HR: Tell us a little bit about the history of the black 34'

MC: Right, well it was one of the first repro bodies built by Bob Caine. We had an original chassis and an old flathead and we started piecing it together a bit at a time. It was built in the early ‘80s when 34's were pretty cool to have and there weren’t many of them around. Especially a chop top roadster, it was definitely one of the out there hotrods.

“Doing things traditionally back then was game because everyone was putting Chevs in them and Centerline wheels, so to build it I painted it Midnight Black under my old man's car port, did all my own body work so it was a full home build. To have Thunderbird wheels, lights and chop top, that was something in the early ‘80s, but the car did not get out-dated till this day, that's the funny thing about it.”

“That trend came in strong maybe 10-15 years later, but back then it was a bit of a resto rod. It went to every rod run in Sydney and it won a string of trophies. It was a real rod run car, a lot of people would still remember it. It was called MC34, back then. In those days it was all about initials. I ran into financial issues building the Plymouth and almost had to sell it, but we scraped though and luckily it's still in the stable.”

Unlike many of the garages we visit, Mario in no way has to hide his hobby from the Mrs. His wife Catriona is a signwriter by trade and during our photo shoot, she was busying herself pin striping the ’34! She is just as much of a character as Mario so we thought we’d have a chat to her as well.

 PG: How did you get into pin striping?

CC: I'm a traditional signwriter by trade and was taught to use a pin striping brush as an apprentice by my boss at the time Mr Jim Rheinberger (master tradesman), we specialised in trucks. When I met Mario I was inspired and encouraged to pinstripe custom cars and bikes by Little Mick from the Beatniks.

Q: Being Mario's better half, you obviously live and breathe gasoline too. What is your favourite car in the Colalillo collection?

A: Well it was our chopped 50 Merc’ but Mario sold that so I've fallen in love with the chopped 55 buick 'Buick Star' all over again. I'm itching for the boys to start working on her again.

So there you have it, a walkthrough of one of the country’s best hot rod collections and an impressively stocked Performance Garage.