During my time in the military, I drove a whole host of vehicles. HMMWVs, the FMTV series of trucks, the huge 8×8 Oshkosh HEMTTs, among others. What did they all have in common? They were all diesel powered, they were all automatic transmission equipped, they all could off-road like nobody’s business, and they all were slow. Not “because it’s a truck” slow…they were just slow, period. Even the LMTVs, which were running turbocharged CAT inline-sixes, weren’t too quick on the uptake when you laid into the throttle…unless you knew which civilian contractor to kiss up to so that the governor could be deleted (whoops, did I say that out loud?)

At no point, however, was there ever any kind of duty like what this member of the Australian Defence Force gets to enjoy. He’s the wheelman and caretaker of this 1978 Ford LTD P6, a high-trim version of the Ford Fairlane, Australia’s biggest Ford sedan. Finding one of these big beasts isn’t easy: there were just under 6,000 made. We can’t get over that it looks like a mid-1970s Torino and a Chrysler Cordoba had a love child, but we can ignore that for the 460-based mill and the fact that this big barge can haze them off with the best of them. The high mark is that this is the guy’s job…he is actually paid to go out and roast the tires off of a repurposed luxury sled. Nice!