If you thought getting a car ready for SEMA was normally a pain in the ass, you can only begin to imagine the headaches that Josh Robinson and the Tri-Ace Tires Drift Ute team had to face: a car that was being thrown together just to be hucked into a shipping crate, thrown onto a boat, and met at the port with issues that still had to be fixed in the States, far away from home. That’s their end of the story when it comes to this 2006 Holden Ute. Our end? Walking in to get my credentials on Monday, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and my first thought…cleaned up a little because BangShift is a family-friendly site…was “I have got to go shoot that.” And I did, because it is as badass as I expected it to be. From it’s Magnuson-supercharged LS to the thin carbon-fiber doors and the custom, rear-mounted radiator, the Holden is serious in every last component. The only thing we were miffed about missing? The Ute was parked static, not showing folks how it’s done in the drift lot that was part of the Ford Out Front scene!
As an Aussie, I still can see no good reason why these things were never exported to your side of the world.