Hundreds of attendees admired the 107 vehicles on display at the Moulamein Car Club’s annual Show and Shine. Owners and their prized possessions had travelled from as far as Melton to be a part of the unique event that offers free attractions for the kids and live music courtesy of ‘Dementia’.

Moulamein Car Club President Andrew ‘Sutto’ Sutton said the day was a huge success.

“The day was unreal, we had over 100 vehicles on display and the car simulator did something like 354 rides.

“The day was all free; we pay for everything through sponsorship, and the families can come and enjoy the day and only have to pay for their food.

Sutto himself had one of the oldest cars in the field, a 1926 Buick Master Tourer. The open top 98-year-old beauty was powered by a humble straight six.

“It’s a General Motors product, they were one under the Cadillac. It’s a bit of a rarity being the Master Tourer, it’s like a limousine – a bigger car than normal.

If slow Sunday drives didn’t scratch your itch, then the horsepower gods had you well taken care of. From Holden Monaros to Falcon GTs, the impressive field had many significant others nervous about the next purchase! 

Sitting amongst the dazzling chrome and gleaming paint jobs was a very unassuming Ford Falcon XG. The humble tradie spec steel-wheeled utility had a reputation for unreliable door handles and lacklustre performance from the 4-litre straight six, also known for failing head gaskets.

The sins of the XG’s past were washed away through a Covid project of divine inspiration. A self-built labour of love for Graeme Dickinson of Swan Hill, this sleeper now sported a 500kw Barra producing enough torque to move the mainland closer to Tasmania. We’re not talking fish with these Barras, the turbocharged straight six 4-litre engines produced by Ford Australia first came to notoriety in the BA XR6 Turbo Falcon. The engine made waves in the automotive world as the plucky motor stood up to reasonable amounts of boost and put many V8s to shame. Later iterations of the engine, as found in Dicko’s ute taken from an FGX required little more than some decent valve springs and head studs before you could squirrel in large amounts of boost.

“I bought a whole car to get that engine through an online auction,” said Dicko.

“I purchased the ute from Beverford; it was actually my son Jarrod’s idea mainly, because he had an XG as his first ute.

“The engine is still standard, apart from valve springs, and I put head studs in it, and a timing gear that they all recommend. The engine had done under 30,000km and it’s now pulling close to 500 kilowatts.

“Jarrod did a bit of the wiring. We pulled all the wiring out of the ute and later, we pulled every bit of wire out of the donor car and laid it out on the ground. We ended up removing the things we didn’t need but it was probably the wrong thing to do, in hindsight, because it made it challenging for the engine tuners as some of the systems are interlinked.

Congratulations to all the organisers on another impressive Show ’n’ Shine! The event will be back on October 11, 2025.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 17 October 2024.