Her love for the late-60s Holden offering was cemented at an early age, and, through the encouragement of her car-crazy family, Dacoda has grown to become a valuable part of Mudgee’s automotive architecture as a qualified spray painter. She tells us about her trade as well as her neat HR Special.

This article was first published in the January 2020 issue of Street Machine

What was the allure of painting?

I realised with all of the cars that our family owns, someone should learn how to paint them. I have good memories of Leven Smash Repairs from when I was a kid, as Mum and Dad’s cars were painted there, and now I’ve been working there for the past five years. In 2017 I won a scholarship through PPG for TAFE to receive additional training, and to go to Sydney and meet people from different states. Then, last year I was awarded apprentice of the year.

Congrats! Have you applied your skills to the HR?

One of my family friends really wanted the HR as her wedding car, so I thought I’d better get into painting it. The paint had rub-through marks from the car being under a tarp, and it also must’ve been sideswiped or reversed into on the left-hand side at some point as it had a bog repair in the passenger door that had started to crack open. The job probably took about two months. The car has no rust or anything like that and it’s in really good condition. It was my daily for two years before I took it off the road for the respray two years ago; she’s been a weekender ever since.

When did you get the HR?

All of us kids have been given an old first car by Mum and Dad. I’ve always loved the look of the HRs, so Dad and I bought this one at auction with help from a family friend. I’m the third owner and it was bought new by an Endacott relation. It had 60,000 miles on the clock when I got it and it’d have about 80,000 on it now – so yeah, I’ve put a couple on there.

What’s under the bonnet?

It’s had a couple of motors go through it, but at the moment it has a 186ci with a Yella Terra stage three head and just a small street cam, ready for twin carbies. It was three-on-the-tree manual, but Dad, my partner Jake and I converted it to a column-shift auto with a Trimatic. The diff is stock but with 3.08s and an LSD. Also, we’ve lowered it two inches all around and added 14-inch ‘jellybean’ mags. The interior is original.

What’s next?

We’d like to supercharge it! That would be exciting – at the moment she’s a bit of a nan’s car. We go on cruises with the Cudgegong Cruisers car club. The club gets together quite a lot and does Cars & Coffee, goes to drive-ins and things like that. I want to just drive and enjoy my HR; I don’t ever want to get rid of it.

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