Our Australian gearhead brethren are a more civilized breed. They may drive on the wrong side of the road and have an unhealthy obsession with burnouts, but they have a much greater appreciation for classic sedans. It’s not entirely our fault. Until quite recently, the performance variants offered to Americans were typically available in two-door flavors only. Coupes and convertibles got the burliest engines and the flashiest graphics, while the sedan versions of those same cars were relegated to grocery getters with only the occasional sleeper model able to slip through the cracks here and there.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping anyone from bolting the best parts of a muscle car onto a sedan. That’s what Brian Gage did with his more-door Chevelle Malibu. Its no-nonsense looks and road-hugging stance caught our attention. The more we looked, the more we appreciated this crew-cab corner carver.
Gage is from Aguanga, between Southern California’s wine country of Temecula and the vast dunes of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. He first spotted this 1967 Chevelle Malibu sedan about 25 years ago, in his local Pennysaver classifieds. A nearby salvage yard had recently acquired it, and someone had the foresight to sell it whole rather than part it out. Although it was rust-free and made it through its first 30 years of service without any major damage, the four-door needed plenty of work. It still had its original 283 V-8, which was no longer running, and an even less cooperative Powerglide two-speed automatic.
After some tinkering, Gage coaxed the little small-block back to life and swapped a four-speed into the A-body for improved performance and more fun. The car served as his daily driver in that configuration for the better part of two decades before he got the urge to build the Malibu for drag racing.
Out with well-worn 283, and in with a big-block. The current iteration is basic by Gage’s reckoning, although the results are still impressive. The .060-over 454 block is filled with Wiseco pistons and a cast Scat crank and Scat rods to displace 468 cubic inches. The short block is topped by a set of aluminum heads from Skip White Performance that work with the rotating assembly to deliver 10:1 compression. With 325-cc rectangular ports, the heads can move a lot of air, which gives Gage the option to bump up to a 496 if the urge strikes him. Fuel comes from a Holley 950 XP carb atop a single-plane intake manifold. It’s all orchestrated by a Clay Smith hydraulic roller cam with 294 degrees of advertised duration and 110 degrees of lobe separation. “It’s a budget kit, but it works really good,” said Gage. It definitely sounds like it.
To hold up to repeated hard launches, Gage swapped in a GM 12-bolt rear axle filled with 4.11:1 gears. The Malibu served its role well, ferrying Gage and his friends to Fontana to compete in the Real Street class, which, as the name suggests, is for street-driven cars, or at least street-legal cars. Gage took the premise to heart and would load up the car, head 75 miles to Fontana, make a few passes, and head back. The car did well, although the Muncie transmission took a beating. Gage upgraded to M22 gears, but the case eventually failed as well. Now it has M22 gears in a stronger Muncie housing. A Gear Vendors overdrive unit, mounted on the back of the Muncie, helped make the 4:11 gears much more tolerable on the highway.
The fun at Fontana came to an end when the eighth-mile dragstrip closed, so Gage changed things up and made the switch to autocross, inspired by his cousin, who raced in the Central Valley. That meant a lot of changes to the suspension. The front uses Speedway Motors tubular control arms with the factory GM A-body spindles and a set of Proforged upper ball joints that alter the geometry. “I did correct the bumpsteer on it, so as I change camber, it toes it out about 1/32 [of an inch]. It helps with corner entry,” explained Gage. In the rear, he built his own tubular control arms with Heim joints and relocated the upper arms to keep the axle centered under hard cornering. Landrum Performance Springs helped get the right spring rate for the car, and soon the handling was getting dialed in with Bilstein shocks. The Chevelle Malibu sits nice and low, with adjustable spring seats in the rear as well as limiting straps so the shorter springs don’t part ways when the suspension is at full droop. “I started to learn how to drive a little better, so we put some 18-inch wheels on it with 315/30s,” Gage recalled. Of course, those tires wouldn’t fit under the factory sheet metal, so some massaging and persuading had to happen. “We cut the inner fender out and used the Porta Power against the upper control arm and just pushed it out”, said Gage. The bolt holes through the fender had to be slotted to get things to fit back in place, and the structure inside was reinforced to maintain its shape. It’s close, but the tires don’t rub, and the turning radius is still rather tight. The fitment is amazing, although there are some changes in the fender shape, most noticeably the panel gap at the rear of the fenders, but it was worth it.
With his improved suspension and huge slabs of rubber at each corner, the grip was tremendous. “I was getting so much traction,” recalls Gage, “It was twisting really bad and almost popped the window out.” Things were flexing so much that the dome light would come on because the door was starting to open. His solution was to swap in an El Camino frame. With boxed frame rails from the factory and the same 116-inch wheelbase as the Chevelle sedan, the swap was easy. The only modification required was a bit of docking at the rear of the frame.
This current motor is well sorted, but there were some issues as the car’s handling improved. “Once I started getting lateral grip, oil would go away, so it ate up some bearings.” The oil starvation also took out some lifters when the car was running a flat-tappet cam. To solve the oiling issues, Gage runs a baffled Moroso road race pan with kick-outs in the sump. For even more insurance, an oil accumulator is ready to swoop in to deliver a shot of bearing-saving oil if the need arises.
The interior is simple, with some Auto Meter gauges, a shift light in the dash, and a set of bucket seats with new foam and upholstery from TMI that add a lot more bolstering than the factory’s flat seats. A harness bar also helped the handling. “I needed something to hold me in there,” laughed Gage, “Lateral Gs and me don’t get along.”
“I’m building another car, so this one’s sort of on hold right now,” said Gage. That doesn’t mean it’s out of commission or put out to pasture; he still racks up plenty of miles in this fine machine. His new project is a 1967 Chevelle, but a two-door this time. That one is going to be a bit more race-oriented than this one, which he describes as quite driver-friendly despite its ability to impress plenty of late-model sports car- and pony car owners it comes across at various autocross events. We still think that Gage must be at least part Australian to have such a vision for a four-door Chevelle. Hopefully, it persuades more prospective road racers to take on a sedan project. With a stance like that, it’s bound to change some minds.
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