Kruzin Kustoms is certainly no stranger to our pages, and the team has been up to a fair bit, so we decided to take a look

Word gets around in little old New Zealand; when there’s a cool new build underway, someone usually tells someone, who tells someone, and so on — well, Kruzin Kustoms in Palmerston North has well more than one cool build underway, so we decided to take a look.

Having been in business for 13 years, Kruzin Kustoms’ main focus is on full turnkey builds; every car you see here is a complete in-house turnkey build. However, to get there, you’ve got to get past the retail section, where you can purchase clothing, dress-up kits, hot rod parts and hardware, suspension, wheels, tyres — basically anything rod and kustom related.

Moving on through the doors to the huge workshop space, complete with paint booth, things start getting interesting. As you can see, there are a fair few projects on the go, plus a couple of owner Kendal’s toys — the ‘Green Go’ nostalgia front-engine dragster and Kendal’s son Connor’s NHRA-winning junior dragster.

Then there’s the builds. The ’56 Ford F100 is one hell of a machine in the making, having been treated to a three-inch roof chop along with many custom features, including a full custom grille, new running boards, and bullet-style flutes in the hood. Space beneath the hood has been maximized for the twin BorgWarner turbocharged Ford Coyote engine that is being built to be slipped in front of a six-speed manual box. While we were there, staff member Mark was taking to the door with a grinder, getting stuff done!

The 1955 Chev Nomad is owned by a woman and has been a ground-up build. The once-yellow wagon was rolled in nine months ago, and work began quickly and never really let off. Kendal and the boys performed an LS2 conversion, slotted in a nine-inch diff, along with a TH700R4 automatic transmission, and squirted on the tangerine paint in the booth out the back — this car is a thing of beauty.

Peter and Delilah Schimanski’s Holden Monaro is another that’s getting the works. Pete bought the car in Invercargill about nine years ago. He drove it around Taranaki for about six months before dropping it off to Kruzin Kustoms. Since then, the boys have done everything, and the Monaro sports a full Kruzin Kustoms chassis and funny car–style roll cage, while the ex–Dean Cadman Willys 540ci big block Chev sits up front and sports a 10–71 Littlefield blower and Enderle EFI. A Tremec TKO 600 manual box feeds the “more street-friendly tuned” horsepower to the massive beadlocked tyres hanging off a McDonald Brothers Racing rear end. What a car!

We’ve gotta say that, while we’re sure looking forward to seeing what rolls out of this place in the near future, it’s the thought of all the future builds that the team haven’t even started yet that really makes us think the future of our car scene is in very good hands.

Kruzin Kustoms Ltd has grown into New Zealand’s largest hot rod shop and parts supplier, even manufacturing its own F100 frames that are now being shipped internationally. You can contact the team at 0800 4 KUSTOMS, or email kruzinkustoms@xtra.co.nz.

Shane Wishnowsky

My first experience of the V8 engine was not a good one. Picture a white-haired young boy bawling his eyes out when an un-muffled sprintcar was fired up. My Dad, who had been car mad all his life, thought I was broken and he’d produced a dud! He persevered though and a few years later took me to Thunder Park; it was here that I fell in love with the V8 engine and I was hooked! Since then I have been a regular on both sides of the fence at drag strips in the North Island, both as a spectator and a crew member. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that 40 years down the track I would end up photographing and writing about them, not that I’m complaining!