For those of you who don’t know who Peter Grmusa is – all three of you – the man is a pre-eminent figure in the Aussie burnout world, with a list of wins as long as your arm. He’s also a prolific car builder, turning out everything from clean streeters to mental pad-pounders. With a resume like that, we tend to pay attention when he shows up on the pad with a new weapon of mass tyre destruction.

First published in the February 2025 issue of Street Machine

“I’ve competed in Perth, Darwin, Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tassie – I reckon I’ve nearly skidded all the way around Australia!” says the well-travelled Victorian. “I enjoy it whether I win or lose; just the thrill of being in the car and skidding. I just love burnouts!”

Peter clearly doesn’t sit on his hands in his downtime, either; the bloke can’t go more than a couple of years without building himself a new car, so it’s not particularly surprising that after several years of competing in his legendary ATRISK XR Falcon, he decided to sell the car and move on to something he already had tucked away in his shed – this rather menacing XA Falcon, aptly dubbed KINGXA.

“During COVID, I bought this car from a farm and had it tubbed by Rob Ambruosi at R&N Superchargers,” Peter says. The XA’s back end was cut out and the chassis rails and leaf springs were moved inboard to give ample room for the 12-inch-wide rear Welds and protect the bodywork from debris when the speedo swings around to 350km/h!

Peter then briefly campaigned the car – wearing an eyeball-bashing coat of pink and powered by a blown 372-cube Clevo – as NORISK. But a snapped cam at Brashernats in 2022 saw the XA pushed into a corner to gather dust. However, with some space cleared in the shed and ATRISK’s insane engine back from a refresh by Brett Niddrie at BNR Engines, Peter knew he just had to marry the two.

Said monster motor is a sky-high, methanol-swilling big-block Chev whose injector hat just clears the XA’s roof. Top-tier burnout cars need to transform tyres into clouds as immediately as possible, and there’s no powerplant like a 2100hp big-block when you simply must affect the weather forecast right-bloody-now! This engine had seen several years of abuse in both ATRISK and FDIS, Peter’s ratty F-truck, but it needed a bit of love from Brett before it was ready to see the pad again. “The seats fell out of the heads and damaged them, so we had to start with a whole new top end – it can be a cruel sport!” Peter says.

Said heads are Profiler items wearing Jesel roller rockers that take orders from a special-brew BNR cam. The tall-deck Dart Big M block is filled with a Callies Crank, Oliver rods and JE pistons for a monumental displacement of 702ci (or 11.5 litres in the new money). Topping off the mountainous motor is an equally giant Littlefield 14/71 blower, and the requisite ex-funny car carbonfibre injector hat funnels acres of atmosphere down its gullet. A dirty great MSD magneto ignites all the methanol pouring into the cylinders, while down below all the noisy stuff, a Stock Car Products dry-sump pump ensures the monster Chev is supplied with adequate lubrication, even when Peter is chucking the XA across the pad with his foot buried in the carpet.

Peter has John at Pro-Matic Transmissions to thank for the tough TH400 gearbox, though the first two gears are redundant when there’s so much engine in front of it: “I just rock up to the line in top gear and stand on it!” Peter laughs. To round out the powertrain, a GJ Drivelines tailshaft sends all the stonk back to a beefy McDonald Brothers nine-inch diff. While they were setting up the diff, the McDonald boys ripped out the entire front end and replaced it with one of their tubular double A-arm set-ups to make room for the Chev’s massive pipes.

While KINGXA’s styling is far more subdued than that of some of Peter’s earlier builds (EVILXA’s burgundy-over-gold livery and ATRISK’s crazy Topaz era spring to mind), there are still plenty of Grmusa touches around the car to set it apart from the pack. For a start, that deep purple paint looks simply magic when the light hits it on an edge, then turns almost black at other angles. “It’s from HAMR Coatings and it’s called Violet Flame, though I got them to add more metallics to it to make it even more vibrant,” Peter says. After decades of panel-beating and painting his own cars, Peter knows his way around a spray gun: “I painted this in a blow-up booth in my factory,” he says with a hint of pride.

After EVILXA, Peter learned that elite-level undercarriage detailing and competition burnouts go together like garlic and liquorice. “The underside paint was just destroyed after one or two skid comps, so now I just use black stoneguard,” he says.

KINGXA’s debut skid was at the Heathcote Park leg of our inaugural Rods Out comp held alongside Street Machine Drag Challenge 2024, where Peter finished second. He went on to take home the top gong at The Rod Shop Invitational, and then the big one – the $50,000 Pro Burnout Champion title at Summernats 37.

It seems Peter’s far from done with skids, and being behind the wheel of an XA again must feel like coming home. “I bought my first XA in about 1986, and I just did burnouts everywhere in it,” he recalls. “By now, I’ve probably owned 20 or 30 of them, but I reckon I’ll keep this one.”

As for all the damage KINGXA may suffer on the pad, Peter’s unperturbed: “The main thing is that you’re building memories – you can repair or replace whatever, but you’ve got to make the most of what you can while you’re here.”

SLIPPERY BUSINESS

While it’s certainly impressive to build an engine that cranks out more than 2000hp and atomises poor, defenceless tyres with a mere tap of the velocitator, you do have to keep it well lubricated if your investment is to survive.

Brett Niddrie at BNR Engines took care of this for Peter by setting up KINGXA’s big-block with a dry sump and a four-stage Stock Car Products pump, and Boosted Fabrications knocked up the 16L tank that supplies it. After the oil has done its job, it’s pumped through the BNR windowed filter on the tank so that Peter can keep an eye out for any dreaded sparkly bits, and before it re-enters the engine, it gets a thorough clean from the big spin-on canister tucked up the back. An electric heater is used to pre-heat the oil before the engine is started so that it’s ready to skid from the get-go.

PETER GRMUSA
1972 FORD FALCON

THANKS
My family – Alyssa, Jayden, Levi and my wife Samantha; my brother Danny (Jay Bloss); Jayden (Chook); Brett Niddrie at BNR Engines; HAMR Coatings; John at Pro-Matic; Jason at Dominator; Admir for doing all the electrical work; Chris and Russell at McDonald Brothers.