Holden Kingswood '2 Face' shows the drastic changes of a restoration

Monday, 8 November 2021

Meet Harvey, the two-faced Kingswood ute that is both restored and unrestored.

Usually, when you embark on restoring a classic car, you would bring the whole thing back from the brink of death. Rust patching, engine work, retrimming and repainting, it is a big job that can take years. One way to trim the timeline back is to half-do it – literally.

That is what Geoff Luck of GC Restoration has done, giving his half-restored Holden Kingswood ute the apt name of “2 Face” or “Harvey”, after the Batman villain Harvey Dent, otherwise known as Two Face.

Luck has restored exactly half of the old Kingswood, drawing an imaginary line straight down the middle of the car. The driver’s side of the ute is pristine and showroom fresh, save for a few modern touches like the modern LED headlights.

This isn’t a Photoshop trick – someone has restored exactly half of this Holden Kingswood ute.

The panels have been beaten straight and repaired where needed, the interior has been refreshed, even half of the engine bay has been meticulously cleaned out. According to a Facebook post about the car, the clean side is meant to look like a Sandman tribute.

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Hopefully, the entire engine has been refreshed, rather than just one bank of the V8.

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Meanwhile, the passenger’s side of the car looks like it has been sitting in a paddock at Mt Isa for years on end … which is about right, considering that is where the car was found.

There is sun and weather damage, dust, crud and rust – basically everything you usually get rid of when you are cleaning a car, let alone giving it a full restoration.

The split personality even continues to the radiator sticker, which is brand new on the driver’s side and unreadable on the other. It looks like a before and after Photoshop exercise, but it is all legit.

“Geoff has had this odd idea for a resto in his head for years and has been talking about doing up an old ute to use as a GC Restoration shop runabout for quite some time.” GC Restoration wrote on its Facebook page.

“Harvey’s driver’s side has been bare-metalled, repaired, straightened and freshened up to look like a Sandman tribute from front to back, inside and out, top and underbody, right down the middle. BUT the passenger side has been left almost exactly as it was.

“We salvaged what we could. It has been sun and weather damaged, it has got dents, holes, bits missing, lost or damaged and bloody red dirt everywhere! Harvey is certainly a head turner!”

And we certainly would not argue with that.

It is unclear where Harvey will go next but with the GC Restoration Facebook post calling it a “shop ute”, it probably won’t end up on eBay any time soon.