Australian V8 Drag Cars: King of the Hill

Aussies run their big V8 engines hard at Calder Park.

While street-style drag racing has gotten huge in the United States, it’s become a bit slower to catch on elsewhere. Maybe most countries’ arcane motoring laws have something to do with that, since they tend to make it hard to build crazy street cars that can be registered. Australia’s anti-hooning laws, in particular, keep nutso street-car builds at bay. However, Calder Park Dragway in Melbourne, Australia, held a King of the Hill grudge-racing night. Fullboost was there and cut together this great footage of all the event’s V8 cars.

The selection of V8 cars leans heavily toward OZ-built machines, as you might guess. A healthy dose of Holden Toranas and Ford Capris run hard down the track. In the case of one black Ford Capri, they run a little too hard. However, you also find a cool four-door Falcon, some Holden Utes, and a turbocharged Holden Commodore. An awful lot of them run 10’s or quicker, which is no joking around. Even a couple of wagons sneak into the action, including a big Mercedes AMG that runs 12’s.

Event organizers split the King of the Hill event into two classes: Street (for street-legalish cars) and Comp (for anything with doors). The Comp class included most of the big American variety of the trans-Pacific V8 brotherhood. The maroon fifth-generation Camaro sporting a huge blower sounds about as nasty as any cammed drag car we’ve ever heard. In addition, the bright-blue Pro Mod-style Camaro, also with a big supercharger, looked a riot. It struggles to hook up in the video, but anything of that nature must certainly be an ill-tempered beast.

We love watching drag cars run hard, but we love hearing them almost as much. Sit back and put on a good pair of headphones for this Fullboost video.