It’s the matchup you never thought you’d see – a blown 1800hp HQ Holden Kingswood and Korea’s quickest electric rocked going head-to-head in our drag racing series.

Last time we put a $5 million Lamborghini Countach up against a pair of Ferraris (an 812 Competizione and an SF90) and eventually the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, but today is all about proper classic Australian muscle.

Thanks again to Hyundai for helping cover the cost of putting this series together – it’s MEGA expensive to do, so without support it wouldn’t have happened, you can read more about that here.

The cars

The 1976 HQ Holden Kingswood was a family staple back in its day. This particular car has seen generational ownership and was generously supplied for this drag race by Steve from Beyond Custom.

Steve’s done a little bit of work to the Kingswood – it features a 560 big block V8, a 14-71 Littlefield blower and runs on methanol.

It produces 1800hp and sits at the opposite end of the earth to our electric missile.

The attainable challenger

Priced from $111,000 before on-road costs, the fully electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 N uses a dual-motor all-wheel drive electric powertrain producing 448kW of power and 740Nm of torque.

Those outputs increase to 478kW and 770Nm with the N Grin Boost function – which can be mated to the launch control function as well. It has a claimed 0-100km/h time of 3.4 seconds with the N Grin Boost function active.

It also has a bunch of other functions like the ability to destroy tyres, make engine sounds, and even pulse fictional gear shifts to make it feel like an internal-combustion car with a DCT.

The results

It may not be immediately obvious, so I’ll explain some of the numbers you’ll see below.

The Kingswood is rear-wheel drive and was wearing a set of drag radials. They need a very sticky, prepped surface, along with warmth to perform well – we had neither of those.

So under strict instructions to not damage the airport surface, Steve only had limited opportunity to warm his tyres up – he showed incredible restraint with his right foot!

We did three runs in total. One run where the Ioniq 5 N was used in its fastest setting – launch control with N Grin Boost active and battery conditioning, one run in rear-wheel drive without launch control, but with N Grin Boost running and finally one rolling race in rear wheel drive with N Grin Boost running.

While the standing start runs weren’t very close – the rolling race was unbelievably close! The final times logged below were logged with Alborz and I in the back seat of the HQ to help with traction.

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