WE WERE all pretty excited when we saw Ben Neal’s name light up on the entry list for Street Machine Drag Challenge Weekend earlier this year, because we knew how capable both his crew and his Toyota Cresta are at events of this nature.

If you’re not familiar with the car, the boys from Mighty Car Mods took a Toyota Cresta fresh off the boat from Japan, threw a Barra in the thing and (successfully) went hunting for a nine-second pass. Ben then took ownership of the car shortly afterwards, constantly improving it into a consistent low-nine-second street car.

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Ben, Woody and Al then decided to throw themselves right into the deep end last year, shipping the car and all their gear to the US to run in the godfather event; Hot Rod Drag Week. Having successfully taken that on with no dramas, Ben set his sights even higher for 2019.

“We’re not here to screw around,” he jokingly said. “If we can get everything together, we’re going to do Drag Challenge Weekend, Drag Week in the States and the full Drag Challenge all in one year.”

As you’ll see in later parts of this series, the boys had another successful run at DCW this year. Ben’s Cresta ran effortlessly on the road all week and just lost out to Dylan Murdoch’s insane BF XR6 Turbo at the track to finish second in the XR6 Turbo Developments Six-Cylinder class.

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At the time of writing, the boys are gearing up for another crack at Hot Rod Drag Week this year. Having already shipped the Cresta over for its second hit, they’ll also be debuting a Fox-body Mustang with a Barra conversion carried out on US soil to really stick it to the Yanks. If logistics are on Ben’s side, we really hope he can get the car back on Aussie shores and have a crack at the full-length Drag Challenge in November. Fingers crossed!