At Detroit’s Roadkill Nights 2024, Two Local Drag Racers Defend Their Crowns

On August 10th, the Michigan city of Pontiac played host to what has become a fan-favorite tradition ahead of Detroit’s world-famous Woodward Dream Cruise: Roadkill Nights. It’s a drag racing spectacle unlike anything else in the world, put on by the folks at MotorTrend’s Roadkill, that sees hundreds of high-powered drag cars fight it out on the eighth-mile for tens of thousands of fans. The event is now in its ninth year, and for most of that time, it has taken place on the pavement of Woodward Avenue itself – a road that has a long tradition of stoplight racing. Back in the heyday of the muscle car era, Big Three engineers were practically encouraged to use the stretch of road to test the straight-line mettle of new performance models. It’s a venue steeped in history.

This year, a last-minute adjustment put the drag racing on the long straight of the local M1 Concourse race track instead of a closed-down Woodward Avenue, but the action was no less spectacular. Hours of high-octane qualifying runs, broken driveshafts, spun bearings, and burnt rubber eventually produced eight quarter-finalists in both the Small Tire and Big Tire categories, who all went head-to-head in a battle for glory and five grand. These three elimination rounds did not disappoint.

Small Tire

The quarter-final round of the Small Tire contest kicked off with Austin Sanchez’s turbo F-body Camaro going up against Adam Hodson’s twin-turbo 1984 GMC “Gap Train” S10, resulting in a close race that just saw the S10 eke out a win with a 5.24 elapsed time. Next up, the Diehl brothers’ New Edge Mustang just barely edged out a Camaro with a 5.18 ET to advance to the semifinal round in a blistering sprint down the strip, while Mikael Borggren’s turbocharged LSX-swapped 1987 Volvo 240 wagon handily left Glen Ward’s Fox-body ‘Stang in its dust with a 5.14 despite lightning-fast reaction times from both drivers. A red Fox-body pulled ahead of Brian Acton’s 1970 Chevy Nova in the last matchup to round out the list of semifinalists.

In the semi-final round, the “Gap Train” S10 found itself going up against the Diehl brothers’ New Edge Mustang, producing a close contest in which the ‘Stang pulled out a narrow victory. The second matchup was even closer and near impossible to call from the grandstands; Borggren’s Volvo and the red Fox-body were neck-and-neck for the entire eighth of a mile, with Borggren just barely pulling off a win to advance to the finals. The times for this round’s winners were 5.11 and 5.12 seconds, respectively, suggesting a super-close contest just around the corner.

Sure enough, the closeness in performance of the Volvo wagon and the Diehl brothers’ Mustang made for the biggest nail-biter of the entire day. Both cars rolled out in unison at the drop, leaving nothing on the table as they blasted down the straight with hardly an inch between them. There was a second of uncertainty as both cars crossed the finish line, before the race was finally called for the Volvo—by all of five thousandths of a second. The winning ET was once again in the low 5s, at 5.131 seconds.

Big Tire

In the big tire class, the action got underway with an R35 Nissan GT-R—a veritable spaceship compared to everything else in the field—going up against Mike Mislivec and his blown third-generation Trans Am. Ordinarily, the R35 would have been fierce competition, but a nasty stumble and stall off the line made it easy pickings for the sure-footed Mislivec, who drove a 5.20. Next, a Grand Cherokee Trackhawk went up against Jeff Hall’s Buick Skylark, pulling out nearly a bus length against the vintage muscle car with a 5.28 ET despite expert driving from both contenders, while a white 1969 Boss 302 Mustang scored a free pass as one of the cars in the class couldn’t make it to the start. Finally, an AWD F-150 was put in the unenviable position of having to try and defend against Jimmer Kline in his nitrous-injected Acadian Canso—a rare car, essentially a rebadged Canadian Chevy Nova. Kline was the only driver of the day to break into the 4s on this track, and he did it again here, easing past the Ford without a fuss.

In the semi-final round, the Trackhawk and Trans Am put on a spectacular show, blasting side-by-side through the eighth-mile, with Mislivec in the Pontiac coming out ahead by a scant .16 seconds. The second contest of the round pitted the Boss 302 against Kline’s little-known Acadian, and while the Mustang had an impeccable reaction, scooting off the line before the Acadian had budged, the Acadian was just too quick. Kline once again nabbed an ET in the high 4s, pulling out a sizable gap by the end of the stretch.

By the final round, as quick and potent as Mislivec’s Trans Am was, it was Kline’s event to lose. At the drop, both drivers reacted immediately without a tenth of a second between them, but the mighty Acadia strolled right past the Pontiac and scored the fastest time of the day: 4.858 seconds in the eighth-mile.

The results of this year’s Roadkill Nights should seem familiar to fans who have followed the event for the past few years; with this win in the Big Tire competition, Kline becomes a four-time Roadkill Nights winner, while this year marks Small Tire victory number three for Borggren. Yet, the all-day tribute to speed and petrol certainly did not disappoint when it came to thrills, and given just how hair-splittingly close the Small Tire competition was, that class is one to watch very closely next year.