Believe it or not, “donk” drag racing really is a thing, and it’s steadily growing in the South, on the West Coast, and various point in between….because hot rodding truly knows no bounds.

For the uninitiated, a donk is, at its core, a term for customized 1971-76 GM B-body vehicles. The origins of that name varies depending on who you ask, however, somewhere along the way the term gained wider use to describe any and all customized, high-riser vehicles with highly eccentric, oversized wheels and tires and lifted much in the same fashion as a four-wheel drive offroad truck. In other words, if you’ve ever seen a donk, then you know what a donk is and you aren’t likely to forget.

Despite their outward appearance that would suggest these are nothing more than boulevard cruisers — and with wheels and tires that don’t lend themselves to anything more than, at least not on paper — what lurks under the hood is a whole different story. Those found at the strip are often big-blocks, nitrous-assisted and even boosted, producing what certainly fits the “sleeper” mold. And that’s just the way they want it, as a whole grudge racing scene has been born in pockets of the country for these cars, where the inner workings are just as secretive as any other grudge racing venue. When asked how many cubes they’re running or how much nitrous, the answer is likely a short and simple “all of it.”

But sleeper status wears off pretty quick when you drag a seemingly superior sports car, as the owner of this ’71 Caprice did a couple of weeks back at the Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida. The Caprice, believed to be a big-block car with a little sauce, shocked everyone when it drove around a ProCharger-fed Corvette with slicks on it — certainly no one more surprised than the gentleman in the ‘Vette who got an eyeful of those gold 26-inch hoops out his window.

Videographer Justin Malcom also captured some footage of a dead-serious Buick Regal owned by Ozzy Acosta, that’s got a 383 stroker on nitrous for power, producing in the neighborhood of 700 horsepower — enough to lift its 22-inch front wheels right off the pavement. If you look close, you can spot an ever-so-slight degree of tire wrinkle in the sidewall on Acosta’s rubber band-like tires at the hit.

While donk drag racing may never be anything more than an underground grudge racing niche, these guys and gals are proving that anything can be raced and raced fast if you really want to it to be.