Christine Elphick's 1971 XY Falcon wagon has a Jeckyll and Hyde personality: in Jeckyll mode it's a "granny's car" that can cruise along the street at 50 km/h - a family car she lets the kids drive with L plates.
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But when its Hyde personality emerges it becomes a wild beast pushing its driver back in her seat while accelerating from 0-175 km/h in just over 13 seconds.
Not bad for a car Ms Elphick bought 14 years ago for only $1400 - though she reckons she's spent over $40,000 bringing it to a condition where it could put in a good performance at last weekend's Runway Thrash at Cootamundra Airport.
Ms Elphick's Falcon was the only Cootamundra car among 83 entrants, most coming from Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, attracted by the availability of the runway to let their street cars do things that could never be legal on normal roads.
The Falcon's V8 motor develops somewhere between 400-600 horsepower ("we've never had it on a dyno"), less than half the thousand-plus horsepower of the fastest cars in the event, but Ms Elphick does't hanker for more power.
"I'm happy just being able to do it in my home town," she said at the airport on Saturday.
"I can't go to Sydney but it's great to be able to race my car against some of these high-power entrants in my home town".
"And to do it legally, too. It's something the younger ones who smoke it up and drag race out on the street need to get into - it's a lot cheaper than a fine from a copper."
The original V8 in the car broke, so it's got a new engine installed by an enthusiast who ended up going to a lot more expense than she originally intended.
"It's got a lot of the good stuff - I'm still learning about it because I work out on the farm seven days a week and I don't get to know all the mechanicals but I'm getting there," she said.
"At my last attempt I had nothing but alternator issues but Jeff's fixed that up and put another one in for me."
Her best time was 13.08 seconds, and she was hoping to "get into the 12s" by the end of Saturday - and her best speed was 108 miles an hour (175 km/h).
The Faclon takes standard 98 unleaded petrol, whereas quite a few of the cars there have methanol and nitrous fuels, and have monster drag tyres, whereas the XY has Shelby 500 style second-hand mags that can run on the street and that the crew was lucky enough to find at the Coota Swap Meet.
"I'm no real competition - I can get them by the 60 foot mark but it's in the top end they've got me," Ms Elphick says cheerfully.
"I still get just as excited as I did when I was younger."
