Full Throttle

The History Channel jumped on the motor-head reality show bandwagon with this show, where two teams of two (friends/coworkers/family) get 10 hours to turn a pair of classic vehicles into drag-racers. The obligatory history content is fulfilled by adding a lot of background information on the vehicles.

The vehicles they're give are nearly identical (same model, engine, transmission), but the contestants have a selection of hot-rod parts to install to improve performance. If they go overtime, they get penalized 0.1s for every X minutes they go over, which I guess was added to the drag race elapsed times to determine the final score.

The team that wins the drag race gets to drive home both vehicles.

As this sort of show went, it wasn't as entertaining as most, but maybe more "family friendly". And it made a pleasant change from the History Channel's usual topic of war.