County laws ban permanent signs along the highway where Paradise Speedway Maui is. So, the Hawaiian dirt oval got creative.
“Our welder, Jeff Volker, and I built a unique mobile billboard on a homemade trailer,” said Tim Nay, president of Paradise Speedway Maui. “We used the front end of our old, retired water truck for the trailer’s axle. Then we used a big Maui pineapple box, a shipping crate we reinforced by boxing it out with channel iron and welding in some uprights. We painted it so it looked nice as a finished trailer.”
With the foundation built, then came the “sign,” a 4 cylinder. Paradise Speedway Maui offers three classes of 4 cylinders—youth, 4 cylinder bombers, 4 cylinder modifieds. The 4-cylinder cars on Maui are plentiful, according to Nay. Rental car companies on the island frequently use them as part of their fleets. After visiting mainlanders beat them into the sand or crash them, they retire them, where they become perfect cars for dirt-track racing.
“Kihei Rentals, a company that sponsors five cars at the track, gave us one of their cars for the sign,” Nay said. “We drove it to the sign, pulled the battery out, raised it up with a forklift and bolted it to the trailer — a little island redneck production.”
The track pulls the trailer to a spot on Maui Veterans Highway before race night to let people know racing takes place on Maui.
“The 4 cylinders are so popular that we have one company — Akamai Motors in Kahului — that sponsors 15 cars,” said Nay.
Paradise Speedway Maui opened this year’s season on April 12, with their next race on May 10. The track runs roughly monthly, but thanks to the ingenious sign, those in the area, whether local or visiting, won’t miss it.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
