When it comes to hot rodding, excess is just a wonderful, sometimes stupid, but usually epic thing. You know, when someone with the finances to do so builds something because they can, not because it’s a good idea. Something like a drag bike with a nitrous-fed V8 motor on it with massive paddle tires, for example. And leave it up to the Aussies, who do everything just a bit over-the-top when it comes to cars and racing, to come up with just such a thing (although we’d bet these exist somewhere in the states, as well).

Each year in April, the city of Bankstown in New South Wales, Australia hosts the Bankstown Custom Motorcycle Show, and a traditional part of that show is a display by creations that can only be described as Top Fuel Motorcycles on sand — minus the nitromethane, wheelie bars, and most of the safety equipment save for a helmet.

What also seems to be lacking is performance; you’d expect a bike with the power of a V8 engine, despite it’s heft, to have plenty of get-up-and-go, or at least enough to make justifiable use of those paddle tires. Instead, despite the power, the nitrous, and the go-fast looks, these bikes nearly got their clocks cleaned by one of the members of ZZ Top on an obscuring street bike from the 1970’s.

It’s fair to say none of these bikes are lightweight. In addition to the weight of small block and already heavy tires re-treaded to accommodate paddles, we’re guessing each and very bike was built over a few cases of beer in someone’s barn, and therefore lack any form of lightweight parts.

The sand, however, is the equalizer here. It’s hard to hook anything on sand, and once the traction is there and the tires are propelling the bike rather than building sand castles in there wake, these bikes do start to really pull. Unfortunately, only exhibition runs are made on the short course, without any-side-by-side runs to gauge how they perform against another.

At the end of the day, is there any good reason to build a sand drag bike with a V8 in it? Probably not. But there’s no good reason not to either, and that’s on fine display here.