That is how Tractor Pull New Zealand chairman Vaughan Coy describes the distinctly country form of motorsport entertainment, which was among the competitions at the Southern Field Days at Waimumu last week.
Four different classes of tractor — standard, Pre-85, sport and modified — competed to see how far they could drag the Tractor Pull New Zealand weight transfer sled.
But nobody could accuse Max Slee, of Te Anau, of being a boy racer. The 74-year-old estimated the drive firstly to Edendale for the recent Crank Up weekend, and then to the field days, was at the sedate speed of about 25kmh.
"It’s slow," he said.
Breaks were required as his two tractors, which are stuck together, tend to heat up in the gearboxes. Stage 1 was from Te Anau to Mossburn — "old tractors and old drivers need a break" — and then on to Browns, before finally reaching Edendale.
Mr Slee, who was involved in the 2010 Tractor Trek around the South Island raising money for Child Cancer — albeit in a faster model — said his brother originally put two tractors together in the 1960s.
He said that when he got "old and senile" he decided to put another two tractors together, as he still had the same equipment to hook them up, and they were usually kept in a museum in Te Anau.
He had collected various prizes in tractor-pull competitions over the past decade and he kept threatening that each year would be his last.
Rather than being behind the wheel, Mr Coy parked up in the competition’s HQ, and watched intently on a screen to see how each competitor fared.
He came south from Tauranga to run the competition at field days and he had written the software to enable it all to happen.
Tractor pulling was massive in the United States — "this is like the Invercargill under-15s versus the All Blacks" — but those involved in New Zealand were passionate about the sport.
Often it started with agricultural contractors having a go and then, if they had a spare tractor, they might build a modified one.
It was those modified classes that were the real spectator sports with all the noise and the vehicles doing wheel-stands.
Tractors, Mr Coy explained, were very easy to drive but hard to operate.
All the drivers started the competition on a level playing field and it came down to how they set up their tractor and how they drove it, Mr Coy said.
It was a sport people tended to either take to — or not. But if they did get a taste for it, then it tended to get under their skin and they were always looking to better their efforts, he said.
