ELKHART LAKE – Where’s the line between history and kitsch?Between a quirky impulse purchase and “You bought what!?!?”Road America management isn’t sure, but one lesson learned the past few years is to err on the side of offering. To paraphrase the classic movie line, if you sell it, they will buy.After the 4-mile course was resurfaced, the track offered cores pulled from the old asphalt two years ago. They were snapped up by corner workers, track history buffs and ticketholders.
When a bigger frontstretch bridge was built for 2025, pieces of the treads from the old one sold briskly.More: Key Wisconsin motor sports events for the 2026 racing seasonSo when the “false grid” staging area was rebuilt, sections of the green guardrail from that area – the type that had flanked the entire track in a day before concrete became the safety standard – were offered up at $130 apiece. Buyers will pick them up during spring vintage weekend, which runs May 15-17.The guardrail sale was one of the myriad topics Mike Kertscher, the track’s president and general manager, discussed in his annual preseason interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in April.Question: Why was that still lying around?
And the second, where does that land on the nostalgia vs. “there’s a sucker born every minute” continuum?Kertscher: It wasn’t just lying around. That was all the old guardrail between the old false grid and pit lane.
So it was coming out anyway, because it’s concrete now. So that was going away, and we hated to have the scrapper just come and give us 50 bucks for these things. It’s got more history than that.I think we initially had visions of cutting it up and selling it in smaller chunks, but we wanted to get word out.
We had a lot of it. I mean, there was close to 1,000 feet. I think it was over 1,000 feet. And we put it online.
I think [the Paddock Shop gift store] listed the 13-foot sections, just because people were calling, and they wanted a piece for their garage, or their man came, or whatever else. We don’t have any left. So for those that were waiting to buy smaller segments, sorry, we sold out already.But it’s pretty remarkable.
Instead of some of that stuff over the years going to the landfill, it’s just like [it’s] going to get recycled. We’re able to recycle in our own sort of fun way.I mean, the bridge treads were huge, were well received. The year before that, I think we did the cores, or two years, whatever it was when we were paved.
I think the cores really started the trend and now I don’t know where it ends. I don’t know what we’ll have next.I wouldn’t even think that somebody would want a piece of guardrail, but there was a heck of a lot of people out there that proved me wrong, and it’s great to see that the history will live on, maybe not here, but somebody else’s man cave. It’s pretty cool. Just continue to reinvent ways to grow our retail base but more importantly, to preserve our history.This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Road America guardrail sale shows Wisconsin racing fans love history