Paraplegic 'hoon' finds joy at Summernats

Jason Rapoff doesn't care that he's in a wheelchair.

"I'm still a hoon," he says, arm resting on the bonnet of his matt black Holden VH Commodore, kerbside at Summernats.

The 36-year-old from Perth was left paralysed waist-down after crashing his dirt bike more than 11 years ago.

He came up short on a jump and shattered a vertebrae on impact, splintering his spinal cord.

He thought he'd only broken his leg and hurt his thumb.

"I remember as clear as day, with the ball of my left hand I gave two taps on my leg," he told AAP before showing YouTube video of the crash.

"I couldn't feel them."

He spent days in hospital and months in rehabilitation.

While he can no longer ride a two-wheeler, Rapoff still finds joy on four wheels.

When he's not steering a quad bike, he is laying down rubber in his modified Commodore.

His beefed-up car has special hand controls around the steering wheel for braking and accelerating.

For the past two years he's entered the burnout competition at Summernats in Canberra, driving across from Western Australia with a couple of mates.

"I steer with my left hand and do the throttle and brake with the right," he explains.

"I've been in a wheelchair for 11-and-a-half years, so I've been perfecting it for 11-and-a-half years.

"I've got no other choice.

"This is a release."