It was February 1973 and Evel Knievel was among the most famous people on Earth. His star would continue rising for another year until his disastrous failure at Snake River Canyon. One of Evel’s first backers was JC Agajanian, the race track owner and promoter had Knievel at his track jumping stuff often and those jumps made it onto ABC’s Wide World of Sports more than once. It helped to drive people to Agajanian’s track and it helped turn Knievel into a household name.
By the time that this film was made, Knievel’s name recognition and exposure were on the level of the greatest athletes and public figures of the day. After all, these guys had the horsepower to not only rent the freaking LA Coliseum but to stage a jump in it along with a demolition derby…yes, a demolition derby. This was not any demolition derby though, it was the richest one ever held and it was contested in late model cars, many of which were being driven by the best race car drivers of the day! We’re talking Foyt, Andretti, Unser, and on and on and on. The cars were late models and they included a Rolls Royce that Evel Knievel supposedly donated to the cause. As it turns out a relative no-name in a Mercury wagon got the job done but there’s just something wild about seeing a Rolls Royce getting trashed and ultimately set ablaze like this.
Knievel’s jump was the centerpiece of the whole day and you’ll watch it here. It is actually the first thing you will see. The jump was over 50 junked cars. Stacked a couple high and spread between the ramps, this was a pretty impressive leap but some in the crowd thought it was “cheating” that the cars were stacked and they expected him to apparently leap 50 cars that were lined up side by side. Those people apparently had never taken a physics class.
At the end of the day, about $140,000 buck were collected by the people in attendance. What’s the means in today’s money? If we had to take a guess at expenses it means that Evel Knievel and JC Agajanian likely pocketed the equivalent of about $300,000 a piece after the expenses were paid.
Not bad for a day’s work.
