Jalopnik: evel knievel

A Look Back: Evel Knievel’s First Televised Jump

Wes Siler — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:30:00 EST

It's 1967. A softly spoken, well-dressed young man named Evel Knievel is about to, on ABC's Wide World of Sports, attempt something no one else ever had: jumping a motorcycle over 15 cars. Let's watch.

Luckily, the Wide World Of Sports was on hand to cover the motocross race for which Evel’s jump was a sideshow. They heard about the jump, thought it might make a neat segment and launched the career of America’s most famous stuntman.

Here With Fanfare, Your Final Tribute To Evel Knievel

bwojdyla — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:45:00 EST

Though the kitchy and hilarious "Jump of Legends" didn't make your cut in the vote for Jalopnik's final Evel Knievel tribute, the handsome and impressively constructed "Creation of Evel" did, with a commanding 37.4% of the vote. This tasteful work was contributed by reader Thomas Reynolds, who hails from the beating heart of hoon central, Australia. We asked Thomas to say a few words about his inspiration, process, and what Evel meant to him. His take on Evel, and stories of years gone by after the leap...

The inspiration was simple: to a now 30-something male growing up 15,000 miles away- Evel was God in the 70s.
In the late 70's Santa brought me an Evel K toy - complete with rip cord start, two jumps and THE cape. Years later my Mum told me that my (now deceased) Dad and his drunken mate were taking turns shooting Evel down the hallway very late on Xmas eve. When she tried to tell them to stop, me Dad replied "But... it's EVEL!"

And so when I photoshopped Evel jumping over the hand of God, I thought it strangely appropriate. The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but Evel was bigger than God. Reckon he would have made it over the pearly gates with just a few more MPH too.

Anyway, many thanks to the Jalopnik crew- when I am named host of the Australian version of Top Gear (dear EK/God - yes please!), I'll be sure to forget to name you all as my inspiration.

Keep this reply in mind for the next time we ask for an acceptance speech, cause this one's got it all: Fond childhood memories, heartstring tugging, hubris, and just a hint of Jalopnik ego stroking. Thomas, we think you're the tops too (especially since he sent us shots of his sick daily driver - jealous). We're tossing the gallery of all the entries out one more time, because after all, a sendoff to a legendary figure can't really be the best. In fact, we're pretty sure the entries make the most rounded and fitting tribute when viewed together.

Evel Tribute Submissions In, Help Us Decide The Final Jump

bwojdyla — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:15:00 EST

A few Friday's ago, the hoon world lost the renegade of the ramp, the sultan of speed, the king of compound fractures, Evel Knievel. We asked you to work up your personal tribute to this monster of pop culture and you responded in spades. In the last days, we put together the Jalopnik Counsel of Awesomeness and selected our ten favorite entries for you to vote on. The reasons range from impressive level of CIA style photo manipulation, to complete irreverence mirroring the life of the man in question. We've decided to leave the voting anonymous, so as to avoid the popularity contests that you kids get caught up in. The winner, and their commentary will be revealed on Wednesday afternoon. Voting, and as always, comments, after the jump.

Remembering Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:00:00 EST

Yesterday, we lost a giant of American history. It's hard to overstate how massive Evel Knievel was in the media sphere of the late 1960s and early 1970s without some premium-grade hyperbole. Imagine the most identifiable figure of the past few years — Oprah, say, or that geek Star Wars kid from YouTube — and raise them by a Rachel Ray or a Sting. That'll get you in the ballpark with a guy who literally broke every bone in his body — on television — in the name of daredevil motorcycling. Evel Knievel owned the 70s. And he pwned himself in the process.

It was the era of the Big TV Network, when a single broadcast could reel in more eyeballs than today's top 10 cable channels and top 10,000 websites combined. Fronting that massive lens during the late-Vietnam era, Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. did one thing, and one thing only. He jumped over stuff. First, it was rattlesnakes and mountain lions, then cars, then buses — launch ramp to landing ramp, stars-and-stripes-clad jumpsuit and satin cape flapping in the wind. Audiences ate it up. Then, they came back for seconds and thirds.

Knievel had a surefire formula for keeping the small-screen bucks rolling in: Up the ante, no matter the cost. An audience comprising equal parts Joe sixpack and hippie Johnny tuned in to ABC to watch Knievel's increasingly elaborate leaps. Some hoped he'd come out on the high side of physics, others morbidly expected the man to shatter like human crockery. Maybe this'll be the time. Usually both sides got their wish. Oftentimes he'd land clear, then crumple to the ground, suffering astounding bodily harm. A pulverized femur here, a stuffed vertebrae there. Knievel worked it, limping out of the hospital in front of the rolling cameras, held together with pins and plates and surgical-steel hinges and ready to go again. He was as close to an action figure as human flesh could get.

In 1967 came the big payoff. In an independently financed production, Knievel launched his bike over the fountains at Las Vegas's Caesar's Palace, crashing so severely that he wound up in a coma for 29 days. ABC's Wide World of Sports bought the show and ran it, kickstarting Knievel into megastardom. In 1972, he undertook a massive effort to jump Idaho's Snake River Canyon inside a jet-powered craft. It was ludicrous from the get-go, a ridiculous climax to a career hard-wired to the stratosphere. He made it as a matter of distance, but a prematurely deployed chute drifted his skycycle back over the water, and he nearly drowned in the process.

After that, it was more exhibitions, more buses, more crashes. In 1981, he made his last jump, an ill-fated soar over a tank of sharks. A fitting end to his career, considering the connotation.

How Knievel went from huckster and petty thief to superstar is a story for the ages. But his death was long and slow and painful, and directly related to the constant battering his body took during that fateful decade-and-a-half. The era of the daredevil ended long before he did. – Mike Spinelli

Photo Credit: KC Blogs

An Evel Knievel Tribute: Photoshop the Hoonfather's Final Jump

bwojdyla — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:45:00 EST

If you're anything like us, you're completely heartbroken over the passing of ubermensch and all around hero to hoons everywhere, Evel Kneivel. Rarely in the annals of history has a man come along with no purpose other than to capture the popular imagination. There are an untold number of errant youths who invested the precious time of their childhood summers emulating this master of the impossible, the improbable, with well worn Huffy's and dirt ramps. We suspect that a great many of those wayward hoon-igans have found refuge here. Given the passing of such a momentous figure, we feel it necessary to pay tribute in some manner and to ask for your help. We would like you, the reader, to do your best to photoshop St. Knievel's final jump into the great beyond. Only "appropriate" submissions will be accepted which are sent into the tips address will be considered for the vote by you on the final tribute. Have at it — Evel'd want it this way.

Evel Knievel, Dead at Age 69

Ray Wert — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:41:20 EST

This is all we got as of now, we'll get you more as soon as we have it:

Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel dead at 69

03:20 PM CST on Friday, November 30, 2007

Associated Press

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel death was confirmed by his 21-year-old granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. He had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

Evel Fails Caesars

Davey G. Johnson — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:45:00 EDT

It's Evel Knievel's tragic fountain jump at Caesar's Palace. What else to we really need to say about one of the Greatest American Hoon's darkest moments? – Davey G. Johnson

Ebay Find - Ultimate Hoon Edition: Evel Knievel X-2 Skycycle

bwojdyla — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:16:52 EDT

During the formative years of ages six through eleven, this Jalop lived a short bike ride from one of Evel Knievel's most spectacular failures (aside from the bone-crushing incident outside Caesar's Palace). That is, his 1974 attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon. Evel, the "paintron" saint of hoonage, hired an ex-NASA engineer to design and build what came to be called the X-2 Skycycle, a steam-powered missile that happened to have two wheels. With this batshit contraption he planned to jump a section of the holy-crap-that's-really-deep gorge and live to tell about it. Unfortunately fate had a different idea and the drogue chute opened at liftoff, sending the cycle crashing into the rocky walls of the canyon. Now that the awesome history lesson is covered, it's time to pony up about $5 million to buy the leftovers (sweet, Mulally will take two!). The Evel Knievel Daredevil and Harley Davidson Museum of Niagara Falls somehow managed to get their sneaky Canadian mitts on it, and is now auctioning it — and the Knievel Exhibit — for a huge profit. Better call all of your oil baron friends quick, the auction ends Tuesday evening. – Ben Wojdyla

X-2 Skycycle Auction[Ebay]

Related:
Who's the hoon of the week? You decide! [internal]

Time Warp Toys: Evel Knievel Daredevil Super Stunt Set

Ray Wert — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:01:00 EST

When I was a kid I would ask to go over to play at my older cousin's house in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak not because I loved my cousin so much, and not because he was five years older than me and therefore worlds cooler. Rather, it was because he had an Evel Knievel Stunt Set with a gyro-powered motorcycle and Knievel action figure. I'd play with that set every moment I could, setting it up and running the cycle into every conceivable object and barrier I could come up with. That is until I ran it off of the table trying to make it jump into the sink and the cycle broke in two. I haven't talked much with my cousin since then. But now that I've found out Ideal Toys is again producing Knievel cycle kits like this "Deluxe Dare Devil Stunt Set" maybe I'll have to buy my cousin a replacement, and then he can look like the poor schlep in the picture to the right, playing with his little Evel Knievel doll. Who am I kidding, that'll be me too. Gallery below. – Ray Wert

Evel Knievel Stunt Set [Firebox via uncrate]

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Knievel sues Kanye: Does He Know He Ain't Messin' With No Broke Singer?

Ray Wert — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:56:55 EST

"Evel ain't nothin' but a gold digger, but he ain't messin' with no broke singer."

The man known mostly for jumping and twirling through the air with the greatest of ease — is now jumping through the dangers of the federal court system, filing a lawsuit in federal court claiming rapper Kanye West has infringed on his trademark name and likeness. Apparently the erstwhile college dropout takes on a persona in a new video he's called "Evel Kanyevel" — who then procedes to jump a motorcycle over a canyon. But I've got to say the claims of the man with the real name of "Robert Craig" that

"[the] video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I've ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public..."

may not be the most accurate claim, then again — maybe it's just that Kanye doesn't care about bike people. – Ray Wert

Evel Knievel sues Kanye West [Freep]

Related:
Am I Evel? I Am Cad: Knievel's De Camino [internal]

Am I Evel? I Am Cad: Knievel's De Camino

Davey G. Johnson — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:01:22 EST

Some days, when the news is slow in coming and server recalcitrance is causing you to rip out your hair in fairly large clumps, it just seems like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. And then a reader sends in a tip. And it's about an El Camino-esque conversion. What's more, it's about an El Camino-esque conversion done professionally on a Caddy DeVille by the Caribou Motor Company for none other than Evel Knievel. All becomes right with the world; you break out the cyanoacrylate adhesive and secure the recently uprooted hair back into place and dream star-spangled metalflake daydreams about candy-colored airborne motorcycle projectiles and ornate capes. And sweet, sweet El Camino love. Thanks, Alex.

1974 Cadillac-based pick-up truck [Car-Nection (scroll down)]

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