Hemmings Motor News Blog Blog

Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

Previous in Blog: Spirit AMX Gave the AMC Musclecar One Last “Decal GT” Hurrah   Next in Blog: Electric Ford Bronco Promises to Ensure a Future for Classic Vehicles
Close
Close
Close
4 comments
Rate Comments: Nested

Open Diff – What’s the Craziest Demolition Derby You’ve Seen?

Posted April 30, 2019 9:00 AM by dstrohl

Like pretty much every other motorsport, demolition derbies have rules and they have winners and losers. As a result, demo derby competitors spend an inordinate amount of time and thought (for something that should just be stupid, dirty fun at the county fair) choosing the best vehicles for the purpose, tweaking the cars to outlast the competition, and devising ways to bend the rules that would make Smokey Yunick proud.

Organizers of demolition derbies know this. Some roll with the culture and tweak the rules back in a tit-for-tat that comes to define demo derby culture and turn it into something far more serious than necessary. Others realize that the whole point of a demo derby is for entertainment and novelty, so they shake things up a bit with oddball variations on the demolition derby: school bus derbies, figure eights, school bus figure eights, garden tractor derbies, RV derbies, and (my personal favorite) combine demo derbies.

Derby stories from fairgrounds across the U.S.

Reply

Interested in this topic? By joining CR4 you can "subscribe" to
this discussion and receive notification when new comments are added.
Power-User

Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 238
Good Answers: 14
#1

Re: Open Diff – What’s the Craziest Demolition Derby You’ve Seen?

04/30/2019 2:13 PM

I enjoyed derbying for many years. Probably derbied about 20 cars. The craziest I ever saw was motorcycle demo. It is exactly as you are imagining right now. Combines are always fun too. My buddy did a pick-up derby. I would love to derby a school bus.

Reply
Power-User

Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Dayton Ohio
Posts: 266
Good Answers: 10
#2

Re: Open Diff – What’s the Craziest Demolition Derby You’ve Seen?

05/01/2019 9:18 AM

When I was just a boy, I watched my crazy uncle Dave derby a school bus in a figure 8 race. The cross roads was marked with earth mover tires filled with sand. This "race" was high energy excitement for me as I had a family member involved. After several near misses my uncle had to swerve to miss a certain collision at the X. He hit one of the big tires at about 30-35 mph and it barely moved. The rear end of the bus came off the ground about 8 feet and slammed back down with 2 bounces. It took about 2 days before uncle Dave's eyes both pointed the same direction.

Ahhhh memories

__________________
MikeMack747
Reply
Power-User

Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 238
Good Answers: 14
#3
In reply to #2

Re: Open Diff – What’s the Craziest Demolition Derby You’ve Seen?

05/01/2019 11:47 AM

I took a hit once that knocked me right out of my shoes.

Reply
Guru
Popular Science - Weaponology - New Member Hobbies - Fishing - New Member

Join Date: May 2007
Location: Aloha or
Posts: 659
Good Answers: 19
#4

Re: Open Diff – What’s the Craziest Demolition Derby You’ve Seen?

05/01/2019 3:48 PM

They have combine derbies here once a year. combines are tough.

when i was young I used to watch figure 8 derbies. I was surprised to see that they still do that.

__________________
Closed biased minds are utterly impervious to any factual evidence which contradicts their beliefs
Reply
Reply to Blog Entry 4 comments
Copy to Clipboard

Users who posted comments:

harley (2); MikeMack747 (1); silvCrow (1)

Previous in Blog: Spirit AMX Gave the AMC Musclecar One Last “Decal GT” Hurrah   Next in Blog: Electric Ford Bronco Promises to Ensure a Future for Classic Vehicles

Advertisement