The video quality is terrible, but maybe it’s for the best that we’re spared the graphic details of these vintage cars giving up their lives in the arena.
Antiques Demolition Derby: Watch ’57 Caddy, ’57 Studebaker, ’58 Mercury, ’56&’59 Lincoln, ’63 Chrysler And A Few Other Classics Get Smashed
– Posted on October 7, 2013
This is a compete
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blast_of_the_past/with/6871324767/
Friend sent me this Flickr link about many of the cars of the same vintage as those in the video and other 50s stuff.
Loved the idea of demolition derbies as a kid, although I never actually got to see one in person. Now… not so much. I have to think that the demolition derby is pretty much going to disappear fairly soon. The preferred old school tanks are getting scarcer and more expensive every year, and newer cars with crumple zones just aren’t suited to it.
There are classes for FWD cars and minivans now, as well as an event that’s like an obstacle course race track, which is also suited for FWD cars. The “sport” is evolving around whatever vehicles are plentiful and cheap.
I was having a hard time identifying the winning car. 59-ish Mercury? He seemed to be the only one who pulled nose-first into his starting spot. I was surprised that those two big 58-60 Lincolns didn’t do better. I was also surprised at how long that little Studebaker kept going, considering how much smaller it was than some of the others.
Good grief, this is in my neck of the woods! Pine City is just a dozen or so miles from here.
Never been to the local derbies, but I know many of the junkyards I frequent have teams of their own. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of those cars came from my favorite little boneyard, halfway between Pine City and Mora. They’ve got lots of oldies out in the back forty which are too rotted to restore, but would be ideal for something like this.
Too bad the video is at such low resolution. If one of them said “Lucky 7 Bear Bait” on the door, I’d know it was their house team. (Seems they mostly like the Imperials and other 60s/early 70s sleds, from what I’ve seen of the wreckage that gets hauled back afterwards. Pretty sure those run in a different class.)
I know derby guys rationalize that they use beaters, not show quality cars, but reasonably solid 50’s vehicles that ran and drove shouldn’t have been derbied in 2010, at worst they should have been parted out. That being said, I will admit to having had a morbid curiosity as to how the unibody Lincolns would fare (not good), and I was amazed how long the relatively smaller and lighter Studebaker held up under the kind of hits it was taking.
Idiotic bottom feeders.
What an idiotic waste of time, it’s hard to watch these vehicles getting smashed up like this for the enjoyment of morons. At least these vehicles should have been parted out.
Most old cars that get derbied are beyond salvage but have already been stripped of anything useful, one club member was given a Humber Imperial on the condition he derbied it 4 entries 4 wins you cant hurt something like that by bashing it with tin can chevies and the like.
I believe (hope) all demo drivers will spend a good part of their time in the here after watching their favorite car being smashed .
Whether or not there were still useful or usable parts on these cars, I can’t stand to watch them meet their ultimate fate in a demo derby. It just seems like such a waste for these vehicles to survive for such a long time, only to see them destroyed in a manner like this.
I’ve got to believe there was something of value on these cars, even if it was to build patterns to make new panels… something! Anything!
When I was a kid, I loved the idea of derbys, now, not so much.
Count me in as someone who enjoyed this as a child and grew to loath it later. The rationale that the cars that are used are usually unsalvageable is bullshit. Half the time I peruse craigslist for cars under $1000 I come across clean Box Panthers and B bodies with “demo derby” in the tags. It’s whatever’s cheapest, and sadly the average 4 door classics aren’t easy sells for anyone but hillbilly derbiests.
And the event itself is boring. If I wanted to watch cars randomly bump into each other at 5-10mph I could just pull up a lawn chair onto any sidewalk in a dense city at rush hour and see the same thing for free. I’d only be missing out on chili dogs and BO aroma.
yeah, if you’re gonna destroy cars, the Brits have the right idea with banger racing; that is both a higher level of insanity and at the same time somehow has more of a point.
They did this in 2010?! Stupid, stupid people. This would have been dumb in 1990, to use ’50s cars. I went to several derbies at the Mississippi Valley fairgrounds in 1989-91 and liked them then (I was 10) but today I remember all the clamshell GM wagons that got totally destroyed. My cousin’s boyfriend at the time, Barry, did several cars. I remember a clean dark red Aspen wagon, a 1977-79 LeSabre coupe (I still have the speedometer from that car somewhere) and a really rough “Uncle Buck” Marquis–got a ride in that one before it was disassembled. But in ’90, they were just old used cars.
That lilac and white ’58-’60 Lincoln, ’56 Premiere and ’57 Cadillac hurt the most. Who am I kidding, they all hurt.