Life of Evel: Evel Knievel (12 page)
Having secured the land, Knievel’s attention turned to transport. Just what sort of motorcycle could get him across the 1,600-foot gap he had to bridge? Certainly no ordinary production motorcycle. Early wild ideas revolved around some sort of standard motorcycle fitted with additional propulsion, such as a steam-powered booster rocket. Evel did have a few unconvincing lash-ups made to promote the event, the most laughable being a mock-up Harley-Davidson three-wheeler trike with what looked like a jet engine mounted precariously on the back. Knievel envisioned building a massive run-up ramp measuring 740 feet in length and angled at 40 degrees, allowing him to attack the jump like he had all others but with the addition of a jet boost at the take-off point. But simple laws of physics soon proved this to be an impossible dream and Evel eventually realised he would need nothing short of a rocket to make the attempt, which was now beginning to look more like a short flight than a long jump.
Knievel received a letter from a rocket engineer called Doug Malewicki offering his services to design and build a small rocket that would be capable of launching Knievel across the canyon. Evel took an interest and asked Malewicki to put in some groundwork on the idea and get back to him. The result was the X-1, a 12-foot-long contraption looking like a mini jet-fighter, with no wings, two wheels and a set of stabilisers. The two wheels were where any comparison with a motorcycle ended but by now Knievel had accepted that the jump was simply not possible on a real bike, however heavily modified.
The X-1 had been revealed at the proposed Snake River jump site in 1972 – the year Knievel had first proposed to make the jump there. He had, due to so many unforeseen problems, been forced to postpone the attempt and set another provisional date for early 1973. This too was cancelled and Knievel would then not be drawn on a date any further than saying, ‘I’ll jump the canyon when I’m ready to do it. And I’m not ready to die yet.’
In fairness, much of the credit for the Snake River attempt must go to Malewicki as it was he who suggested the rocket idea, the nature of the near-vertical take-off ramp and the use of steam to power the X-1 (because it was cheaper, safer and more reliable than liquid fuels). But working with Evel Knievel was never easy, as Malewicki found out, and, after a series of arguments, he walked away from the project leaving Knievel with a basic plan for the attempt but no one with the necessary experience to develop it and make it happen.
With America’s space programme still in full swing in the early 1970s, it was to Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks in the 1995 movie
Apollo 13
) that Knievel turned to for advice. Lovell recommended a rocket specialist called Robert C. ‘Bob’ Truax, who Knievel boasted had worked with NASA on ‘all the big space stuff right from the start’. Truax was a rocket and water-propulsion specialist, having once been president of the American Rocket Society and having been involved in the development of the Polaris missile with the Naval Research Laboratory, but he had never actually been employed by NASA. Even so, Truax was accustomed to working with sufficient budgets to see his projects through, but was soon to find out that getting money from Knievel was a tougher job than rocket science. The issue would lead, rather predictably, to more arguments and confrontations.
Truax’s first priority was to arrange a test shot of Malewicki’s X-1 to get a basic understanding of what he was dealing with, and whether or not the concept held any promise, which Truax already doubted. A massive earthworks project had long been underway on the rim of the Snake River Canyon to construct a base, angled at 40 degrees, for Knievel’s take-off ramp. On top of this, Truax and his crew built a 740-foot ramp angled at 22 degrees for the test launch of the X-1. The unmanned craft blasted off the ramp safely but then spun round and headed nose-first down into the murky green Snake River.
If anything, the test served to prove just how brave Knievel was and just how dangerous the stunt was going to be, but it was only a half-hearted attempt, as Truax was fully aware. Although he used steam to power the craft, he only applied 1,300 lbs of thrust instead of the 5,000 lbs he had calculated as being necessary to clear the canyon. The angle of the launch ramp too would eventually be adjusted to a much steeper 56 degrees. The first test may have been a failure but it was certainly not an end to Knievel’s dream, and, while the X-1 lay at the bottom of the riverbed for several months, Truax went back to the drawing board and worked on a second craft, which he naturally enough dubbed the Sky Cycle X-2.
Truax set to work in his premises in Saratoga, California building two Sky Cycles, one for an unmanned test and the other for Knievel’s bona fide attempt on the canyon. The basic shape and principles of the X-2 were the same as Malewicki’s X-1, but it was in a host of small modifications that the two designs differed. The new craft had three wheels and an open cockpit as opposed to an enclosed one, and, rather than being laid flat on his stomach, Knievel would sit like a regular pilot, though he would have a set of handlebars to hang on to, even though they served no steering purpose. The aerodynamics were improved for stability and efficiency and Evel would have a very small amount of steering control via two foot pedals which operated two small flaps on the X-2’s nose.
Despite the fact that Knievel would eventually brag that the building of the X-1, two X-2s and the construction of the launch pad had cost him $1 million, Truax was still forced to use very basic technology to stay within Evel’s tight budget. According to author Steve Mandich, the X-2 was built around a Navy bomber fuel-tank and was, in places, held together with nothing more than bailing wire. Mandich even reports the use of a lid from a can of dog food as part of a valve mechanism. Knievel himself seemed perfectly aware of the lash-up nature of the X-2, cheerfully referring to it as a ‘tin can’.
The craft was 13 feet long and weighed in at 600 kilos, about the weight of three average sports motorcycles. Because Knievel would have so little control over its flight, the X-2 was actually registered with the FAA as an unmanned rocket, while the State of Idaho considered it an aeroplane and registered it as such.
With the Snake River jump date finally being confirmed as 8 September 1974, Knievel allowed Truax to continue his work as he himself embarked on yet another tour of the country to perform more jumps, rake in some much-needed cash, and promote the canyon attempt. Throughout 1974, Knievel would use every last ounce of the considerable promotional talent he possessed to hype the jump, and he was so successful that by the time 8 September came around he was the most talked-about man in the United States. Knievel mania was about to reach new heights.
The roller-coaster ride began on 17 February when Evel cleared 11 Mack trucks at the Green Valley Raceway in North Richland Hills, Texas. The event was covered by ABC for its
Wide World of Sports
programme and viewers saw Evel almost completely overshoot the landing ramp and slam down hard at its furthest end, just managing to avoid a crash.
The Knievel steamroller then moved on to Portland’s Memorial Coliseum on 29 March, where Evel officially announced the Snake Canyon jump date of 8 September. Incredibly, with so much at stake over the canyon he also announced he would be making a further seven jumps leading up to the big day with the last being just nineteen days before the canyon attempt. It was accepted that Knievel never missed a chance to make money but it must have been obvious even to him that if he was badly hurt in any of those later jumps then everything he had organised for the canyon would have been for nothing. But then every jump carried risk, both financially and physically, and, to a mentality like Knievel’s, the canyon was just another jump. If it happened to be more dangerous than the others, well, he’d better make what he could now and spend it all the quicker.
Knievel had an unlikely ally in his quest for world domination in 1974 – rubber dolls. Rubber dolls in his own image, to be precise. First released in 1973, sales of the Ideal Toy Company’s Evel Knievel action figures and toy motorcycles went through the roof as Evel mania swept the States and started spreading further afield once news of his outrageous canyon plan was broadcast round the world.
The toys were such a success that to this day many people remember the Evel Knievel toy they had as a child as much, if not more, than they remember the man himself. Such was the ingenuity of the toys that they were bought and enjoyed by kids who had never even heard of Evel Knievel, just because they were so much fun. The first model to be released was the standard $10.97 Stunt Cycle, accompanied by a seven-inch bendy action figure with removable helmet and hands moulded into a grip-shape to clutch the bike’s handlebars. The bike itself was mounted onto a ‘Gyro-Powered Energizer’ which, when turned furiously, wound up such momentum in the rear wheel of the bike that the bike sped off the device when a release button was pushed. After that, a child’s imagination was the limit when it came to choosing obstacles to jump. Toy cars, flights of steps, Airfix models, scraps of burning twigs at the bottom of the garden…anything which came to hand was fair game. The thrill of seeing Evel losing his grip on the bike (which, like the real thing, happened more often than not) and wiping out was to be cheered as enthusiastically as any safe landing, in true parallel with Knievel’s own real-life audiences.
Recognising the potential gold mine it was sitting on, Ideal quickly followed the Stunt Cycle with more increasingly bizarre models as they cashed in on the craze they had engineered. The Evel Knievel Dragster car, complete with working parachute, was released in 1974, as was the Stunt Stadium which included a ramp and an audience painted into the grandstands. There was also the Stunt World Set, which actually featured three-dimensional obstacles for the action figure to negotiate, but the strangest of the play sets had to be the Escape from Skull Canyon Set, which included a werewolf doll, lots of rocks and boulders and a plethora of skulls hanging in the trees. Quite what Evel was supposed to achieve in this set remains a mystery.
But there were more down-to-earth items released over the next three years. The Evel Knievel Chopper may not have been very practical to jump in real life but it still made for a collectible toy, and the Stunt and Crash Car was designed to break into segments upon impact. The Super Jet and Canyon Sky Cycles were nods to the Snake River attempt, and the Strato Cycle (which would be released in 1977) was based on a bike used in Evel’s movie from the same year,
Viva Knievel!
Ideal even made a Scramble Van based on Knievel’s own touring rig, and a Road and Trail Adventure Set, but the firm really began pushing the envelope with the totally bizarre Evel Knievel Arctic Explorer Set, and the Rescue Set that saw Evel dressed in his star-spangled jumpsuit and equipped with a fire extinguisher and radio!
Sadly, one toy Evel dreamed up never actually made it into production, as he explained with his tongue placed firmly in his cheek. ‘One toy I’d like them to make is my own idea; I think it’s the most super toy in the world. You wind it up, it goes like a little bugger, goes across the floor, grabs this little Barbie doll, throws her on the floor, gives her a little lovin’, jumps back on the motorcycle and goes whizzing out the door screaming “GI Joe is a faggot!”’
However tenuous some of the links between Knievel and the products, both he and Ideal made a fortune from their sales, which outstripped sales of all Barbie and GI Joe dolls put together. It has been estimated that the branded toys grossed beyond $300 million over a ten-year period, and they unquestionably became one of the most popular toy lines of the 1970s.
Knievel claimed he was the first to have a toy made in his likeness and he seemed extremely proud of the fact. ‘I was the first real person to be the subject of a successful action figure and toy line. To those youngsters, Evel Knievel was Batman, Superman and Captain Marvel rolled into one.’
As Ideal ran out of ideas for action figures and play sets, they began churning out other Knievel merchandise, including fourinch, die-cast precision miniatures of Knievel on various motorcycles, some based on his real bikes, some purely fantastical. The firm also produced a board game called the Evel Knievel Stunt Game in which players performed different stunts with an action figure and Stunt Cycle as they worked their way round the board.
Rival companies were not slow in trying to grab a slice of the market either, and the Addar model company jumped in with plastic scale-model kits of Knievel on various bikes, including the Sky Cycle. As well as this, no Seventies star was truly a star unless they had a plastic lunchbox made in their honour, and Alladin Industries were only too happy to oblige on this front, while the Ben Cooper company even marketed an Evel Knievel Halloween costume for kids, complete with a rubber Evel mask.
In an age before computer games had taken over amusement arcades, the pinball machine was king, and the Bally Manufacturing Corporation would cater for Knievel fans and pinball aficionados alike by launching the Evel Knievel pinball machine on 27 September 1976. Knievel became only the third individual to have a pinball machine named after them: while rock groups like the Rolling Stones and Kiss already had themed machines, only country singer Dolly Parton and legendary ice-hockey player Bobby Orr could claim the honour as individuals.
The Knievel machine was the first fully electronic commercial pinball game ever produced, and, like the Ideal toys, it was a runaway success. It became the first Bally game to sell over 10,000 units and went on to sell 14,000 units in total. A scaled-down version for home use was also designed and built, but, for reasons that will later become clear, it never actually went on sale.
Various other firms, too numerous to mention, jumped on the bandwagon to produce Evel Knievel pillowcases, bed sheets and matching curtains, rubbish bins, tyre-mounted radios, T-shirts, baseball caps, Thermos flasks, belt buckles, bicycles, bedside lamps, beach towels, drinking straws, key-rings, and even a Sky Cycle electric toothbrush with the toothbrush mounted on a replica of the ramp built at the canyon. For a time in Knievel’s heyday it was harder to find a product without his name on it than one with. And as far as he could keep track of them all, Knievel made sure he got his share of the profits. By 1974, as Evel prepared for the most audacious jump of his career, the money was simply rolling in.
