WATCH: Evel Knievel Jump Over Cars at the Spectrum in 1971
Evel Kneivel at The Spectrum from David Mueller on Vimeo.
This is kind of neat — Vimeo poster Dave Mueller put this video up the other day: Video of Evel Knievel’s 1971 visit to the Spectrum. “In 1971 a boy and his camera went to see stunt rider Evel Knievel,” Mueller writes. “Today the technology exists to share this moment with the world.”
Mueller says in the video that Knievel jumps his motorcycle over eight cars; Knievel’s website says he jumped over 10 cars that day. The video is grainy, so it’s hard for us to say for sure, but it sure looks like eight cars to us. (This video from Jim Samuel makes it look like eight cars, with a van as the jumping-off point.) Then again, he cleared it with plenty of room.
No matter. That’s a lot of cars to jump over in a motorcycle.
In any case, Knievel returned to Philadelphia just once after that, according to his records — jumping over 13 cars at the old JFK Stadium in South Philadelphia. They just don’t make them like that anyore.
