Car Carrier of the Day: Dodge “Hell Drivers” – But No Demons
– Posted on August 21, 2020
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Looks to be a load of 1973s. Two Dusters, a Dart Sport, and a Dart Swinger, along with a Satellite. No Demons, of course, in 1973.
I remember seeing the Hell Drivers when they came to town, and they used all full size sedans at the time.
A great way to wreck a bunch of cars.
Hell yeah, hell drivers! Here they are in a couple of ’61 Lancers:
Here’s on in the hell of SoCal traffic:
…a ’63 Dodge and a ’63 Dart…
Same cars, different angle:
A ’63 Dart below a presumably-’63 D-series:
The lead car on the top rack is a Scamp.
Agreed
It looks like there’s one, each, of a Duster, Dart Sport, Swinger, and Scamp, plus the Satellite sedan. Covering all product lines, I guess.
Curiously, the lead Scamp is missing its 5mph bumper guards. I would imagine that the front bumpers were routinely dinged-up and replaced and the guards completely unnecessary.
Also interesting that the hardtops have Rallye wheels (sans trim rings) while the coupes look like plain black steelies.
I saw the Hell Drivers at the Dutchess County (NY) Fair in the 60s. Early in the show one of the drivers went through a chain link fence in front of the grandstand and injured a few people. That was the last time the fair had a thrill show.
‘Thrill’ and ‘Dart’ really don’t belong in the same sentence. But the Hell Drivers began with Wayfarers, which were even tamer by reputation.
The “Joey Chitwood” Hell Drivers used to appear at our county fair in Angelica NY every year back in the early 70’s. Here is a color corrected version of the photo.
Further evidence that tame cars can do tricks: this video shows Hell Drivers using K cars.
https://archive.org/details/67424-the-hell-driver-formula-vwr
I have never heard of these guys… perhaps it was a mid-west thing.
After viewing the video posted by Ferric Oxide above, this looks like an automotive version of Gymkana (a gymnastics demo put on by a troupe at University of Maryland Terps Basketball games).
Paul: Is there something wrong with the comment edit function? It does not seem to come up anymore. I wanted to take out that grammatically incorrect apostrophe in the word “games” that my iPad’s “Autocorrect” function incorrectly placed.
Paul Riddell’s Imperial Hell Drivers operated in Canada.