American Evel
Florida-based race team DragonSpeed is perhaps best known for bringing cars dressed up as Evel Knievel to races from the 24 Hours of Le Mans to the Indianapolis 500. Two years ago, their IMSA effort made the switch from competing in LMP2 prototypes to the hotly contested GT classes. The team’s Ferrari 296 GT3 always looked a bit incongruous in its louche livery, as if Elvis Presley’s Las Vegas wardrobe somehow ended up in Marcello Mastroianni’s dressing room. Well, consider that problem solved.
DragonSpeed recently announced that for 2026 they will be trading the Ferrari for a Corvette, and bringing their stars and stripes to a far more appropriate canvas. Never mind that the mid-engined C8 in Z06 GT3.R race car form looks so nearly identical to the current competition from Maranello that it’s frequently difficult to tell them apart on track. The mere fact that it’s paired with the Corvette’s crossed flags means the livery rings true at a deeper, more spiritual level.
For the benefit of readers who weren’t around in the 1970s, it might be helpful to explain who we’re talking about when we refer to this “Evel Knievel.” Knievel, a real person who died in 2007 at the improbably advanced age of 68, represented the apotheosis of a type of guy that no longer exists, a daredevil showman who rose to the level of quasi-superhero. Brash, ruggedly handsome, clad in signature star-spangled, flared white leather jumpsuit and cape, he leavened his cocky braggadocio with a solemn air of gravitas commensurate with the danger of his vocation.
Through his feats atop a series of unmodified Harley-Davidsons, he achieved not only household name status but that of genuine cultural phenomenon. We’re talking about a guy who had action figures of himself. Children of the day faced the Christmastime dilemma of deciding whether to ask Santa for a toy GI Joe or Evel Knievel. For the six-year-old version of this reporter it was an easy choice. Mr. Claus was kind enough to include the stuntcycle, too.
Not content with hijinks as pedestrian as flying over cars dragged out of junkyards, Knievel—it feels wrong to refer to him only by his last name, to us it was only ever “Evel Knievel” in full—preferred grander gestures. It was his 1967 attempt to jump the colossal fountain outside of Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas strip that firmly fixed his place in America’s collective consciousness. While successful, the resulting wipe-out upon landing saw him whisked away in an ambulance. Concussed and broken-boned, Knievel seized the opportunity to escalate his non-life-threatening injuries via rumors of a coma into a life-or-death drama that made for even greater publicity. His legend was secure.
Tens of thousands turned out through the decade that followed, filling fairgrounds and stadiums to witness a series of ever more ambitious stunts, each heavily promoted and frequently televised live. These were events, things people would anticipate for months beforehand and talk about for years after. It’s difficult to imagine, given our perpetual present where viral moments effloresce and are immediately forgotten, just how big a deal an Knievel performance represented.
Never was this more the case than with the Snake River Canyon jump of 1974. On an autumn afternoon outside of Shoshone Falls, Idaho, Knievel attempted a 1,600-foot aerial crossing of said river aboard something called the Skycycle X-2, a rocket-powered vehicle that most closely resembled a red, white and blue NASA X-15 with some vestigial wheels underneath it. He didn’t quite make it; the X-2’s parachute deployed prematurely and the rocket-cycle drifted impotently to the canyon floor, prevailing winds rubbing further salt in the wound by depositing an unhurt Knievel on the near side of the river.
Another unsuccessful jump, this one leveraging the popularity of the movie Jaws in 1977, would’ve seen Knievel flying over a giant shark tank had he not crashed during rehearsal. Perhaps more than any other stunt, though, it was this one that guaranteed Knievel’s immortality, when years later sitcom writers desperate for inspiration had The Fonz make a similar attempt in a late episode of Happy Days—the origin of the phrase to jump the shark.
A long-retired Knievel also provided us with perhaps the greatest moment in sports radio history. In an interview with ESPN’s Jim Rome, Knievel described the risks associated with the Snake River jump and was unsparing in assigning blame for its failure. An incredulous Rome pressed, “Evel, lemme ask you something. If you thought it was 50-50, if you thought that you had a coin-flip’s chance of survival, a coin-flip’s chance that you might buy it and die, why do it?”
There followed a silence just long enough to be uncomfortable, before Knievel deadpanned: “Do you know who the hell I am?”
We used to be a country, man.
In a recent video posted to IMSA’s YouTube channel, Marshall Pruett asked DragonSpeed team principal Elton Julian about the origins of their signature livery. Julian explained that the homage was at first unintentional: “It was never meant to be Evel Knievel. Once we were done, we looked at it and went, ‘Oh!’” He quickly added that it made sense, though, as his long-time racing partner Henrik Hedman is “the spitting image” of the late stuntman.
Hedman, who will be competing as DragonSpeed’s bronze-rated driver in the coming season, has frequently been spotted tooling around south Florida in a $2 million Ferrari Daytona SP3. Seems like the perfect kind of guy to keep Knievel’s flamboyant legacy alive. Somebody needs to get him a cape, though—and keep him away from Sea World.
One response to “American Evel”
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Kids,
Evel Knievel… Imagine if Travis Pastrana’s lack of survival instinct was married to the biggest asshole you ever met and the entire country was madly in love with him.
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