Thirty “Hell Drivers “ risked life, limb and ’64 Dodges, crashing 1950’s oldies and performing wild stunts in a daring, very high-speed show at the ’64 – ’65 New York World’s Fair Auto Thrill Show. Among the features of the program were four-car bumper tag, wing ski jumps (drivers careen off a low ramp on two wheels at 50 miles an hour) a crash rollover contest, and the “dive bomber crash” (off the ramp with an older car onto the top of a parked car). In the show’s big climax, a driver piloted a truck on a ramp to ramp “flight” hurtling more than 70 feet through the air. The 6,000 seat Auto Thrill Stadium had a banked figure 8 track, the first of its kind for super stunt driving. Admission for reserved seats was $2.00, general admission a mere $1.00! There were four shows daily on weekdays, six on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays; each performance lasted about one hour.
The Fair occupied only about half of the Flushing Meadow acreage, but it was almost nine times larger than the ’62 Seattle World’s Fair. Actually the entire 1962 event would have fit into the Transportation Area of the New York Fair. That was the area where the first track ever designed for an auto thrill show was constructed by Transportation Productions Inc. It was built at the cost of $2,500,000, a staggering amount for ’64, and was the result of three years of planning. The only track of its type in the world in 1964, it had an asphalt surface, double guardrails, special drainage equipment, and a figure 8 pattern that let drivers have maximum maneuverability. Drivers, engineers and designers worked to develop the plans for the track that the Hell Drivers performed on. Special methods had to be introduced to lay the track due to the degree of the high banking curves at both ends of the figure 8 track. A special concrete crash wall was constructed between the double guardrail and the grand stand. It had a visitor’s lounge, refreshment stand, a plaza, and floodlights for nighttime performances.
(Part 2 Coming Soon…)
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Images of the Hell Drivers from the World’s Fair Hell Drivers Official Souvenir Program at the New York World’s Fair 1964-1965
Published and Copyright 1964 by Alsack Corporation