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Birthplace and History of Demolition Derby

I have searched high and low for information on the birthplace and history of demolition derby. Here's is what I found out, if you have more information please contact me.

There are three stories about where the first demolition derby was held, Islip Raceway(Long Island NY), Hales Corner Raceway(Hales Corner WI) and an un-named town in Ohio.

The first story is that in 1958 Larry Mendelsohn a 28 year stock car driver noticed that the most chearing and excitement happened when a cars crashed. With this information he decided that a whole race of accidents would be a hit! He held the first demolition derby a few years later at Islip Raceway, Long Island NY. Islip continued to hold demos and starting in 1962 was featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports almost weekly until the mid 70's. Even had a Model A compete in 1964, many people offered to buy the car but he refused, and only lasted about 3 minutes. This craze swept the country, becoming the staple of every county fair within a few years. Islip Raceway is now closed.

Another story is that Hales Corner Raceway in Hales Corner Wisconsin (near Milwaukee)had held demos years previous to Islip. According to legend, "Crazy Jim" Groh of Milwaukee WI, had a few too many cars on his dealership lot. So he got a few people to drive them as a promotion. I have heard from many locals there that they had demos in the early 50's but have yet to find actual proof. The only other evidence I could find to back this story is the Happy Days episodes 64,65,66 "Fonzie loves Pinkie part 1,2,3" shows demolition derby. This show was based in Milwaukee during 50's. These episodes featured Fonzie battling it out with the Mallachi brothers and he recieved the infamous "Mallachi Crunch". Even though they showed demolition as a common sport in the Milwaukee are during the 50's I hardly think this bring any believability to this version.

The last account is that an un-named town in Ohio was a scene of road rage gone wild in the mid-50's. Two car collided at a busy intersection and both continued to battling it out drawing a large crowd to the scene. This story fails to even name a town or date, and only gets some creditibility because Ohio is a mecca for demolition debries.

The actual date of any of these stories is quaestionabale. All probably fall in the urban legend category. I'm sure there were other demos held around the country during the same time period but Islip gets the credit because they were the first to officially organize one. Most are still a disorganized affairs to this day, the first demo was probably some old racers or mechanics that were having a few to many one day and decided to crunch some old cars in the back yard. We could all take a lesson from our founding fathers and have fun smashing cars.

"In 1957 here was two races. First was in southcoast town called Kotka and second race was in Tampere, where these pictures is taken from. These photos are from Tekniikan Maailma (Technical World) magazine (november issue 1957) You wrote at your homepage, that first demolition derby race in USA was 1958. This magazine article says "This kind of car race idea is from the USA, where lot of people want to see car crashing races (????) This kind race was totally new at those days. Only two race was raced. Then demolition derby idea was forget of many decades. It is good to remember that after second world war Finland was poor country. Only rich people had money to buy own car. That's why some criticzed these races because destroying expensive cars was "totally stupid" Today demolition derby living fine in here. In finnish language we called it Romuralli (Wreckrace) " Teemu Norrena Jyväskylä, Finland www.meisseli.org

SRT Vintage years

Here a few pictures we finally found of the early years of SRT when it was just Russ#4 and Paul#2. We have been demo'ing since 1968 but have very few pictures of the oldest cars. This pictures say May 81 in the corner but I bet thats just when they were devolped. By the looks of the clothes, I would say mid to late 70's would be a better guess. I don't know what all these cars are, but early on, we ran 50's cars (all makes) then we ran mainly 62-64 Ford Galaxie 500 through the 70's. In the 80's we switched to Sucide door Lincolns before switching to 71-76 GM's in the 90's.

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