Marv’s Garage: 80s monster trucks are rad to the power of sick
Monster trucks invented “motorsportertainment” in the 80s. Bigfoot, Bob Chandler's 1974 Ford 4x4 F-250, spawned one of the most awesome spectacles of the 1980s: monster truck rallies. This mud boggin', car crushin', hill climbin' bossdawg of off-road vehicles was the first monster truck and happened by accident.
Bob Chandler had been modifying the family's F-truck since 1975 and it got to a point he and his wife Marilyn opened Midwest Four Wheel Drive and Performance, in Ferguson, Missouri. Using the 460 big-block-powered Ford to promote the business, Chandler eventually fitted an ex-military 4-wheel steer diff set up and 48in-tall tyres to give birth to the concept of the monster truck.
And that is why Bigfoot wears 4x4x4 graphics: 4 wheel drive and 4 wheel steer, on all 4 wheels.
Giant, overpowered pick-ups really took off in 1981 after Bob videotaped himself flattening a couple of wrecked cars in a back paddock, doing the first public car-crushing run in April of 1982 in Columbia, Missouri. Within 3 years there were multiple Bigfoot vehicles competing against other trucks (like Bearfoot and USA-1) in truck rallies, which featured challenges like sled-pulling, side-by-side car crushing drag races, mud-bog racing and more.
As a person born in 1983 watching VHS tapes of these over-powered, ludicrously over-sized, flame-belching brutes fly through the air was a centrepoint of my childhood. Bigfoot and Gravedigger were as fluro 80s awesome as Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan, or a Van Halen guitar solo. With fireworks. And bald eagles. Pew pew!
Bigfoot 1 was in active competition until 1987, and was restored back in 2015. It was joined by Bigfoot 2, the first truck to use the now-industry-standard 66in tyres, by the end of 1982. Bigfoot 2 took the Chandler name and made it famous, even racing a paddle steamer boat on the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia. And if you don't find that awesome then you're legally dead.
