“We’re gonna drive this truck till it don’t drive no more!” exclaims an excited Tony Ochs, the driver of Earth Shaker, the 5,4-tonne monster truck that rarely had all four of its wheels on the ground at the same time during its recently completed so-called “skills” session. The near-capacity crowd seated within the Cape Town Stadium erupts in delight as Ochs raises his arms like a gladiator savouring a victory.
While the “art” of crushing cars using modified pickup trucks began as small-town weekend entertainment in Midwest America in the 1970s, footage in the early ’80s of a heavily modified Missouri-based Ford F-250 quickly caught the attention of various promoters. Broadly acknowledged as the first so-called monster truck, Bigfoot would soon begin touring the US, leaving small sedans pulverised in its wake, to the continued delight of thousands of paying onlookers.
