The Demolition Derby has its origins in the USA during the mid 1950's, when stock car dirvers were to realise that the crowd really rose to their feet whenever an accident occured. Exactly who came up with the idea is still the subject of considerable conjecture - what we do know however is that it has always been a popular "sport", often used to help increase attendance at stock car events and billed as the highlight feature.
There are some claims that the event dates back to even earlier times, when the abundant supply of Model-T Ford's were used as side-show wrecking performances.
The idea is, of course, to be the "last man standing", by trying to ensure your vehicle remains the only vehicle still mobile. To ensure driver safety, the cars have their glass removed, and rules usually dictate that deliberate ramming the drivers door is forbidden.
To help make it easier for the competitors to fathom which door is which during the heat of battle, the drivers door is often painted white and has the cars number shown in a contrasting colour to enable high visibility.
The favoured approach (we are certainly not experts in this area) seems to be to use the rear of the vehicle as a battering ram, thereby inflicting as much damage on the opponent as poosible, while protecting your own mechanicals.
The favoured vehicles for such an event were traditionally the large Holden's, Ford's and Valiant's, however with their growing appreciation in value (and scarcity), more modern high kilometer examples from the 1980's and 1990's are now finding favour.
And the switch to a front-wheel-drive rig has several advantages, the most obvious being that, if you do manage to protect the front of the car, the rear can take a huge amount of damage before rendering the car immobile.
A popular spin off of the Demolition Derby is the "Rollover Competition", the object being to roll your car over as many times as possible until the vehicle simply cannot perform any more.
Some competitions even allow a truck to provide assistance when the engine has died, to either re-start or even push the car up and over the ramp used to facilitate the roll over.
Also see:
Drivers Defy Destruction
