Life of Evel: Evel Knievel by Stuart Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

his friend Joe Dosen, put it together with his own meagre savings and opened a motorcycle dealership in Butte called ‘Imported Motors’. He stocked a range of bikes including Hondas, Triumphs, BMWs, Indians, Ducatis and Matchless machines. With his innate gift for promotions and sales techniques Knievel should have been a natural as a bike dealer, but money was scarce in Butte and there simply weren’t enough people in the position to buy a motorcycle. The shop did a poor trade and in 1963 Bobby was forced to close the business, whereupon he fled to Spokane, Washington with his young family, which grew again to include a daughter, Tracey Lynn, born on 22 October of that year. In Spokane, Knievel tried, yet again, for a new start in life.
    The experience of having raced and of owning a bike store, albeit an unsuccessful one, stood Knievel in good stead when he arrived in Spokane. He’d made lots of contacts and friends within the bike industry and one of those, a man named Darrell Triber, readily offered Bobby a job in one of his Honda dealerships. This time Knievel flourished in the trade and was soon made a partner of the Spokane branch. Later, when Triber decided to add another franchise in Moses Lake, also in Washington State, he trusted Knievel enough to allow him to run the business. When Triber eventually wanted out of the motorcycle business entirely he sold the Moses Lake branch to Knievel, who was obviously determined to have another stab at being a successful businessman.
    Bobby knew from his previous experience that the challenge of running a successful bike dealership was in learning how to attract potential customers to his particular store rather than anyone else’s, and, once he’d got them there, how to persuade them to part with their money to buy a motorcycle. At first, Knievel thought small: he offered a $100 discount off the price of any Honda to anyone who could beat him at arm wrestling. (According to Knievel, no one ever did qualify for the discount.)
    But such wacky fairground gimmicks were never going to be enough to attract serious business, and as sales continued to be sluggish Knievel started thinking bigger. Having become more and more adept at the art of riding a motorcycle and, more importantly, at performing stunts and tricks on a bike through his racing, Knievel got round to thinking back to his childhood and the Joey Chitwood Auto Daredevil Show. It might now have been nineteen years ago, but childhood memories, especially such exciting ones, are forged strongly within the psyche and Knievel had never forgotten the experience. But only now, in 1965, did he see a way to turn what was just a happy memory into a potential money-spinner, or at the very least, a way to attract more customers through his shop doors. Robert Craig Knievel, at the age of 26, decided he was going to jump a motorcycle off a ramp over some obstacles in front of a live audience. A star, and a whole new medium of entertainment, was about to be born.
    Not content with an ‘ordinary’ ramp-to-ramp jump (which was anything but ordinary at the time), Knievel decided upon adding more danger and more novelty to the event. His elk protest from 1961 had taught him the value of original thinking when it came to drumming up publicity and this time around he excelled himself. In future years the world would know Knievel as the man who soared over cars, trucks and buses on a motorcycle, but his first ever jump was one of the most unusual of his entire career: Bobby had made up his mind to leap over two mountain lions and a crate containing 100 live rattlesnakes.
    Once more displaying a keen eye for promotional opportunities, Knievel chose a 350cc Honda from his dealership to make the jump on. Honda, now the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles, was a relative newcomer in 1965, and many people still mocked the little bikes from the land of the rising sun, associating them with cheaper, unreliable produce manufactured