THE ORIGINAL BIGFOOT – A MONSTER REBUILD AND HISTORY LESSON IN ONE!

With all the hype of the Monster Jam world tour, taking a look at the history of the industry and then watching the original Bigfoot get its engine rebuilt is terrific.

Back in 1974, a chap named Bob Chandler bought himself a Ford F-250. Almost immediately, Bob replaced the wheels for bigger ones, which started the journey of modifications that would, in 1979, culminate in the blue pickup being named Bigfoot and given the honours of the world's first monster truck.

Eventually, Bigfoot had been so heavily modified, including receiving the 4x4 under-assembly from a surplus military vehicle with four-wheel-steering, that Bob started making appearances at car shows and tractor pulls. The story of this monster truck soon spread far and wide and, when a man promoting a motorsport event asked him to recreate a stunt he'd seen of Bigfoot crushing two scrapped cars in a video in Bob's shop, things started going 80s-viral.

Needless to say, it bore an industry that spread worldwide, spawned all sorts of varieties of motorsport and made history.

There have been numerous Bigfoot's over the years, all bigger and badder than the one that came before it. But, there can be only one original, and that's the one you're looking at here.

Now, more than forty years later, Bigfoot 1 is having its 640-inch blown, nitrous injected V8 rebuilt. An honour that any red-blooded American can only be humbled by. The guys a PowerNation are the specialists given this extraordinary task and use the opportunity to explain how this engine was high-tech for the time.

So, grab yourself a Budweiser and a pack of beef jerky, sit back and enjoy the show!