In 1976, Canadian stuntman Kenny Carter decided he was going to jump the St Lawrence Seaway in a Lincoln Continental. The jump would cover a distance of more than a mile, so he wasn’t going to use just any old Lincoln Continental. He was gonna soup that bitch up with some sweet fins and some mofo rockets.
The jump proved more complicated than anticipated, as jumping a mile across a river apparently isn’t something you can do just on the spur of the moment. Several backers of the jump came and went, until finally in 1979 Kenny was ready. Or at least, he thought he was. Mechanical failures caused him to abort an attempt at the jump just five seconds before takeoff.
The film crew who was then funding the jump decided Kenny was just a big chicken, and called him to a “meeting” in Ottawa just to get him out of the way while they brought in another stuntman, American Kenny Powers. Because as everybody knows, if a Canadian isn’t dumb enough to risk his life on something stupid, the only answer is to call in an American!
Well, if you watched the video above, you know what happened. Or, hey, if you just thought about it for a few seconds, you probably figured out what happened. The car rocketed off the huge ramp, and… freaking disintegrated in mid-air. The chutes deployed early, and American Kenny plunged into the river, far short of the other bank. Kenny Powers lived, thankfully, although he broke 8 vertebrae.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don’t attempt a stunt even Evel Knievel thinks is a bad idea.
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