It is not too often that you see Bigfoot 1 with the 10 foot tall tires. The photo is tagged Bigfoot 7, which must be the monster truck trying to climb it. I kind of lost count of the Bigfoot monster trucks after the first three or four. Via Monster Mayhem.
I’m sure there have been other comments on this, but… The Bigfoots are almost impossible to track which one is which because they were almost all re-bodied at some point. I think you’re right about #1. Bob Chandler found the 10′ tires and adapted them to put a rest to the ‘Who’s biggest?’ arguments. Eventually, #5 was built specifically for the 10′ tires and sat more on top of them. #7 was converted to look the same as 5 later in it’s life.
Pretty sure the ‘small’ one is #3 with it’s first body. Although it usually had polished aluminum wheels or the duals all around. You can see the little ‘III’ after BIGFOOT on the door. The fenderwells are a good way to distinguish them sometimes.
Cool pics!
Then someone built the first space frame truck, the first mid engine, first fiberglass body… Just like NASCAR the monster trucks lost all connection with real vehicles.
All of them now except Maximum Destruction are space frame design with a mid engine, and have had several built to run under the same name. IIRC there have been around 30 Grave Diggers. But the front engine Maximum Destruction? Just two! Tom Meents built Max D and competed with it for around 20 years (for a while Max D was named Goldberg, for the pro wrestler) before duplicating it so another driver could compete at other events.
Could be why Max D is one of the most popular, because unlike the others that get smashed up then replaced, Meents repairs and rebuilds the same vehicle. Thus many thousands of fans who saw Maximum Destruction when they were kids have been able to take their kids to Monster Jam *and see the same Max D* they did. The paint job may be different, the fiberglass body may have all been replaced over time, but underneath it’s the original. (Or possibly the one copy.) Can’t say that about any other monster truck in active competition.
the truck with bigger tires is bigfoot 7 the smaller one is bigfoot 1