He hired a crew of eight, including a mechanic, and joined the fair circuit as Lucky Teter and the Hell Drivers, with a fleet of yellow Plymouths. In those first years, they traveled across the U.S. and Canada, and as word of Teter’s exploits grew, so did his enterprise. He was constantly designing and testing new stunts, and created staples of the daredevil industry in the process. He perfected launching a car from one ramp to another, eventually working up to leaping over a line of eight other vehicles. Grainy black and whites show him sailing through the air over a Greyhound bus, his hulking frame filling the window in front of a full grandstand. He worked out how to drive a car on two wheels, and shocked onlookers as he blitzed through a wall of fire.
Early on, the Hell Drivers added motorcycle stunts to the program, with riders performing the same feats as Teter in the Plymouths. Bikes jumping three other bikes at 70 miles per hour. Riders gunning it through burning boards or jumping across bonfires. The Hell Drivers were writing the playbook that would make “Evel” a household name 30 years later. They made records, then broke them, and broke them again.
Teter never suffered serious injury. He was an early proponent of the seatbelt, and spent a fair portion of his show demonstrating how belts could save lives, even performing a few head-on collisions to get the point across.
By 1942, the Hell Drivers were performing 100 shows a year in front of an estimated 1.5 million people. He was the world’s foremost stuntman, performing in films and speaking to crowds on the importance of traffic safety. But while Teter was busy dreaming up ever more thrilling stunts, the world was unravelling; Axis powers were beating on England’s door, and America was at war.