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Sadly for borderline-reckless automotive enthusiasts here in America, the carnival sideshow act known as the “wall of death” isn’t all that common anymore. The reasons are many—the risk of litigation, the diminishing presence of fairs overall, those damn kids these days with their video games—but the end result is the same: It’s pretty hard to find a place where stunt riders on motorcycles loop around a giant bowl-shaped track at a right angle to their usual stance. So if you’re ever lucky enough to stumble across one, it’s well worth checking out.
But that apparently goes double for India, where you can catch a glimpse of a full-blown car lapping the wall of death at your local fair.
According to a Redditor going by the handle “positivelyappositive” who posted the video in the /r/cars subreddit on April 11, the Maruti Suzuki (an Indian-market subsidiary of Suzuki) hopped onto the wall of death alongside a trio of motorcycles and quickly picked up enough speed to cling to the wall like an Indian Spider-Man. (Which is a thing.)
“The whole arena was made out of some rough steel scaffolding (and the wall itself consisted of partially-broken boards), so every time that Maruti lumbered by, it felt like the whole thing was going to come crumbling down,” he wrote. “Luckily it did not.”
The Wall of Death—often known as the “Well of Death” in India, but also known historically as a silodrome or motordrome—was a staple of carbivals and fairs in early 20th Century America. The first one reportedly opened in 1911 in Coney Island, right in The Drive‘s own Brooklyn backyard; by the 1920s, they could be found across the country, as well as in countries like Germany and Great Britain, as well.
Traditionally, the stunts are performed by riders on motorcycles, where their comparative lack of weight makes it easier to generate the centrifugal force needed to press the vehicles against the wall with enough strength to resist gravity. Still, given a light-enough car, it’s more than possible to build up enough speed to lap the rounded, vertical wall…as folks in India, apparently, are still quite aware of.
That said, if anyone well-of-death drivers in India happen to read this: If you have a tame lion lying around, we’d really like to see you recreate the video below.
