The summer heat has subsided, whimpering under the foot of the autumn equinox. The air has turned crisp, darkness blankets the landscape earlier and earlier each day. Fish spawn in the rivers, the leaves erupt with colour and transform the bush into a candied treat bag of foliage. You sit in the bleachers, donning a hoodie and sipping an Ultra. Engines roar to life as gnarled, crumbled sub compacts traverse the muddied pitch. The crunching of steel fills your ears like an orchestra of rural euphoria as the frenzied crowd cheers on their motorized gladiators. You smile. It’s demolition derby season in Grey Bruce, baby.
It takes a special kind of person to take on the figure-eight track. Someone who isn’t afraid of a little fender bender or two. Someone who takes in the world a little differently. Someone who can jam their foot into the gas pedal knowing full well the result might be a stiff neck in the morning. That’s where Jeff Crannie comes in. The tenured figure-eight and demolition driver has been a staple driver of regional Fall Fair and demo derby circuits since the late 90’s, earning a room full of trophies and a head full of epic stories over the past 2+ decades. 2024 marks his 25th and final season getting behind the wheel.
As we sit in his living room talking, it’s clear the culture of the track, tinkering on motors, and solving problems with welders, duct tape, and ratchet straps is in his blood. A lifelong local, Crannie embodies the archetypal figure-eight racer: a perpetual smile on his face, a hard worker, family man, and all round good dude who likes to have some fun.
“One year, I saw the signs and thought, ‘yeah, I’m gonna do that.’ I didn’t even finish. It was 10 years before I won! 10 years of losing, crying and bleeding, broken fingers, you name it.”
The first question on my mind, of course, was: how the hell does someone get into this? “It’s just the shit,” says Crannie. “You get the car ready and you work with all your buddies. So that’s most of the fun, right? Hanging out with your friends and telling stories and learning new things. There’s always an element of ‘let’s try this, let’s try this.’ And, you know, sometimes it’s an epic fail and sometimes it pays off. But when you get in your car when they call your name; I’m a full grown man and I’ve been driving for years – it still gets my legs shaking… the adrenaline rush lasts an entire year.”
Jeff first got behind the wheel in July of 1999 with the help of his Dad, brothers, and some friends. Back then, they had no idea what they were doing, but Jeff lived in a house on 10th Street East across from Victoria Park in Owen Sound. You can only live in a location like that before thinking about joining in on the party that happens every fall across the street from your front porch for so long.
“My Dad and older brother used to do the eight cylinder segment. V8’s, big old boat cars and that’s back when you didn’t have to take the glass out, you just got in the car and wrecked it. My older brother got into it for a few years. And then one year, I saw the signs and thought, ‘yeah, I’m gonna do that.’ So we grabbed the car. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t even finish. It was 10 years, Nelson, 10 years before I won! 10 years of losing, crying and bleeding, broken fingers, you name it.”
Jeff grew up in the driveway and the garage watching cars be worked on. A real hands-on style upbringing. The tricks and tips they learned from first-hand exposure to tools and engines really impacted his life and his racing career became a family affair.
“We applied all of our little tricks and we had our little group, there were four or five of us that drove cars. Maybe a few more, but we had our team. I’d say about five of us probably had vehicles and then we had our ‘picker cars’ we’d take parts from… If I needed something someone would throw it over – if someone else needed something, I’d throw it over. We just helped each other. It was our little once a year family type thing. It was awesome.”
For his pièce de résistance, Jeff found an old Chevy HHR just begging to become his final sacrificial lamb. It’s not a Toyota or a Mazda like he’d prefer, but for $300, it’s the perfect donor. A short trip on a flatbed trailer later, and it sits at his friend’s garage, waiting to be transformed into the toothless, windowless, seatless vessel that’ll (hopefully) propel him to victory in September.
So what’s it take to turn an unsuspecting grocery-getter into a figure-eight smash-up car? Turns out a lot, but that’s all part of the fun. Anything that will break, cut you, or burn has to come off the car.
“All the interior has to go aside from the driver’s seat, obviously. We take the driver’s seat, passenger seat and back seat out and then you can fold up the carpet on the floor much easier because it burns too. The goal is to not burn or explode,” says Crannie.“The engine has to stay in place. Sometimes we just put a chain around the frame and the engine, just in case it falls apart. We have to remove the stock gas tank and put it where the back seat used to be inside the car and replace it with a metal marine-style gas tank and battery. The doors have to be bolted shut or welded shut. The hood and trunk have to be fastened down. We really try our best to reuse everything on the car, everything that we can. Seat belts, for example: we typically pull them all the way out, cut them off, and then use those to tie the doors and fasten the trunk shut. Things like that.”
“It’s been one of the real joys of my life. The fun I’ve had and the people I’ve met have been incredible. I couldn’t have done this without the support of my family and friends.
All of this ‘Frankenstein’s garage’ stuff happens pretty quickly, and if you’re careful, the car will see more than one night of racing. After 25 years of tinkering, Jeff speculates he and his team, usually composed of his two brothers and a few friends, could complete a car in just a couple of weekends. The cars inevitably end up at the scrap yard after sustaining relentless damage, but if you’re lucky, you can have a car for a whole season.
“One year we did Democross,” he says, reminiscing about automobile reliability. “It was just an oval but there were ramps everywhere. Like little, foot-and a-half tall jumps. That year we ran a Toyota. I got second place in the first heat which put me in with all of the other second place finishers in the consolation feature. Then I won first place there, which put me into the heat with the other heat winners and then I won that race as well. It was really awesome. That car did 70 jumps that night – it was a real testament to Toyota.” So why a Chevy this year? “Because it showed up at my doorstep,” laughs Jeff.
The figure-eight is a unique race. The object is to finish the race, but there’s also a consolation in realizing you can’t win. “Sometimes you’re racing and realize ‘Okay I’m just gonna destroy everybody else,’” he laughs. “And I do think it relieves your everyday average road frustrations, right? It’s actually safer for society,” he smiles.
I grew up watching the Fast and the Furious franchise films. In any number of those incredible, god-awful movies, the notion of experiencing ‘one good race’ is always prevalent; real cinematic once more into the fray moments. The chase of that petrol-powered ecstasy is key to the story of anyone who loves cars. But it’s not so much the winning part that’s the end goal here. In talking to Jeff, it’s clear the high of winning isn’t what figure-eight drivers are after – at least all the time.
“Winning is the highest feeling you could get, right? Driving out with the trophy in your hand? That lasts for, I’m going to say, less than 10 minutes,” says Jeff. It’s about the stories I get to tell for the next year, y’know? So I should say, the very first time you do it – if you love it, you’re stuck. You’re done, you can’t not do it.”
After a quarter century of smashing up cars and living with his foot in the firewall, Jeff is hanging it up. But after 40 minutes of chatting, I’m about ready to jump in the driver’s seat myself. Why quit something this fun, this inexpensive, this anarchistic, this wholesome?
In a full circle moment, Jeff’s first son, Hawksley, is planning to enter the 14-16 year old division this coming year, making the Crannie name a three-generation legacy of Ontarian derby car and figure-eight racing pedigree.
“It’s been one of the real joys of my life. The fun I’ve had and the people I’ve met have been incredible. I couldn’t have done this without the support of my family and friends. It’s been a long time and I’m feeling good about calling it a career. I’ve had my fun. I’m going to keep the key from this car and hang it up on the wall, the whole song and dance.”
“Could you be persuaded to come out of retirement next year?” I ask in retort. “Oh absolutely,” he says grinning. “Very easily.”
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Words by Nelson Phillips. Photos by Melissa Crannie.
