The Michigan Madman Was America’s Best Motorcycle Daredevil

A few years before Evel Knievel showed up on the scene, America had a motorcycle daredevil who was even better.

His name was E.J. Potter, and he was a skinny farmboy from Ithaca who became known as the Michigan Madman. He took a regular Harley Davidson motorcycle frame and put a V-8 car engine on it and then raced it down a quarter-mile dragstrip at 170 miles an hour. The crowds looked on in shock and awe.

Evel Knievel’s shtick consisted of building a ramp and jumping his motorcycle over things. The Michigan Madman’s deal was building his own motorcycle and racing it at speeds that didn’t seem possible. They both tempted death in different ways, and they were rivals in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but there was a distinction.

“The difference between me and him was that he got paid to say he was going to do stuff, whether he did it or not,” E.J. Potter said. “I got paid to actually do stuff.”

Motorcycle guys like to debate whether Evel Knievel or the Michigan Madman was a greater daredevil, and the purists like to point out this fact: E.J. Potter not only raced his motorcycles; he built them. Evel was just riding a Harley someone else had modified.

In terms of overall greatness, you’ve got to give the edge to the kid from Ithaca.

Evel Knievel was a far better showman and became much more famous, but every Michigander needs to know the story of our own daredevil legend.

Elon Jack Potter grew up on a small farm in Ithaca, where his dad ran a honeybee business. E.J. was far more interested in mechanical things than school, honeybees, or anything else, and as a teenager, he was always in the garage tinkering away.

He became obsessed with doing something that nobody had ever done before: taking a regular motorcycle frame and figuring out a way to put a Chevy V-8 engine on it. Why that?

“Basically, it was ignorance,” Potter said in a 1999 interview. “I didn’t really know what a Chevrolet engine was, except the hot rod magazines were talking about it being the smallest, lightest, most-powerful car engine that had ever been built up to that time, which was about 1958, when I got the idea.”

If you’re not a car guy, fine. But imagine taking a huge motor that was meant for a Corvette and putting it on a motorcycle. That’s what E.J. Potter was doing.

By the time he was 19 in 1960, he decided it was time to try it out in front of a crowd. He took his bike to a local dragstrip, and while the crowd looked on, he took off down the track. He hit 130 mph, and the crowd went wild.

He decided he needed a nickname, so when somebody suggested “The Michigan Madman,” it stuck. He also wanted to give his bike a name, so he called it “The Bloody Mary.”

Potter built more than a dozen bikes during his career. The first versions were all called “Bloody Mary,” and after he got married, he changed the name of his bikes to “Widowmaker.” Seemed appropriate.

The Michigan Madman’s fame spread quickly, and throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he was one of the biggest draws in the county and then throughout Europe. By the time Evel Knievel arrived on the scene in 1965, Potter was already the king of the hill.

The Michigan Madman literally tempted death every time he raced because of the way he did it. Since a regular motorcycle tire wouldn’t be able to handle that much power, he put a heavy-duty car tire on the rear of his bikes. Each run would burn so much rubber that a single tire could only be used three times.

And this was the best part of a Michigan Madman run: He had a big kickstand on the rear wheel, so when he raced, the rear wheel would be off the ground while it revved up to incredible speeds. He would climb aboard and rock the bike forward, and when it came off the kickstand and the tire hit the ground, it would take off like a rocket—rubber burning and weaving violently back and forth.

Potter would eventually get the motorcycle under control as it hit speeds of 170 mph or more. It was a sight to see.

Roger Meiners, a motorsports journalist who chronicled Potter’s career, described it this way: “Usually, a guy went for the fastest time on the track, or he tried to win the competition for the highest speed clocked that day. E.J. wasn’t looking to win anything. He just showed up and tried to make people go, ‘Oh, my God!’”

Throughout his daredevil career, Potter set every Guinness Record you could imagine for motorcycles. His fastest recorded time was 172 mph on a quarter-mile strip. He also built a three-wheeled cycle and put a U.S. military surplus rocket engine on it. That machine hit 200 mph on the drag strip.

Potter tempted death every time out, but he only had two bad accidents. In 1966, he crashed his bike in England and broke his pelvis. He had another crash in 1971 where he suffered multiple bone fractures.

The Michigan Madman decided to call it quits in 1973, after 13 years on the daredevil circuit. He was only 32 years old. Potter got into tractor pulling instead (a much safer hobby) and used his mechanical skills to build some truly kickass tractors.

His legend endured long after his daredevil career ended, though, and people always lined up to see his bikes (the Widowmaker 7 was especially popular) and hear him talk about his racing days.

Potter died in 2012 at age 71, the victim of Alzheimer’s disease. He left behind two kids, four grandkids, and zillions of fans who had been lucky enough to see the Michigan Madman in action.

The motorcycles he built also continue to be legends. Some of the Bloody Mary and Widowmaker bikes are available to see in museums, and in 2019, the guys from the PBS show “American Pickers” tracked down two of his old bikes and a bunch of his memorabilia that a guy in Michigan owned. They paid $45,000 for everything.

E.J. Potter never achieved the fame and fortune as a daredevil that Evel Knievel found, but for those who know his story, his legacy endures even more.

Nobody else was ever clever enough, smart enough, or foolish enough to bolt a car engine onto a motorcycle frame and then race it down a dragstrip.

Only a Michigan man. Only a Michigan Madman.