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Who is Ghost Rider?

Ghost Rider is the tag name of the star in a number of motorcycle movies that can best be described as a continuous traffic violation comprised of journeys through uncontrolled and unstaged roads and highways at high speeds. One of the most notorious of these journeys is the “Uppsala Run” in Ghost Rider: The Final Ride, 2002. This trip covers approximately 70 kilometers (42.6 miles) of continuous travel from Stockholm to Uppsala in 14 minutes 55 seconds which equates to an average speed of 276 km/h (170.1 mph) over the period on public highways.

In the November 2005 issue of Slitz magazine, it was revealed that he is a foreign stunt rider who is close to 40 years old, and Motorcycle News recently revealed the true identity of Ghost Rider as Swedish rider, Patrik Furstenhoff (a member of the Swedish Wheelie Team – SWT), when he broke the world wheelie speed record – breaking his own previous record by 14 mph to hit 215 mph on one wheel.

Ghost Rider’s primary motorbike of choice for the movies is the Suzuki GSX-R1000. He has used a variety of GSX-R models from different years with differing modifications to each, including a fully carbon fiber GSX-R1000 K4 in Ghost Rider Goes Crazy in Europe and a 280+ brake horsepower (bhp) turbocharged GSX-R1000 K5 in Ghost Rider Goes Undercover. Although Ghost Rider’s primary vehicle is a motorcycle, he uses a wide variety of other vehicles in the movies including different types of cars, bicycles, minibikes, and even a snowmobile on public streets. Each movie has a scene where Ghost Rider rides a highly tuned, turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa. The Hayabusa in Ghost Rider: The Final Ride was tuned to 417 bhp, and the one used for the later movies was at 499 bhp (Yes, you read those horsepower numbers correctly).

Ghost Rider claims the original motive for making the films was to show the Getaway in Stockholm (an illegal car racing video) team how much better the results would be using a motorcycle. In a Hein Gericke promotional section of PB magazine, Ghost Rider made the following comment:

“We saw a movie called ‘Getaway in Stockholm’, which is a car chase movie. But it’s all made up. We couldn’t believe the world was raving about it. The policeman was actually a body builder, he even had baggy pants on. It wasn’t real. There’s a hardcore of riders and drivers in Stockholm who do this for real, but yet the “Getaway in Stockholm” movie was a rental car pretending to be a police car and it was all in the middle of the night with empty roads. You can print this; it was shit. And we made up the Ghost Rider as a big ‘you suck’ to the car guys.”

Law Enforcement

Swedish authorities know who he is, but because of the structure of Swedish law, they have to catch him in the act to arrest him and this has proven an impossibility. After all, he does have insurance on his motorcycles and rides them all the time. But, when he takes his plates off and goes for it, they have no “real way” of identifying him. They have nothing but a man or woman in a black suit speeding on a black license plateless bike. And since they can’t catch him in the act, they can’t arrest him. You’ve gotta like that system…

So, Ghost Rider has never been caught and prosecuted for any extreme traffic violations. His record for police chasing him in a pursuit is 6 cars, 2 vans and 1 helicopter and, yes, he got away…

His closest call is documented in one of his videos where a large roadblock has been set up and a crazy policeman tries to pull him off the GSX-R he is wheelie-ing toward the policeman at speed. End Result: Ghost Rider gets away…Again.

There are some fake videos on the web claiming to be of Ghost Rider being busted or crashing. However, none of these are real. And think about it – if any of them were real, the Swedish police would gleefully have posted it on their homepage for the rest of time.

Ghost Rider Filmography

A total of five Ghost Rider titles have been released:

Title Year
Ghost Rider: The Final Ride 2002
Ghost Rider Goes Wild 2003
Ghost Rider Goes Crazy in Europe 2004
Ghost Rider Goes Undercover 2005
Ghost Rider: Back To Basics 2008

* Official Web Site
* Slitz Ghost Rider Interview (English translation further down the page)
* Thanks to Rishie for making the Ghost Rider interview to PB magazine available

Now, there are rumors that there was never just one ‘Ghost Rider’ in the movies, but a handful of highly experienced riders. They used identical motorcycles and riding gear to confuse Swedish police. Joakim Karlsson (AKA Iceman) who tragically lost his life at the Isle of Man TT races on May 30th 2005 is rumored have been one such ‘Ghost Rider’ although this has never been confirmed by SWT.

Joakim Karlsson AKA Iceman