JATO Rocket Car
The famous JATO Rocket Car story was one of the original Darwin Awards but has now been debunked as an urban legend. It was originally circulated as forwarded email.This legend was again convincingly debunked in 2003 on the Discovery Channel show "MythBusters". They replicated the scene and the thrust of the JATO with several commercially-available amateur rocket motors. The car did go very fast, maybe 150 MPH, but did not go anywhere near 300 MPH, and did not become airborne.
"You all know about the Darwin Awards - it's the annual honor given to the
person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in
the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last years' winner was the fellow
who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he
was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.
"And this year's nominee is:
"The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded
into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve.
the wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car.
the type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured
out what is was and what had happened.
"It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted
Take Off - actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy
military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short
airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found
a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his
car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!
"The facts, as best could be determined, are that the operator of the 1967
Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from
the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and
melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating properly, would
have reached maximum thrust within five seconds, causing the Chevy to
reach speeds well in excess of 350 MPH, continuing at full power for an
additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, most likely
would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14
jocks under full afterburners, basically causing him to become
insignificant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile
remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds)
before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the
tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming
airborne for additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a
height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
"Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small
fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and
fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed
to be a portion of the steering wheel."
The original Darwin Awards were ficticious. Both were contained in a
1990-12-07 Version posted to rec.motorcycles of the JATO Rocket Car urban legend. When this urban legend was debunked, it was specifically pointed out that the mentioned Darwin Awards were ficticious. It contained a
reference to the 1985 mention of a Vending Machine Tipover Darwin Award.
It may have been Paul Vixie who wrote the introduction to the JATO urban legend that first included the term "Darwin Award" (if the message header was not forged) who is most responsible for the spread of the term. Vixie credits Charles Haynes with making the (informal) Darwin Award Nomination, but it was Vixies specific wording, with the first sentence crediting Haynes stripped off, that was actually circulated and actually refered to the Darwin Awards as if they actually existed and were common knowledge, though the message wasn't widely circulated until it was reformatted.
It appeared to remain fairly dormant (asside from a request for reposting) until 1995, when the message
surfaced again
in rec.pyrotechnics but this time the email header was stripped off the introduction, though the main story is still indented.
Three days later the introduction is fully integrated into the story and it appeared on rec.humor in a form that made it a truly infections meme.
There is evidence on google groups that as soon as it was reposted in 1995 it quickly began to spread, being posted on usenet 24 times within the next month.
In 1996 the legend was further embellished with references to the year of manufacture of the car and G-Forces and to the form which showed up in mailbox 1-1/2 months later (55% of all postings on usenet which included "JATO Rocket Darwin Award impala" also included "g-forces").
Though this urban legend had apparently been around long before 1990, it appears to have been the addition of the Vixie Darwin Award introduction and the subsequent two edits to integrate that introduction and then posting on rec.humor that may have boosted its meme status and the 1996
embelisments increased its popularity up to twofold. Popularity peaked around the end of 1996.Jet Assisted Take-Off
This is the text of what appears to be the most popular version of the message, judging from usenet repostings:History