The account of the JATO Rocket Car was one of the original Darwin Awards winners: a man who supposedly met his death in a spectacular manner after mounting a rocket engine on a common automobile. It was originally circulated as a forwarded email.
In 1996, after numerous inquires, the Arizona Department of Public Safety issued a news release posted on their website concerning the story. It termed the story "an Arizona myth."
The story was also debunked in 2003 on the pilot episode of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters, titled "Jet Assisted Chevy, Pop Rocks and Soda". They replicated the scene and the thrust of the JATO with several commercially available amateur rocket motors. The car did not go anywhere near the 300 mph (500 km/h) reported in the original story, and failed to become airborne.
Read more about JATO Rocket Car: Jet Assisted Take-Off, History
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