The story goes that this guy had a fairly expensive but otherwise very average car. He had lots of money to spend and nothing much to do so he set himself a challenge: to tune up the car untill it could travel at speeds of 225mph or above. This was no easy task, so he needed some extra help. He sent the vehicle to a high performence tuning specialist, and told them of his little scheme. The tuners, faced with a rich, mad customer, pulled out all the stops. The engine was removed and replaced with a high speed racing engine. Nearly every aspect of the car was modified or upgraded in some way, untill it was running at maximum eficiency. But, it wasn't enough. Even after all that work, he could barely reach 200mph on the track.

It's running on maximum eficiency, and the best tuners for miles around say there's nothing more that can be done with it. Foolproof? No, fools are such ingenious things. Even a Darwin Award can be bought - for a price.

Money is an excelant gateway to anything, and with a vast amount of it our hero managed to buy in every boy racers dream: ten bottles of nitrus oxide. With these loaded into his car, and wired into his engine on a single start button, he was ready to go.

The video starts with the car at the start of a very long runway. I mean VERY long. You could have landed Concorde with no brakes. The hero hops into his pride and joy. No protective gear, of course; just jeans and t-shirt. The car accelerates away. Then things go a bit wrong.

You can tell when the hapless driver hit the nitrus button. The vehicle (it's hardly a car anymore) suddenly accelerates even more. The G-forces must have been incredible. He keeps it speeding along as far as he dares, enjoying the ride of his life. Then he realised the biggest, and last, mistake of his life.

He forgot to include a shut-off valve.

In desperation to stop his road-rocket, he hit the brakes, blowing all four tyres and melting the brake disks. The runaway car then reached the end of the runway. As the front wheels (or what was left of them) left the tarmac the whole car bounced up. But all those aerodynamics aren't designed for flying, the're designed for driving. The air slaming into the bottom of the modifications insead of flowing smoothly over caught the front of the car, but not the back, flipping the whole car over onto it's roof.

Predictibly, the nitrus canisters burst, and the car erupted into a fireball, removing a set of genes lacking in both economics and judgement from the gene pool.

Submitted on 11/12/2005

Submitted by: Iain Macdonald
Reference: none, an Urban Legend

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
If you can find the video, do please submit it. If you can find other documentation, do please submit it! Otherwise, I like the write-up but I have to vote urban legend...

Sheryl said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
While this shows similarities to the JATO story, I can't find it on Snopes (but that could be because I searched incorrectly). The other option is that this was a stunt, especially if there's a video. Nice write-up, Iain.

Greg said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
I'll go along with this. Shame there's no detail.

Charles said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
While there are a lot of videos of really expensive motorcycles and cars (and in one case, a helicopter) meeting extremely premature ends on sites like StipidVideos.com, Compfused.com, and Break.com / Bigboys.com, I have to admit that I haven't seen this one on any of them. Yet. I will, however, keep my eyes open. In the meanwhile, I will side with the other moderators and list this as Neutral and Urban Legend.

Jack said:
Neutral: Urban Legend
I agree. This does sound like a varient of the JATO powered car story, but I'll vote to keep it. Iain, if you can find a site with the video, I suggest that you submit it to Snopes.

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