Pilots Wanted 

  Previous: Jargon Watch | Next: Nuclear Apocalypse Near Misses

Story Tools

Story Images

Click thumbnails for full-size image:

Rants + Raves

• More »

START

• MLB.com levels baseball’s playing field
• The 1,350-hp, jet-turbine Beetle really flies
• Phew! The best apocalyptic near-misses.
• More »

PLAY

• Sufjan Stevens’ avalanche of odes to Illinois
• A mecha makeover for Japanese monster flicks
• Online craft faire – Linux blankie, anyone?
• Meet your next favorite game guru
• More »

POSTS

• Monk ebusiness
• Superheroes go ape for Stan Lee
• Lessig examines Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth
• More »

Most people are content to pimp their rides with chrome spinners and a turbo kit. Not Ron Patrick. He wanted something unique for his 2000 VW Beetle. So he mounted a $270,000, 26,000-rpm, 1,350-horsepower, Navy-surplus helicopter jet turbine in the trunk.

The Stanford PhD and car computer designer spent four years making the vehicle safe to drive, but now, when he needs a boost, he just switches on an afterburner (which shoots an 8-foot-long flame out the back). The intake draws air through the windows and sunroof, creating cabin noise that sounds, as Patrick puts it, “like Iraq.” And once it kicks in, “it feels like the finger of God is pushing the car.” The jet jumps the Bug’s speed from 80 to 140 mph in less than four seconds, at which point Patrick eases up on the throttle. He estimates that at 160, “the rear end would probably start to go airborne.”

Despite all the muscle, Patrick doesn’t race. “I’m 49, so frying some 16-year-old who just saw The Fast and the Furious doesn’t do anything for me,” he says. But he has been known to light up Northern California’s freeways on weekdays between 2 and 3 am. “More than one late-night truck driver on I-5 has been passed by a low-flying comet.” If you don’t see Patrick’s ride there, you may be out of luck – his hot rod is just too much for car shows. When he entered it in the Los Angeles Grand National Roadster Show in January, he was greeted with disparaging looks and scoffs from the gearhead elite. So when the winners started revving their V-8s, Patrick responded by firing up the jet and blasting out a 6-foot-long flame. Officials screamed at him to shut it down, and then banned him for life. Luckily, he’d already received a special prize for Best Compact Custom.

- Brian Lam

   Previous: Jargon Watch | Next: Nuclear Apocalypse Near Misses