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Having rediscovered the joys of the RSI-inducing Rocket Robin game on our own site last Friday, talk on TopGear.com turned to the most ambitiously rubbish car-based stunt ever pulled using rocket-propulsion.
Obviously our own attempt at Reliant-based space exploration featured highly. And then someone remembered this.
In the early 1970s, when such things were positively encouraged, American (not Canadian, apologies - Ed) daredevil/idiot Kenny Powers was nominated as driver for a cunning plan.
It involved him driving/flying a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental - with wings - off a massive ramp and over the mile-wide St. Lawrence River on the border between Canada and New York State. It cost an estimated $5.5 million in today’s money. And it didn’t go well…
There's actually a fascinating tale behind all this - check out the documentary The Devil At Your Heels for the full story.
Open Car Bar
What do you think?
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DocSteveR commented on this article
at 02:14 pm on 26 April 2011
Biblically stupid, even Jeremy and his total lack of engineering sensibility... and using a hammer, could have done it better than this (almost needless to mention) american ingrade. Look at the wings, the load blows them off within milliseconds. I bet those wings would not even hold, if I sat on them, not to mention a 2,5 ton car. Waste of money, waste of pretty much everything really.
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lambofreak commented on this article
at 02:14 pm on 26 April 2011
how did he expect a brick shaped car to fly..absolute idiot! :P
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Shadowfell commented on this article
at 02:22 pm on 26 April 2011
When we were kids, we used to pass this ramp and say it was Evil Kenevil's ramp. My dad said, "nope, it was for someone even more stupid."
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At_Giza commented on this article
at 02:31 pm on 26 April 2011
Hey DocSteveR, Kenny Powers is Canadian. Next time read the article.
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Enzo3185 commented on this article
at 04:17 pm on 26 April 2011
How he think a box with wings that weights 8 tons could fly over a mile?? i remembre when i saw this in an american tv show and they say that the trouble was "lack of power" of the rockets... if they give it more power, it would explode even before it reaches the ramp, hahaha
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