Jet-powered Bug

People talk about some sports cars that drive like they have a jet engine under the hood. Well, engineer Ron Patrick has turned that metaphor into reality, installing a real jet engine into his VW Beetle. He installed and modified everything himself, with the entire project costing him about $250,000. The jet boosts his engine by a cool 1,350 horsepower and is actually street legal in California because it still runs on the VW’s factory engine. He claims he isn’t sure what the top speed is because once it hits 160 mph the car starts to lift off the ground, which sounds like a pretty wussy excuse to us. Next on Mr. Patrick’s plate, and this isn’t a joke, is adding two jet engines to his wife’s Honda Metropolitan scooter, which sounds like the most terrifying and unsafe vehicle ever conceived. There are loads of photos of both the Beetle and the in-progress scooter over at his Web site. If this looks like something you’d like to do, keep in mind he has a PhD in engineering, and unless you’ve got one, too, there’s a high probability you’ll end up smearing yourself all over a hard surface somewhere.