Taken from "Private Eye" magazine: "Funny Old World"


"Who can be absolutely sure? After all there were no witnesses," a spokesman for the Arizona Highway Patrol told reporters. "But after examining all the evidence, I'm pretty sure this is what happened."

"Our patrol came across a pile of smouldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff in the desert. It looked like the impact of an aeroplane, but we eventually realised it had once been a car, a Chevrolet Impala. It seems to us that the driver must have fitted his car with a Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) unit, a solid fuel rocket intended for military planes, and decided to try it out on a straight deserted highway withut realising the inevitable consequences. We think ignition must have taken place 4.8 km from the crash site, because there's a large area of melted asphalt there. The JATO would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, reaching a speed of 800 kmh. About 15 seconds and 4km later he must have applied the brakes, which immediately melted, blowing out the tyres and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The car then became airborne and crashed into the cliff 38 metres above the level of the road, leaving a blackened crater 4 metres deep. All that was left of the driver were his teeth, and even they'd melted. They were false teeth. The weird thing was the radio was still intact and still had power. When we arrived it was tuned to our local radio staion and was playing 'Come fly with me'. I supppose that's what you call irony"

Australian Aviation, August 1996, Spotter Alan Cohen.