“If we stop, we’ll overheat. We must go faster”.

Ford actually envisioned nuclear cars in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

"Our water pump went out" would go from being a 2 hour side of the road fix or tow to potentially a mutli-decade incident...

Either add a second pump or just power it from a legit non-mobile federally rated reactor plant.

A Tesla with nuclear power plants...