Street Legal Jet Powered Beetle (2006) | Hacker News Reader

Street Legal Jet Powered Beetle (2006)

ronpatrickstuff.com

76 pointsjmonegro23 comments

I was thinking of putting it into an import car show but the promoter told me that it looked too plain and recommended that I put some decals on it, lower it, and put on some aftermarket wheels.

/me boggles. This is either a joke or an incredibly sad commentary. "I built a jet car!" "Yawn. Where's the bling?"

The sloppy layout made me think "blog spam"... quick Google search turned this up.

http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/

Nevertheless, it's pretty amazing.

Oh I agree, that didn't stop me from reading the entire thing :)

This guy was on David Letterman some time ago. He did a test run and I believe caught some of the grass near the track on fire. :-)

edit: found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJyAA0oPAwE

This is so full of epic win. The scooter is better than the VW. lol

I think a face-off is needed between this, and the Jet powered Minivan

http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/03/03/jet-turbine-van/

I still prefer the engineer who lights a charcoal grill in 30 seconds with a piece of flaming paper and 4 quarts of liquid oxygen.

http://gizmodo.com/5360234/lighting-a-grill-with-liquid-oxyg...

Both are neat to look at but lighting the charcoal grill is a cool chemistry demonstration, not really 'engineering'. Putting a working jet engine on your VW beetle is pretty serious engineering.

I just want to see this thing pass me, full after-burner on.

I'd like to have that scooter. That one looks cool.

Jet Powered Porche on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Porsche-928-Boeing-Gas-Turbin...

This really puts the Bat-mobile to shame.

I'm thinking interesting project, but beauty of design points = fail.

For the ultimate in elegant, jet powered simplicity, I think Mr. Maddox and his pulse jet bicycle is leagues ahead:

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2009/06/02/pulsejet-bicycl...

I didn't vote on your comment - your fail claim I would have downvoted, but I loved your link. Maybe you should have commented them separately if you wanted better feedback.

The point I was making was about beauty of design, not on the technology, which is where I think the Beetle/jet combo fails, and the handmade, beautifully crafted bicycle/pulse jet excels.

Although you could propose that the Beetle follows the Corbusian 'form follows function' ethos, the end result taking it's shape from it's purpose so elegantly illustrated by the original Beetle itself, strapping a whopping great jet to it does not.

The bicycle on the other hand, has obviously been lovingly crafted to be an aesthetic whole, even though two disparate technologies have been employed - therefore = win.

You could of course argue that Corbusier didn't follow his own ethos and 'fie rules' either though.

I actually think that the Beetle/jet combination is a very appropriate metaphor for many types of technology we use.

"Here's thing A, which only does X, if we add thing B to it, it now does XYZ, just not very efficiently, and it looks awful"

It's a lot easier to industrially design/engineer a bike than a car. The work you're suggesting probably would have dwarfed the actual jet-engineering. However, unlike jet bikes, we see real jet cars all the time—being raced for the land speed record. The fact that it's possible to add this after-the-fact to a car you own was the novel property here, not the combination of jet engine with car.

Sooo many photos and no video? Weird :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831375

It's a penis!

I have to say the shot of him in his Hawaiian shirt with the huge phallic turgidity of the engine held erect against him does look rather like an example from a Freudian textbook.

So you agree that it's a penis? ;-)

You know, sometimes a jet engine is just a jet engine

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