IML: Impala Driver vs. Imperial Driver

Imperialists,

The next time someone mistakes your car for the aforementioned, note we Imperialists generally frown on rodding ourselves, as well as our cars, for MANY reasons:

ybshore

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Ladies and Gentleman, the winner of this year's Darwin Award
(awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal
embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a
curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car.
The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators
finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist... had
somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel
rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for
taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into
the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO
unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of
the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately
3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and
melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust
within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of
350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25
seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces
usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners,
causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the
automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20
seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing
the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming
airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a
height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most
of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of
bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and
bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion
of the steering wheel.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground
speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?