WTF Friday: Rocket Karts Continued

By
DaveT
-
4

Some of you might remember when I stumbled upon a Turbonique rocket powered go kart for the first time last August at a Street Classics Cruise in.

The original WTF Friday post I did on that kart shortly has been one of the most popular posts on the site, period.

It has drawn collectors from all over looking to exchange information about these extremely rare pieces of drag racing history and automotive ridiculousness.

The popularity of that post lead to today’s kart showing up in my inbox, and while the owner was fairly Spartan on the details he did share that he purchased the kart a few years ago in Chicago and can confirm that this one has never been run.

Unlike the blue one I posted previously of which there seems to be some dispute about whether or not it was a factory direct kart this one seems to be (as far as I can tell and feel free to correct me) one of the ‘original 7’.

Notice how this Kart has much different brackets attaching the tank and the entire assortment of gizmos required to get the kart to move down the track
The extremely rare rocket pods are also mounted differently than the blue one
Someone put this away knowing it was going to be worth something one day

With stories of these karts blowing up, getting confiscated by municipalities, and generally falling off the earth (or launching into orbit?) it is pretty cool that the community of these kart owners has decided to share some of their information with me so I can share it here.

Now if I can only convince one of them to take a ride down the strip in one…. (video of someone (Jack McClure?) doing just that back in the day here)

Site Updates

Reader submissions! I have a ton of them to get through, thank you to everyone who has sent their rides in. I will do my best to find a home on the site for your cars.

Be it in a feature, its own post, or in a readers ride post.

By all means keep them coming.

Flashback Friday

The feature of Aidan’s VIP inspired IS300 has been getting a lot of traffic and comments latlely so I will throw it back to that this week.

His cars gone through quite a few changes since but I still really like how it looked here.

Have I ever mentioned that we had one chance at this photo and security was actually entering stage right as it was taken?

Being Remeberance day in Canada today it wouldn’t be right of me to end this off without saying a thank you to those who fought and continue to fight for this country. 11/11/11/11 – ‘Lest We Forget‘

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Remeberance day is sunday for britan
    your never ending obsesion for rocket karts never seases to amaze and enlighten me

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