00:00We had this crazy idea. People thought we were nuts. The worst thing that could happen is I have a fuel leak or a wheel explodes going down the track. That would be a bad day.
00:18They're having a big rock and racing event here, so we showed up and kind of crashed their party and it seems to be a hit so far.
00:25The vehicle being shown today at the rock and race event is definitely one of a kind.
00:34My name is Chad Clark.
00:43I'm Mike Monter and this is the Thunder Buggy.
00:45When people see the Thunder Buggy, they just can't believe their eyes and the first question is, does it really move? And yes, it does.
01:01It does move, but not in the traditional sense, which would have been with the help of a horse or two.
01:08It's a nostalgic race weekend. What's more nostalgic than an Amish buggy?
01:11Yeah, we go way back.
01:15Helping this buggy up the racetrack is not a regular engine either.
01:23It's like oil and water. They should not go together.
01:27No earthly business having an Amish buggy and a jet engine together.
01:32But how did this jet-powered buggy come into existence?
01:35Mike and I were at our local county fair watching a truck and tractor pull.
01:39I mentioned to him that it would be a really cool idea to build a turbine-powered four-wheel drive pulling truck.
01:44So I went home that night and found an engine online, bought it.
01:48I didn't realize it was not turbo shaft, it was turbo jet only.
01:53So I had to come up with a different concept than a pulling truck.
01:57So with a lightweight vehicle, we live in the Amish capital of the world, so I figured an Amish buggy would be perfect.
02:03He called me up and said, we're not doing a pulling truck anymore, we're doing an Amish buggy.
02:08Seemed natural.
02:13The buggy was not designed to take 100 feet of electrical wiring and fuel tanks and a jet engine.
02:20It's a really simple engine design.
02:24It's a pretty awesome engineering for back in the 40s.
02:28We built a steel subframe to carry the extra weight.
02:31That's about the only thing that we did chassis-wise to strengthen the buggy other than airbags.
02:38We got a mix of aircraft gauges and car gauges.
02:43This red handle is for emergency fuel shut off in the event of an accident.
02:47With a jet engine, this buggy must have some serious speed in it.
02:54Top speed so far has been 55 to 60 miles an hour.
02:58Or maybe not.
03:00This particular setup, that's probably max because we kept the buggy as original as possible.
03:07There's no safety cage. I've got a driver's seat and seatbelts, but it's still a wood vehicle.
03:17Today, the team have brought the Thunder Buggy to rock and race.
03:21I'll be doing all the crew chief work, making sure he's safe, making sure there's no fuel leaks,
03:26all the electrical, towing the vehicle up to the starting line.
03:29With Mike on technical support, Chad will be...
03:32...holding on for dear life.
03:34And that's not surprising, as there's not a lot of protection for the driver of this vehicle.
03:41The worst thing that could happen is I have an accident.
03:45Buggy wheels aren't speed rated.
03:47Not yet.
03:48Not yet.
03:49It's time for this Amish automobile to show the audience what it can do.
04:15The Amish Automobile
04:19The Amish Automobile
04:22The Amish Automobile
04:43It's fun to come to a track or an air show and see the reactions of people when they drive by it.
04:49They almost break their neck, like, is that really real?
04:52We've had mechanical engineers and people come up.
04:55It's kind of nice when you're sitting in your garage thinking about building things,
04:59and you actually have an engineer come up and go, okay, you did that all right.
05:02You weren't a complete idiot.
05:03Right.
05:04We made it!
05:05People thought we were nuts, and I think that might have been part of the motivation behind it,
05:10to get this thing done.
05:11We'll show you.
05:12Yeah, hold my beer moment. Watch this.
05:15It's something that's unconventional. You don't see it every day.
05:18And people seem to love it.
