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bobs jetcar article
---
title: "Bob’s Jetcar article"
source: https://otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-bob-lazar-corner/bobs-jetcar-article/
retrieved: 2026-06-28
author: Tom Mahood (otherhand.org) / quoted sources
---
# Bob’s Jetcar article
*Bob Lazar’s jet-car story, prior to alleged employment at “secret saucer” base in Nevada.*
# LA Man Joins The Jet Set – At 200 Miles An Hour
Publication: Los Alamos Monitor, Page A1 and A8
Date: Sunday, June 27, 1982
by Terry England, Monitor Staff Writer
The custom California license plate says “JET-U-BET.” This isn’t an idle boast, unlike so many other California license plates that pronouncea car a jet.
This car, a Honda, has a real jet engine in it. And the jet engine can move that car: up to 200 mph.
The car already was in the family, and it had room to hold the engine. So, with a little modification and a little outside help, a Honda became a jet car.
Why?
“There’s no real reason except for going fast,” said Bob Lazar, builder of the engine. “It’s going through various transitions, and it’s always half done.”
It’s not the car so much that’s important. To Lazar, a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, the important thing is the jet engine.It’s something he’s been working on for years. It started “awhile ago” when working with another researcher in NASA on the technology. Lazar modified the original design “and put out more power.”
His first jet powered device was a bicycle, on which he hit 100 mph. “The cops saw that and put a stop to it for fear of safety,” he said.
The engine, the second for the Honda, is made of stainless steel and titanium and burns liquid propane. The jet is capable of putting out 1,600 pounds of thrust, (although it has been cut back to 800 pounds for various reasons). The first jet engine was smaller, and the exhaust was right behind the license plate holder. When the jet was to be fired, the holder was moved out of the way. One time, someone forgot, and the metal plate was shattered by the force. The Lazars keep a piece as a souvenir.
The waste products are water vapor and carbon dioxide. An afterbuner that uses kerosene increases the jet’s efficiency 50 percent, he said.
In tests at a dry lake bed near Los Angeles, the car hit over 200 mph, he said. The standard gasoline engine still works, and is used to get the car going to about 90 mph. The engine is then put into neutral, and the jet engine is kicked in for 30 to 60 seconds.
When the car hit 200 mph, the driver, a friend of the Lazars, came back “white as a sheet.”
The Honda isn’t made for high-speed driving. Indeed, the total thrust, slightly above 1600 pounds, is about the same as the car weighs.
“Theoretically, the car should become airborne if the thrust exceeds the weight,” he said. ” If you hit a rock, you’re in trouble. That’s one reason we cut down the thrust.”
Besides the rear-area modifications, Lazar said he had to put in two steel beams in the floor of the car because Hondas do not have frames. Fiberglass was used to remold the body so air scoops could be added to the roof and sides.
A firewall protects the driver and passenger from the heat of the engine.The temperature in the engine compartment reaches 200 degrees, the limit because of the air flow. Parts of the engine will glow white hot.
At one point, the Lazars were almost out of money, and the car was unfinished. “That’s when the commercial firms help out,” he said. Word was getting around California about the car, and offers began to come in.
“I went to a tire dealer and asked for some tires for the car,” he said.”The man asked ‘is that your jet car parked out there?’ I said yes, and he said ‘Goodrich has been trying to get ahold of you. I’ve got four tires here they want to give you.’ They cost $100 apiece,” he said.
So it went: the car received a custom paint job, new tires, new seats and new tire rims (which Lazar never picked up), all free “as long as we put their names on the car.”
The jet cannot get the car going from a dead stop, which enables Lazar and his wife, Carol, to demonstrate the engine to reporters. The car was driven (in the usual manner) to the Pueblo High School parking lot Saturday where Lazar started the engine about four times.
One of the oddest sights is this little foreign car sitting in an empty lot making noise like a jet plane. Lazar explained that the sound waves in the intake are synchronized with the sound waves from the exhaust, adding to the din. The waves travel in a V from the exhaust, and moving around the rear of the car subjects one’s ears to a real cacophonous assault.
The noise level in the passenger compartment isn’t as bad, Lazar said.That may be, but the sound carries far and wide; a gentleman later told Lazar he heard the noise from the “topmost street” above Urban Park.
The police are familiar with the vehicle too. During the demonstration,a county policeman drove up and asked “Have you been firing that thing?”He didn’t ask what was going on, he seemed to know. When Lazar said yes, the policeman said not to do it any more because complaints had been received about the noise.