Checkout A Homemade Jet-Powered Ferrari Enzo Dragster

Check. This. Out. Ryan “Lightning” McQueen has been working on this one for a while now and he did it all with the help of Google. McQueen has spent over a decade and close to $100,000 building a working jet-powered, Ferrari Enzo-looking monster. If that’s not one of the coolest DIYs you’ve seen, we want to know what else you’ve seen.

Between Google and YouTube, McQueen pieced together his appropriately named car – “Insanity”. In an interview with The Drive, he said, “The car took 14 years to build because I had to teach myself all the skills required as I progressed in the project”.

The car puts out over 18,000 horsepower and about 14,000 pounds of thrust between its two Rolls-Royce Viper engines.

If you’re wondering how a build like this even came to fruition, McQueen has quite the story. He took the body from a scale radio-controlled Ferrari Enzo and cut it into 26 carefully measured pieces. Next, he took them to an overhead projector to scale the pieces up ten times and the larger template pieces were then used to cut panels out of plywood. Those pieces were then filled with Styrofoam and the bodywork placed on top.

McQueen says the car should be able to achieve a top speed of over 400 mph once things are smoothed out. Of course, a build like this didn’t just happen. There were many trials and errors along the way. For example, on the first test fire, one of the two starter motors failed which led to an entire engine rebuild.

All trials and errors aside, McQueen says he’s hopeful that the car will be ready to make some “slow speed” runs this coming May. If that turns out to be successful, the car will be taken back to the shop for full top-to-bottom diagnostic before heading back out for higher speed runs.

And if you’re thinking he’s sunk endless cash into the car, you’re only half correct. McQueen says it’s cost him around $90,000 which is nothing to sneeze at but also isn’t outrageous considering the vehicle. Be sure to check back for McQueen’s future runs!