Jet car showman dies in U.P. racetrack crash
Decades of danger finally caught up with Doug Rose, who died in a fiery crash of a jet-engined show car at a Michigan Upper Peninsula racetrack over the weekend.
Rose, 81, was appearing at Norway Speedway, just over the Wisconsin line, when his Green Mamba inexplicably went off the track and into a wall after an exhibition pass in front the grandstand Friday evening, WLUC-TV reported.
Cellphone video taken by someone in the audience shows the Green Mamba coming slowly around the last corner of the one-third mile track, then revving with the distinctive whine of a jet engine before emitting a giant fireball, then smoke as the car briefly accelerates.
But as it enters the first turn, the car continues straight off the track and crashes, with another brief fireball and huge smoke cloud.
Emergency vehicles rushed to the car, and the grandstand announcer said it appeared to be good news that Rose was quickly recovered from the vehicle. But he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Norway Speedway official John Ostermann said several witnesses said they saw Rose’s head down as the car went off the track, suggesting he may have had a medical episode and lost consciousness before the crash.
Ostermann said Rose had come to Norway at the last minute, honoring a promise from last year, when his cancer prevented him from making the trip. Ostermann said he told Rose to keep the payment anyway, and then Rose called last week and said he was coming.
“He said he didn’t want to let us down two years in a row,” Ostermann said. He said he didn’t even have time to promote the appearance, which Ostermann had arranged many other years at the track.
“The show was spectacular,” he said. “It never got old.” He said even the racers would stop working on their cars in the pits and come out to watch whenever Rose came to town.
Promoters canceled that night’s racing, which was to follow the Green Mamba exhibition, and rescheduled races to Saturday evening.
According to a tribute by noted automotive writer Steven Cole Smith, Rose had been enthralled by jet-powered cars since the 1960s and lost both of his feet while driving a famous car from that era, the Green Monster, in 1966.
But he came back to driving with prosthetic legs that year, built the Green Mamba with a Navy jet fighter engine and started touring the country. Rose said the car could go 300 mph on a long straight stretch.
In 2006, Rose’s trailer, with the Green Mamba, tools and equipment inside, was stolen from outside his apartment in Tampa, Fla. It was recovered about a month later in a Tampa repair shop, but in pieces.
Fans and colleagues around the country donated money, parts and labor to help Rose rebuild and by 2007 the Green Mamba returned to the exhibition circuit.
Rose’s show often involved immolating junk cars with the Mamba’s fiery afterburner, leaving behind a melted mess.
“It had to be seen, and heard, to be believed,” Smith writes.