The fastest car crash anyone has survived took place on 17 November 1966 at the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover, Utah. Land-speed-record racer Art Arfons was piloting his jet-powered Green Monster at around 610 mph (981 km/h) when the bearings on the right front wheel seized, sending the car tumbling for more than a mile across the flats. Arfons was pulled from the wreckage, dazed and bloodied, but astonishingly turned out to have suffered only cuts, bruises and friction burns from the salt lake's rough surface.

Art Arfons built the Green Monster himself, bolting the afterburning J79 jet engine from an F-104 Starfighter to a home-made metal frame and the steering gear from an old truck. The process was made all the more difficult by the fact that the J79 engine (which he bought from a military scrapyard) was classified at the time, and no manuals or technical information was available.