CHARDON, Ohio — Perhaps you've seen it rolling through Northeast Ohio or climbed aboard the "Rocket Car." Maybe your parents — or grandparents — remember riding it.
Long before it turned heads and roared on the road, the Rocket Car, a 28-foot-long stainless steel machine, flew in the sky at Euclid Beach Park.
The futuristic-looking rocket ships hung from a wire and swung out over Lake Erie after being added to an existing ride at the park in the 1930s.
Euclid Beach Park closed in 1969, and it would take more than a decade before the rockets flew again.
How the rockets became cars
In 1982, Jen Heitman's father stumbled upon one of the original rockets.
"A guy had one sitting in the backyard," she said. "The guy came out because my dad was sitting there so long, smiling and looking at it. He said, 'You want it? Get Shamu out of the backyard,' and my dad said, 'I'm going to make a car out of it.'"
It took just four months, with the help of old swing sets, for her father to convert the rocket into a functioning car.
"Dad started hanging them to pull them up so it wasn’t flat on the ground," Jen Heitman said.
Since then, Heitman told News 5 the rocket car has rolled through Manhattan in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and can still top out at 138 mph in just a quarter of a mile.
What started as a family passion quickly became something more.
"People started contacting my dad saying, 'Hey can we rent that?" Heitman said. "It's not for rent. It's my family car. And he saw the joy it brought to people just like it brought to him."
This one-of-a-kind rocket car added a sibling when Heitman's father built a second one.
For Heitman, keeping the cars on the road and out in the community helps keep her close to her father, who passed away in 2020.
"I promised my father I would keep them going until the day I pass," Heitman said. "This is my dad's gift back to Cleveland and his legacy lives on."
Both can be seen throughout Northeast Ohio at various events.
To learn more about the rocket car, click here.
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard, on Facebook ClayLePardTV or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com.
