Why Cars Explode Into Fireballs And Why They Usually Don't

  

Last week, noted journalist Michael Hastings was killed in a tragic and dramatic car crash that ended with his new Mercedes-Benz burning in a massive fireball. The intensity of the conflagration have made many people suspicious about the wreck. We asked our physicist.

Normally, we associate massive auto-wreck fireballs with movies and over-the-top effects. It seems to be pretty rare for real-world cars to go up in flames so dramatically, that hardly means it doesn't happen. Here's the full story on why and how cars explode from Jalopnik's on-call physicist, Dr. Stephen Granande:

For the rest of the story: http://jalopnik.com/why-cars-explode-into-fireballs-and-why-they-usually-do-560552028