Motorist’s ‘Jet’ Flight of Fancy Will Never Get Off the Ground : Hobby: Jim Cox of Canoga Park puts on a show when he roars away from his home in a Pulse, which resembles a plane on wheels.

Jim Cox gets more stares than a streaker.

All he has to do is go for a drive in his car.

Cox thrives on the attention his unusual transportation draws--a vehicle that resembles a stubby-winged jet-fighter cockpit on wheels.

“Some people--the look in their eyes is almost like it’s a toy,” said Cox, 42, of Canoga Park, an unemployed auto mechanic and custom-car builder.

“It’s like they’re enjoying a day at Disneyland.”

And Cox puts on the best show he can.

Wearing futuristic wrap-around sunglasses, Cox climbs into the cockpit of his sleek fiberglass machine, powered by an 85-horsepower motorcycle engine, slides the canopy over his head and roars away in search of people and attention.

He heads to Rodeo Drive two or three times a weekend. And he enjoys looping around Valley highways, gravitating toward the captive audience on the congested Ventura Freeway.

“You’ll be driving along on the freeway and flashbulbs are going off,” he said. “It’s like the cheapest fun you can have.

“Anybody who buys anything off-the-wall like this wants attention or you’d drive a Volkswagen and be incognito,” conceded Cox, who drove the car in the Steve Martin movie “L.A. Story.”

The vehicle--16 feet long and eight feet wide--is one of about 400 Pulse cars made by Owosso Motor Car Co. of Owosso, Mich., Cox said.

Cox, who bought the vehicle for $15,000 in 1988, put a tail fin on the back and a strip of “landing lights” beneath the wings. A fake switch he installed on the dashboard is labeled “vertical takeoff.”

The fantasy confuses some.

Cox said he recently pulled up to a gas station pump only to be told through the loudspeaker, “We don’t sell jet fuel.”

A plane tracking speeders on U.S. 101 near Gaviota last year circled the car repeatedly. Soon, a patrol car roared onto the freeway and two deputies stopped Cox. “They said the plane radioed that someone was flying a plane down the highway,” Cox said with a chuckle.

Last month, the fascination proved too much for one woman, who crashed into the car in front of her while eyeing Cox’s vehicular apparition in the next lane.

As Cox drove along local roads one recent afternoon, several motorists gave thumbs-up signals or honked. Nearly everyone’s head swiveled after spotting the car and its fanciful license plate: 3TOYJET.

“That’s really neat, really neat” said a woman when Cox pulled beside her Nissan Sentra at a traffic light on Ventura Boulevard. “Can you take off?”

Even a CHP officer directing traffic after an accident took a moment to express his appreciation.

“That’s pretty good!” he yelled. “You can’t even see the pedals.”

Despite the attention, Cox said he sometimes goes even further to intrigue fellow motorists.

He said he has dressed a stuffed lion in a cowboy hat and sunglasses and set it in the passenger seat. Then, he said with glee, “I really get looks.”