And I dare say they did it better.
Longtime fans of Top Gear will remember that the first Stig was rather unceremoniously launched off the edge of the HMS Invincible and into the sea, mainly for writing a book revealing his true identity, but also because that violated a whole bunch of contracts. He was loaded into a nitrous-injected Jaguar, and simply drove off the edge:
But that wasn't the first time a car had been launched off an aircraft carrier for mildly amusing purposes.
Citroen made a little hatchback called the Visa back in the 1980s, and made a sporting version of that known as the Visa GTI, which was weirdly enough not a credit card-themed Volkswagen. And France is one of the few countries in the world besides the United States to operate aircraft carriers with steam-powered catapults.
In case you haven't already watched the video above, you may be able to predict where this is going. In case you have already watched the video above, you know exactly where this is going.
Steam catapults regularly launch jets weighing many tons, so a little hatchback was no problem.
The little Visa positively flies through the air, in much more spectacular fashion than the little *plop* of the British Jaguar when it slips over the Invincible's ski-jump ramp.
Thus proving that catapults make everything better.
Also, stereotypical French laughter, a la Pepe le Pew or Pierre Esargot, makes everything much, much better.
Hon hon hon hon.