Having had a vehicle on fire myself, i had to laugh at the hopelessness of my mates story today.
His nephew was going down their section in urquarts bay, whangarei heads, on the old diesel beach tractor, to pull a boat out of the briny. Anyway it is an old ugly shitter that starts badly but barely gets by otherwise. It had just been started with a can of start ya bastard and on the downhill run the can rolled over the battery terminals and just erupted in a huge sheet of flame with sound effects! Mikey jumped off immediately, with burns to his hands only, and they stood and watched the blazing tractor chug on over towards the neighbours house! Fortuneately a passing beach goer came running over with a fire extinguisher that not only put out the fire, but stopped the motor as well.