Bang while driving....

Back around 1986/87, was driving my 71 B'cuda to pick up my girlfriend. Running down the 4 lane road at 50mph when out of nowhere, BANG! And the car died. You'd have thought someone set off a cherry bomb in the back seat. The traffic behind me dropped way back. Scared the hell out of me. I coasted to the shoulder, got out and looked behind me for 1/2 of the 440 scattered in the road. Didn't see anything. Open the hood and start looking around, checked the fluids, looked under the car. Noticed both mufflers were puffed up. The car would not restart for nothing. About 15 min later, I find the wire feed to the electric choke had melted thru on the intake at the heat cross over. Pulled the wire off, tied it back and she started up and never had another problem. So the choke wire shorted out on the intake, ignited the unspent fuel thru the exhaust and nearly blew the mufflers off. I'm guessing a pair of pretty good sized fireballs came out of the tail pipes for the way the other cars backed off.