Totaling your Toyota Yaris just an hour after picking it up would be bad enough, but a Ferrari 430 Scuderia? Well, that must really hurt.
It happened in the U.K. only a few days ago, with the driver lucky to survive the mangled and burned wreckage that, for only 60 minutes, was his prized supercar.
Worth around $260,000 new, the still-smoking Scuderia was photographed in a field by South Yorkshire police, who said the unnamed driver had “walked away with cuts and bruises” following the incident on a highway near Barnsley, about 140 miles north of London.
Cops tweeted that the driver had lost control of the Ferrari, causing it to go airborne and burst into flames. Elaborating on the single-vehicle incident in a statement posted on Facebook, the police said road conditions “were wet at the time,” adding, “As officers arrived on scene, it became clear there was a vehicle well alight, and colleagues from South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue were in attendance squirting water all over some kind of sporty motor some 50 or so meters down a banking.”
Someone had a miracle escape (cuts/bruises) from his #Ferrari earlier on the M1. Lost control, went airborne & burst into flames #fire #ouch pic.twitter.com/DkMPEOedFB
— SYP Ops Support (@SYPOperations) July 27, 2017
First responders were “amazed” to find the driver with only a few cuts and bruises. Once they’d checked him over, the owner told them, “It was a Ferrari. I only just got it — picked it up and hour ago.”
While you’d be forgiven for thinking the crash was the result of the driver deciding to confirm the Scuderia’s ability to reach 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds, or to test its high-speed performance by pushing past the highway’s 70 mph limit, South Yorkshire police said later that after speaking to a number of witnesses, “officers do not believe excess speed was a contributory factor in this collision.”
The Ferrari 430 Scuderia has a top speed of 198 mph, and in a Top Gear review of the supercar broadcast way back, Jeremy Clarkson, who loved the car, scared himself with its awesome power when he floored the gas pedal. Bringing it to a stop, a relieved Clarkson quipped, “I wonder if it comes with bog roll.”
Ferrari produced the F430 from 2004 to 2009. The Scuderia — one of several F430 variants — was unveiled by Michael Schumacher at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2007.
Famous F430 owners include Donald Trump, who bought one shortly after it launched. It went to auction earlier this year, it failed to reach its reserve price of $250,000, though a little while later an unnamed buyer reportedly snapped it up for $270,000.
