My $48,020 Audi TT coupe has the optional, 250-horsepower, 3.2-liter six-cylinder engine, not to mention a six-speed automatic, dual-clutch gearbox and Quattro all-wheel drive. It’s what they call a "driver’s car."
It’s nice to know the Audi has a full complement of airbags, a rigid body shell and side-intrusion protection, because it’s easy to drive it too fast. I’ve hit 80 mph on I-95 without thinking much about it. This is all well and good on straight roads and dry pavement, but hit a patch of water on a blind curve and any car can turn on you.
The fact is there are a lot of people with more money than sense these days. Half of America’s greatest actors and rock stars are driving 500-horsepower "supercars" without knowing what they’re doing. The car Paris Hilton failed her Breathalyzer test in was a nearly $500,000 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 617 horsepower.
Forbes reported, "The purpose of the [SLR McLaren] is to put Formula One technology in an accessible, comfortable vehicle."
And then hand the keys to Paris Hilton? That’s responsible.
Not surprisingly, the wealthy celebrities, doctors and real-estate developers who buy supercars because they can also are wrecking them with alarming frequency. A Wall Street Journal article ("Honey, I Wrecked the Porsche") recently surveyed some of the carnage. A private equity firm president lost control of his 550-horsepower Ford GT in San Diego and destroyed it on a lane divider. "The car is like a wild animal," he said.
A biochemist spun his $440,000 Porsche Carrera GT on a corner and slammed it into a brick wall, whereupon it caught fire. "It wasn’t something I could have corrected," he said.
Earlier this year, a Bugatti Veyron owner collided with a station wagon at 100 mph on a country road in Surrey, England, and a Lamborghini owner hit five parked cars in Santa Monica, Calif.
The day after I read the Journal piece, The New York Post ran an article titled "Daredevil Doc Killed on L.I.E." (that’s the Long Island Expressway for the uninitiated). It seems 64-year-old Dr. Neil Battinell was hitting 120 mph in his Ferrari convertible when he slammed the car into a light pole.
Even so-called experts wreck supercars. I was on a press trip where a cocky journalist drove a BMW convertible off a cliff. (The only thing hurt was his ego.) The technical editor of Car and Driver sideswiped a wall in a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano recently after turning off the electronic stability control to see what would happen.
Driving supercars is hard work. As David Champion of Consumer Reports points out, it requires constant inputs and corrections to keep these finicky vehicles on the road. I had a particularly nerve-wracking experience piloting a $200,000 Callaway Corvette around Manhattan, one of the world’s most congested islands.
I’m sorry when drivers get hurt or killed, but I cry no tears when I see big-engined supercars hauled off on the end of a tow hook. They’re toys for the rich, and super polluters, too. Among the "meanest vehicles for the environment" in 2007, according to Greenercars.org, are the Lamborghini Murcielago, the Maybach 57S and the Bentley Arnage RL.
To see what it looks like when driver’s reach exceeds their grasp, visit www.wreckedexotics.com.
