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seamusTX wrote:Bugatti driver was sued for insurance fraud: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/276126" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Allegations are not facts until proven in court.

- Jim

Uh oh... Lucy may have some splainin' to do.

No bird in the video and the car went into the lagoon just as if the man driving was in one of those curved turn lanes...sad for that car, though.

Stealth pelican.



Hey, it's as good an excuse as "the mosquitoes were biting me."

I don't see the pelican either.

seamusTX wrote:Bugatti driver was sued for insurance fraud: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/276126" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Allegations are not facts until proven in court.

- Jim

No, but when you gots video that says he didn't even mash the brakes.... well... there goes his payday!

Yah gotta cut the guy some slack. If you so much as sneeze while driving that kind of car, it does a donut. If you're five feet from water ...

- Jim

I was elsewhere on the course when THIS happened to a Ferrari Enzo at Targa Newfoundland. At least that was on a closed road.

If the allegation is true about him trying to hire someone to steal it, is it still within the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution?

It's a civil lawsuit in federal court. Usually the statute of limitations on that kind of thing is seven years. IANAL, etc.

This lawsuit was filed less than seven months after the incident in 2009. It's only in the news now because it it moving toward trial.

Insurance fraud rarely is prosecuted as a criminal offense unless it involves injury to people, arson, or serious money laundering or tax evasion.

- Jim

Just a note: Bugatti isn't French, it's German (Volkswagen, I think. The original Bugatti was Italian. The original race Bug was a beautiful piece of poetry in steel.

The first Bug in the Bay was near the Bolivar Ferry a year or so ago. I think the latest guy got the idea from that one. (Or are they the same?)

Bugatti is currently a subsidiary of Volkswagen. The factory is in Alsace, France.

This incident took place in 2009. It was nowhere near the Bolivar Ferry (about ten miles away and on the mainland). I don't think there are enough Bugatti Veryons in the U.S. to have multiple incidents of this type. Also it would be pretty difficult to drive into the water at the Bolivar Ferry landing on the island, given the way that the shore is built up.

- Jim

threoh8 wrote:I was elsewhere on the course when THIS happened to a Ferrari Enzo at Targa Newfoundland. At least that was on a closed road. ...

Here's another one.....

Back in 2006, 2 months before I left southern California for Texas, a guy crashed a Ferrari Enzo while speeding up the Pacific Coast Highway near Mailibu. I believe he was street racing some other exotic car. Anyway, he was drunk. He apparently topped a rise in the road at 199 mph, got a little airborn, and lost control of the car when it landed, striking a telephone pole and cutting the car right in half. The pictures were quite dramatic. Miraculously, he survived......and escaped. They caught him later. It turned out he was involved in some kind of shady supercar smuggling deal where owners were getting swindled out of their cars in Europe and he was reselling them in the U.S.

So, I just now googled the story to see if I could provide a link to it, and lo and behold, the first story up is about ANOTHER Ferrari Enzo that was cut in half just this past September, just 20 miles up the road from where the other crash happened. The "original" incident is mentioned at the bottom of the story:
http://www.wavenewspapers.com/news/loca ... 87878.html

Here's a pic from the 2006 crash:

These are small, light cars with powerful engines. Combine that with testosterone and booze, and the results are not going to be pretty.

I've only driven a Porsche 911 a couple of times (a friend owned one). It's quite a shock to put the gas pedal down, glance at the speedometer, and see that's it's 120 MPH.

Who, me, officer?

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:These are small, light cars with powerful engines. Combine that with testosterone and booze, and the results are not going to be pretty.

I've only driven a Porsche 911 a couple of times (a friend owned one). It's quite a shock to put the gas pedal down, glance at the speedometer, and see that's it's 120 MPH.

Who, me, officer?

- Jim

When I was stationed in Germany, I had a German-spec Audi 200 Turbo (Audi 2000 in the states, I think). One Sunday midday I was driving the autobahn from the Aachen area to the Wiesbaden area. It was very quiet, so I decided to let 'er rip and see what would happen. I found I could easily peg the speedometer at 260 kph, but most of the trip I drove a "leisurely" 220 kph. I got passed by a 911 and a BMW of some sort, then we sort of ended up in a high-speed convoy.

Very intense driving, was not a restful cruise. Car was very stable, tho...except for the gas gauge. First time I was able to see that needle moving.

That type of car has really good suspension. They go over bumps like a snake.

And, yeah, you can't leave a smoking tunnel in the atmosphere without burning quite a bit of fuel.

- Jim