(Hat tip to Dustin!)

The initial reports from the scene raised some eyebrows when the driver reportedly said the crash was the fault of a "low-flying pelican." The video seems to indicate otherwise. Or does it? JCwhitless thinks he's found it:

On behalf of fairness, the film clearly shows the bird being killed.

Please refrain from throwing the guy under the bus as the Pelican has already been thrown under the Bugatti.

Although the pelican's a compelling argument, especially with the frame-by-frame screen grab, but Christopher Schull disagrees:

The only thing clearly established is JCWhitless has a vivid imagination and is willing to present it as factual. It is laughable to say a pelican can "clearly" be seen anywhere near the front of that car at any point in the video. It just didn't happen. I truly hope JCWhitless is never called on as a witness for anything that matters.

I live right down the road from that spot and I went there this morning. The object in the first square of the picture he posted is trash on the side of the road, looks like one piece due to the point of view which is a few hundred feet before the second image. In reality it is two pieces one right behind the other from that angle.

The objects in the second square is the same two pieces of trash but viewed further down the road nearly next to them. You can see the seperation and the way they are laying that from the other view they could appear as one.

There was no bird. I video taped the scene and the two pieces of trash are obvious, no dead bird to be found and as flat and open as the road is (no shoulder drop off at all even) it is ridiculous to believe anything other than the guy gently steered the car right into the water. I will post the video of the scene on YouTube if needed.

Coming back from Galveston on I-45 this section of feeder is only around a half mile long, the only way on it is to exit after crossing Highway 3. Then you have to either get back on the freeway very quickly or you will be forced to U-turn under I-45 and head back the other way. There is absolutely nothing on the feeder and there is no reason to get on it if you are heading back from Galveston. The spot where the Veyron ran into the water is beyond the point that you have to get back on the freeway, leaving only the choice of U-turning to go the other way, so so much also for the BS story about heading back from Galveston eh?

This crash is a publicity money making scam along the lines of Balloon Boy and this guy should be promptly arrested for fraud....

Reader NitrousOxide sees either a pelican or a blackhawk helicopter in this screen-capture from the grainy video.

B3ND3R avails himself of every possibility with the following breakdown:

OK, for the record I never meant to imply that I definitively thought it was a scam, just that my BS meter is pegged and people need to open themselves up to the possibility.

Note:

A. This is 1 of 15 Veyrons in the entire US. The odds of anyone, let alone a car enthusiast, even spotting a Veyron are about 1 in 7.3 million provided that all 15 Veyrons were on the road on this day (and I'm betting most were not).

B. Veyrons are horrendously expensive to maintain. First scheduled maintenance - $22,322. Tires must be replaced every 2,500 miles at a cost of $10,347 per set. The entire set of wheels must be replaced every third tire change (7,500 miles). Extended warranty? Sure, that will be $103,062 for 2 years.

C. Restoring exotics pays well, but does it pay well enough to purchase a $1M+ car. I happen to personally know a concourse restorer of vintage Ferraris, and his income would be categorized as upper middle class. Previous poster stated the driver lives in a $147K home, but driver claims to own the Veyron.

D. The engine was left running for 15 minutes underwater.

E. Both the pulling of the car out of the water and the accident were very conveniently filmed.

So, for those who buy the whole story, you can safely commit to the fact that:

1. There is no possibility that this guy was in over his head and wanted an insurance payout.

2.There is no possibility that he didn't have the whole thing filmed so that he could prove he wasn't driving recklessly.

3. There is no possibility he didn't want the car totally destroyed (engine and all) and thus risk getting stuck with the car when it was repaired.

4. There is no possibility that this wasn't embarked on as a publicity stunt by one of the very few people in the country who specialize in restoring wrecked exotics.

OK. I don't know the guy or the situation other than what has been disclosed, so just maybe this is one set of amazing coincidences.

And if this is just one set of big coincidences, then both the driver of the Veyron and the kids filming it need to go out and buy a few thousand dollars worth of lottery tickets.

Whatever the case, there's a pot of gold in there somewhere for someone as many of you pointed out, and Rogue180 captured, there's a rainbow at the end of this story.

House himself confirmed to us he owns the Enzo crashed by Griffin. Ironically, the business House owns is Performance Auto Sales, which sells repaired exotic cars. According to House he's one of the largest salvage auto dealers in the world. We asked him if the car was salvageable or not and here's what he replied in an email:

Not sure if the car is salvageable yet, have not had a chance to go survey the damage. I am one of the largest salvage excotic dealers in the world. This car should be repairable but at what cost Im not familiar with. This was a personal car and one that I was very proud of.. it is by far the nicest car that I have ever owned, looking to replace it now!

Car: Tata Nano
Place on the list: 49
Reason it's BS: The Tata Nano isn't ugly, it's simply space efficient. Given the constraints of price, footprint and upright packaging, it pulls off the microcar shape rather well actually. There are certainly uglier cars on the market in India and China right now.

Car: Ferrari Enzo
Place on the list: 42
Reason it's BS: Save the Enzo's! The Ferrari Enzo wasn't built to win beauty contests, it was designed to showcase Ferrari's F1 racing pedigree and tie those techniques and technologies to their road cars. Form follows function and while it's not classically beautiful it's fast and unique. In any case compared to the Mondial, it's a supermodel.

Car: Plymouth Prowler
Place on the list: 31
Reason it's BS: When the Prowler was introduced in 1997, it was the coolest car on the planet, bar none. Unfortunately it was packed with an engine from an Intrepid, and suspension tuning best described as one-of-a-kind. Despite its glaring flaws and how you might feel about the retro-mod style, it was certainly a car that got people looking. When you spot them today, you turn and look longer than you should, admit it.

Car: Lamborghini LM002
Place on the list: 25
Reason it's BS: BusnessWeek complains about "geometric doors, angular fenders, and a busy hood." Perhaps they forgot it was introduced in 1986 when everything cool was geometric, angular and busy. They don't even mention the fire-breathing (for the 80's) 5.0 liter V12 from the Countach under the hood and the take-no-prisoners attitude. You don't get a moniker like "Rambo Lambo" by being lame.

Car: DeLorean DMC-12
Place on the list: 20
Reason it's BS: Are they joking? The DMC-12? Of any car from the 80's this one still plays well on public streets. The stainless steel body is unique, the ridiculously heavy gullwing doors draw crowds and the fastback style screams 80's coke dealer, and nobody was more up on all things stylish in the 80's than coke dealers.

Car:Subaru Brat
Place on the list: 18
Reason it's BS: Apparently BusinessWeek's too busy adjusting its top hat and monocle to enjoy the finer things in life, like riding in the jump seats in the Subaru Brat's cargo bed. It's even got decent capability for an early soft-roader.

Car: Aston Martin Lagonda
Place on the list: 16
Reason it's BS: Oh come on? Really? The Lagonda? It pushed the limit of longer, lower, wider to absurdity and mixed in out of control braggadocio. By all account it was admittedly every bit British reliable, but who cares? Hire a team of mules to pull it around town as you look out upon the unwashed masses from your obnoxious 80's chariot.

Car:Volvo 240
Place on the list: 13
Reason it's BS: Don't you go messing with the 240 BusinessWeek. You have no idea the depths of Volvo love out there, especially by the boxy-but-trusty 240. We dare you, dare you to find a more dedicated owner base. Fine, it's a bit boring, but so is the Camry and that's not on the list. We actually find it handsome, especially with the quad headlight design. You best watch your back BusinessWeek.

Car: Bricklin SV1
Place on the list: 11
Reason it's BS: Okay, this one's a bit on the ugly side, if you look only at the outside, but it was one of the first cars to push the idea of safety in a sports car, even though because of its heavy construction it wasn't particularly sporty. It's got a logical shape, and the nose is designed to prevent expensive damage repairs. Sure it's a bit cluttered in places, but come on, gull-wing doors.

Car:Chevy El Camino
Place on the list: 1
Reason it's BS: Number one. They've got to be kidding. Two words on this one: Screw. Off. First of all, lumping the entire series into one big pile is just plain ignorant. Secondly, it's rude. The El Camino from the outset was a looker and stayed a dynamite design all the way until the fall in the 70s. But then again, everything was pretty fug in the 70s. If they even try to say the 1960 and 1972 were ugly, they might get a Jalopnik-shaped shoe to the butt.

Photo credit: SuperChevy

What was it? Ferrari 360 Modena
How Fast? 130 MPH
What happened? The moron driver was showing off for his girlfriend in France when he lost control and hit power posts, splitting the car in two. Amazingly, both survived the accident.

What was it? BMW 528i
How Fast? 135 MPH
What happened? This is what happens when a tire blows at high speeds. The car rolled, eventually coming to a stop by way of a concrete pillar.

What was it? Mercedes Benz SLK
How Fast?135 MPH
What happened? There's not much left of an open-topped SLK after it hit a tree in Germany at speed.

What was it? Chevrolet Corvette C5
How Fast? 140 MPH
What happened? Despite being a high performance car, taking a Corvette up to 140 MPH on a Texas highway is a recipe for disaster, as evidenced here.

What was it? TVR T350C
How Fast? 140 MPH
What happened? This South African crash is pretty brutal. The driver lost control at 140 MPH, hit a concrete barrier, and smashed into an overpass. You know a crash is violent when even the wheels are shattered.

What was it? Lamborghini Murcielago
How Fast? 150 MPH
What happened? After owning the car for six days, this Egyptian driver decided to take it out to the desert and go for broke. Broke is what he got when a truck cut him off and he rolled the car, though he did make it out alive.

What was it? Ferrari Enzo
How Fast? 160 MPH
What happened? The driver in this crash wasn't so lucky and died after crashing at 160 MPH, spreading the car out over a huge debris field in Italy.

What was it? Mercedes McLaren SLR
How Fast? 165 MPH
What happened? The SLR's 22 year old Qatari driver was showing off for his passenger when he lost control, rolling the car into the desert. This one was also fatal.

Head over to Wrecked Exotics for the two fastest supercar accidents on the list. One you've probably not seen and another you're definitely familiar with. [Wrecked Exotics]

(Hat Tip to Anthony!)
[MadWhips]

As you can tell from the photo, the driver of this yellow 2003 Enzo lost control in what's been described as "light rain" and crashed into the guardrail of an expressway. No word on whether or not Eddie Griffin was shooting a "movie" in the area. [Wrecked Exotics]

They're guesses range from this being an unpainted car (there's extensive fiber use on the Enzo) to it possibly being a mule of some kind (probably not). Either way, it's certainly captivating to look at, isn't it? [Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

[Autogespot]

We've identified the vehicles claimed by the super carpocalypse, where it happened, how it happened (hint: speed), and the original value of the vehicles (MSRP). Click through to see the carnage.

Lamborghini Gallardo Fire
Name Of Car: 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo
Where: London, England
How: Engine Fire
Value: $212,000

Lamborghini Gallardo Fire
Name Of Car: Lamborghini Gallardo
Where: Athens, Greece
How: Engine Fire
Value: $212,000

Ferrari Enzo Fire
Name Of Car: 2003 Ferrari Enzo
Where: Okanagan Falls, BC
How: Engine Fire
Value: $643,330

Ferrari Enzo Crash
Name Of Car: 2003 Ferrari Enzo
Where: Rallye De Paris at Magny Cours
How: Slid off track
Value: $643,330

Lamborghini Murcielago Crash
Name Of Car: 2008 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640
Where: South Carolina
How: Rear-ended
Value: $405,000

Corvette Fire
Name Of Car: Chevrolet C6 Corvette
Where:Ukraine
How: Fire
Value: $49,515

Corvette Z06 Wreck
Name Of Car: Chevrolet Corvette Z06
Where: Massachusetts
How: Rear-ended by owner‘s wife on the freeway
Value: $74,875

Ferrari F430 Fire
Name Of Car: Ferrari F430
Where: Romania
How: Burst into flames following crash
Value: $227,000

McLaren F1 Fire
Name Of Car: McLaren F1
Where: Santa Rosa, California
How: Engine Fire
Value: $2,000,000

612 Scaglietti Fire
Name Of Car: 2009 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti
Where: Moscow, Russia
How: Engine Fire
Value: $320,000 (nearly $850,000 for this owner)

Ferrari F50 Crash
Name Of Car: 1995 Ferrari F50
Where: Lexington, Kentucky
How: FBI Loses Control
Value: $480,000

Ferrari 599 GTB And Audi R8 Crash
Name Of Car: 2008 Audi R8 And 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
Where: China,
How: Super Car Rear-ending
Value: $312,000 & $114,000

Ferrari F430 Stunt Accident
Name Of Car: 2007 Ferrari F430
Where: New York, New York
How: stunt accident
Value: $227,000

Lamborghini Diablo Crash
Name Of Car: Lamborghini Diablo
Where: Czech Republic
How: Showboating
Value: $240,000

Ferrari F430 Teenager Crash
Name Of Car: 2008 Ferrari F430
Where: Moscow, Russia
How: High Speed Teenager
Value: $227,000

Lamborghini Gallardo Driven Off A Cliff
Name Of Car: 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo
Where: Marbello, Spain
How: Lost Control, went off a cliff
Value: $212,000

Ferrari Testarossa And Ferrari 348 Wreck
Name Of Car: 1991 Ferrari Testarosa, 1995 Ferrari 348
Where: Oklahoma City, OK
How: Two high school baseball players ran into each other in the borrowed cars.
Value: $181,000 and $117,400

Name Of Car: Next-Gen Porsche 911 Tester
Where: Frankfurt, Germany
How: Lost Control
Value: $1,500,000 (estimated prototype value)

Porsche Carrera GT Takes A Tumble In Spain
Name Of Car: 2005 Porsche Carrera GT
Where: Marbello, Spain
How: High Speed
Value: $440,000

Lamborghini Murcielago Crash
Name Of Car: Lamborghini Murcielago
Where: Greensboro, NC
How: lost control due to "mechanical failure."
Value: $313,000

This Ezno, S/N 132658, submitted itself as an example for why we need our "Save the Enzos" campaign during a heated lap last March on a cold day at the Magny Cours circuit. The Enzo's tires hadn't properly heated up to a velcro-like state, so when the over-zealous driver misjudged a corner, he ended up in this precarious position on top of the tire wall.

With two Enzos down this year, are we going to need to reprint t-shirts again? [via FerrariChat]
Images via Flickr, Imageshack, Arthomobiles

ADVrider member, Bross, was out for a ride with his wife this week when they were passed by an overly exuberant Ferrari Enzo driver. Imagine their surprise when, not ten minutes later they rolled up to it looking like it was fire bombed by the anti-fun motoring demons that seem to have been on the attack lately.

Here's Bross' account:

We rolled past and walked back to the scene. Jodie stopped and asked a man walking along the road if he knew what happened. He said "Yeah a guy was driving his Enzo Ferrari, it caught on fire and he jumped out." Jodie said "We saw that Ferrari drive by us in OK Falls, is the guy OK?" He said "Yeah, I'm the guy!" Then Jodie was struck speechless and said "I'm sorry"

The whole time he's not really looking at Jodie just texting furiously on his phone. He then went and sat down on the side of the road beside his duffel bag, all that he had left.

We've seen our share of 360s, 430s, 612s and 599s on fire, but to see the dethroning of the mighty Enzo like this, brings a bit of moisture (or is that 5W-30?) to our eyes. [via ADVrider] (Hat Tip To Rick!)

I have to admit I had no idea what I was looking at when I first saw a Nissan Figaro. In Emerald Green, to be specific, as opposed to Pale Aqua, Lapis Gray or, rarest of them all, Topaz Mist. London car expert Máté was there to patch the gap in my brain so I can now tell you about this cute little button of a car.

It was built in very limited numbers on a Micra platform for Japanese domestic use. Nissan only planned a production run of 8,000 which was bumped to 20,000 to meet demand. Rather like when Ferrari decided to make an extra 50 Enzos—then one more for the Pope—to round the original run of 349 up to a nice and even 400.

The Figaro is like those tiny Japanese cars from the 60s, from back when the Japanese were still scrappy upstarts when it came to producing cars, and when companies like Honda were more knows for motorcycles (and Formula One racing cars). Cars that used engines more commonly utilized in dialysis pumps or pacemakers. Like the Honda S600’s exquisite 0.6-liter inline four—with DOHC and four carbs. Except, of course, the Figaro is a modern car.

Compared to its spiritual predecessors, the Figaro runs a big block. Its turbocharged one-liter MA10ET makes 75 HP which sounds infinitesimal until you consider that it has but 1,800 pounds of car to propel. Imagine a car whose power-to-weight ratio improves by 10 percent if a corpulent driver disembarks.

What makes the Figaro so popular in London is of course the fact that all of them were built right-hand-drive. Given that the whole production run was twenty thousand, you bump into them surprisingly often. And their only saving grace is that they are much older than you’d think: the Figaro was introduced 20 years ago at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show.

It’s almost retro by its own right. Almost.

Last time, 65% of you thought the Fiat 850 Spider Project Car was crack pipe for the 11 grand asking price. Today, we've got another Italian for you to ponder the merits of.

You'll need to cash in those savings bonds from Grandma, check between the sofa cushions for loose change, and start hanging around outside of bars early in the morning so you can roll drunks, because you're going to need a little spending cash here. Nice Price or Crack Pipe is going all Eddie Griffin on our bad selves, and is serving up an '03 Ferrari Enzo for a cool $1,190,000. Geez, it nearly gives me a nose bleed just writing that.

This 12 cylinder black stallion, one of 399 built, and even fewer left on the road owing to its 13/10ths driving capability requirements, will shame just about anything else in your garage. Unless of course your name is Jay Leno- and it's not, is it?


There's not too much to the description- black over red, 1,900 miles, and interestingly, the note of the repair of damage caused by a valet who had seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off one too many times.

For a little over a million, you could literally "spend it all in one place" as you join the hallowed names of Enzo owners past and present- Jay Kay, Michael Schumacher, and Stefan Eriksson, the Swedish douchebag. Not only that, but this Enzo is special- as you Garp fans will note, it is predisastered. You will be able to drive it knowing that nothing bad could happen to you, as that irresponsible valet has already popped this car's accident cherry.

So is $1,190,000 (whoa, getting dizzy writing that number again) a nice price for what many consider the holy grail of present day automobiledom? Or do you call crack pipe, because buying this car would leave you haunted by the bereft, wanting eyes of all the orphan children you could have fed with that money?

You decide!

Craigslist, or go here if the ad gets craig de-listed. Thanks to Roy Wert for the tip!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a tip.

This San Francisco owner skipped the fancy ad and the snooty listing site and went straight for Craigslist. Of course that makes us automatically think setting up an "appointment to see this wonderful car" will result in waking up in a bathtub of ice with a missing kidney. If it is legitimate, with an original asking price of around $650,000, and 9,000 miles on the clock, if this owner manages to get the asking price for his car, this guy will have been paid about $60 a mile to own his Enzo, minus expenses of course. Chew on that for a while. [Craigslist Ad, HERE when the ad evaporates]

Someone actually built this thinking it would look good. Ouch!

[via Flickr, Erdero]

Matt Groner, the guy who restored the once-bashed Enzo is also a 24 Hours Of LeMons racer. This race, he's running a 1995 BMW E36 (obtained via salvage title, which didn't stop the Chief Perp from slapping a 100-lap BS Penalty on it), and he decided it would look much better with the beat-up original carbon-fiber bumper from the Enzo bolted to its roof.


After a few hours, however, the safety enforcers at MSR decided that Team Enzo Dysfunction's "wing" wasn't the safest accessory they'd ever seen, so off it came. Even so, this Hollywood-famous and LeMons-veteran object is still available for purchase on eBay, with all proceeds going to charity. Wall art? Part of a body kit on your Diamante? It's up to you!

First, check out the clip from the documentary here (sorry, the Hulu embed wasn't working right), then come back to read through our sequential ordering of how the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the Carpocalypse actually occurred to see the link:

• Daniel Sadek owned Quick Loan Funding, a company providing mortgages to un-creditworthy buyers, exploding the sub-prime mortgage market to epic proportions.
• Sadek's company makes a lot of money through something called "Asset Securitization," whereby sub-primes are bundled up, repackaged and sold at credit ratings higher than the underlying mortgage credit worthiness as either "Mortgage Backed Securities" (MBS) or "Collateralized Debt Obligations" (CDOs).
• Sadek sinks profits into Redline movie, even letting Griffin crash Sadek's Enzo to promote it.
• Major banks and financial institutions that had borrowed and invested heavily in MBS and CDOs to re-purpose Sadek's mortgages face liquidity and solvency issues due to defaults of underlying mortgages within the securities.
• Banks stop loaning people money for buying cars because they're afraid they'll face a liquidity crisis.
• No loans means a "credit crunch" and thus, the Carpocalypse.

What do you mean our internal link scenario is highly dubious? It's so obvious. Just use the Commutative Property of mathematics and we swear it works — it's all Eddie Griffin's fault.

[CNBC via Hulu]