Plane vs car: guess who wins!
Now, it’s not really clear from the reporter’s description here, but it appears that a Cessna 172 (a delightful little plane, kind of the woody wagon of airplanes) full of FBI agents was taxiing to its hanger in Aurora, Oregon, when it collided with a Lamborghini Countach (an exquisite car, once the greatest performance vehicle in the world and still a work of art, although not so much after the accident) full of a cranky 69-year-old man, which happened to be crossing its path at speed.
A senior citizen playing chicken with a plane full of Feds. Whatever happened to simply plowing into the farmer’s market?
Should you be possessed of such a vehicle, this is one maneuver we do not recommend, for obvious reasons. Please make a note of it; we do not want to have to repeat ourselves.
Not only does the Countach sell for around $90,000 (the Cessna is less than 40k) {and btw what kind of low-rent spellchecker is this in Firefox that doesn’t know the word Countach, I mean like seriously) but it can apparently sustain enough damage that the repair bill totals more than the price of the car.
From OregonLive:
…One of the agents wrote in a report filed with the NTSB that the plane was “moving down the taxiway about to enter our hangar area, moving at about a fast walk and crossing a narrow inner taxiway perpendicular to us when the aircraft crunched to a sudden stop.
“Out the left side window of the aircraft I saw a small black sports car dart from under the prop moving to my left, gushing fluid,” the unidentified agent wrote.
Treit, a licensed pilot, says he had the right of way and that the pilot should have spotted him.
Treit, who lives in Aurora and owns a business at the small airport, this month filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, accusing the pilots of negligence. He is asking for $105,500 in damages.
I’m assuming the extra fifteen thousand is for his wounded dignity, but I must ask: just exactly how much dignity does a litigious 69-year-old man in a Countach actually possess?
UPDATE: Hey Farkers! I’m not 100% sure this one in the picture is the car, but it is the right year, the right colour, and it was wrecked around the same time, in the US. There aren’t that many of these babies around, so I’m betting this is the one. Probably the guys at WreckedExotics.com can help settle things. Click on the pic to go to its home page.
The car was moving at speed from right to left, and essentially tried to dart in front of the plane, which was moving about 5mph. At the risk of repeating myself, Do. Not. Do. This. Also: Planes have right-of-way on taxiways.
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raincoaster 
The Marchioness of WitchH etc
Your Ladyship
Just think
Your Grace’s mother was so close to successfully negotiating Bride-Prices – inshallah, your Grace could have been a Saudi Princess, able to go into a car sales-room and to announce in Arabic :
“Lambo – I like – order me a Hundred”
so you could have had a new one, every time it ran out of oil … or hit a Cessna or an American Tank …. or bent a parking meter … or ended up in Riyadh harbour after hand-brake failure ….
…. or if its engine seized up after you were unable to make it run on carbon-neutral diesel derived from squid-ink ….
…or if it got buckled by Aerchie’s dancing Pink Elephant – like Aerchie, the beast is (when sober) amiable & surprisingly gentle for a brute of his size ……. but whose conduct is less felicitous after any mention of Mr Howard or drinking of SchNapps (apparently in Elephants & Eagles, such episodes occasion unfortunate SchPelling)
… and the Gentleman would surely have acquired the Courtesy Title of Margrave (or is that “Marquis”) – surely that must have been worth a few racing camels or waddy-bashers
but
your Grace (& we) would have been deprived of the elevating spectacle of le pauvre Monsieur Metro, ferrying homewards late at night, in the back of a Christian-Hearted Pick-Up truck, while le Metro was sat nursing an immobile but much loved antique Motor-cycle en route (pronounced “rout” in North-American) to expensive repairs, as your Grace roared past, dangerously perched on a Velocitudinous Harley-Davidson to warn Mme Metro of his delayed arrival
…. with le Metro to be consigned the next morning to an outdoor tub, surrounded by resentful GRAY squirrels & by menacing Tree-Oktopus eating Caribou, restrained only by the sight of his artillery ….
As the erudite & entertaining AerChie would more grammatically say :
Mens sano in corpore sana (I think this means “mens boggleat”)
[An unGrammatically healthy body in a healthy mind (the mind boggles)]
There are some things you cannot buy …. but for bike repairs & ammunition, there’s always a credit card ….
Yr Grace’s obedt servant etc
G Eagle
You’re right.
I’ve wasted my life.
Me too. I’ve just about had it with this blogging lark. In fact, I’m going to go blog about how rotten I feel about blogging lately.
Will you be joining us?
No. I’m all up on the blogging thing, totes. It is perfectly congruent with having no life.
And you don’t feel bad about blogging. Your 1800-word tomes prove that. You’re bummed about the fact that you’re going through crap right now in real life. Throwing a blog away would be counterproductive. You’re at Blogger: just give it a fucking makeover or something.
Raincoaster! How do you even FIND this stuff ! :) One great post after another, totally love this blog.
Wonder about a 69 year old driving this car…what was he thinking? and at an airport no less?
Anybody know how the $ he’s sueing for came about? Would love to total a car and get more for it than it’s worth. The things we learn from our blogging friends!
Thanks for the post, still giggling over here…
Glad you liked it.
That fellow apparently has a business at the airport. I grew up at airports, and I know this type. He wears really expensive golf shirts, and smokes expensive cigars, and is a complete asshole who thinks he’s earned the right because he made his own money. Quite often he made it by smuggling stuff that’s not good for children and other living things, but sometimes he made it honestly, too. But what he does not realize is that this does not entitle him to drive a Lamborghini into a planeload of Feds.
The car, for all its good points, has very bad side visibility, ie you can’t really see out of the damn thing. He was going too fast and hadn’t made sure that the coast was clear. I do hope people make fun of him the rest of his life.
There’s nothing tackier than buying an expensive toy to show off how rich you are and then going apeshit when it gets dinged. If you’re so bloody rich, you’re supposed to shrug it off and buy another.
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The wheels don’t look correct, this “lambo” is a replica. It looks like shattered fiberglass and the real think is aluminum alloy.
another internet scam.
But John, how does it relate to the 9/11 commission report?
Sweet!
One of my favourite examples of rich people’s idiocy came from the mechanics who occasionally do the complicated stuff on my ancient Land Rover.
I went into to see them one day, and noticed a comprehensively trashed Range Rover Vogue SE – a current model and about three months old.
The front was crushed in, the front wheels were torn off and there was damage all along the underside.
One of the mechanics noticed me looking at it and told me the story.
It turned out an oil industry executive had bought it for his wife as a birthday present. She’d had it for a couple of months when someone told her the Range Rover was a good off-road car.
She thought that sounded like fun and as their rather flash house had a large field behind it, she decided to drive it – at speed – across the field.
All went well until she drove it into the drainage ditch at about 50mph…
Hilarious! Yes, it’s a really nice car, but it cannot actually FLY.