Well, it starts off predictably enough. The Scotsman links really expensive, really fast exotic cars and the death and destruction they wreak when it all goes "pear-shaped." We get the big numbers (a crash involving an £830k Bugatti Veyron), a celebrity connection (former world boxing champion Naseem Hamed's head-on collision in his paltry £320k McLaren Mercedes), a call from a responsible organization for graduated licenses for supercar operation (The IAM Motoring Trust) and then… ""These are ridiculous cars for wannabe jet pilots rather than people who need to get safely from A to B," declares Jenny Jones, The Mayor of London's road safety ambassador. "Some who buy these vehicles are clearly in need of either an advanced driving course or therapy." Either or? Anyway, call us irredeemable exotic car junkies, but that doesn't sound particularly ambassadorial to us.
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therapy is awesome. it lets you erase all of the racist shouting, the drugs, the drinking, the promiscuity, the public nudity–pretty much all the fun you’ve ever had–if you’re a celebrity anyway.
to think that therapy can now undo reckless driving…man, i love modern society! i think i’m gonna go do donuts in the freeway.
“wannabe jet pilots” – guilty as charged. Though I still say more cars should come with a Head-Up Display (the biggest thing I miss from my Z06)
Well, obviously, anybody who’s in love with cars is barely one step healthier than somebody who’s in love with refrigerators. Guilty as charged, myself. But mainly, what does ‘all goes “pear shaped”‘ mean? I mean, I grasp what it means, but what’s the etymology? Interesting phrase.
“These are ridiculous cars for wannabe jet pilots rather than people who need to get safely from A to B.”
And that’s the whole beauty of it! But if her point is to not play jet pilot on public roads, I can accept that.
I’ve been saying this for years.
Those cars are NOT for the every day driver – you can’t put that much power in someone’s hands, mate it to an automatic transmission and send them to the road.
For christ’s sake – Paris Hilton owns an SLR. Lindsay Lohan owns an SL65 AMG – you want someone like her running around with 600+ horsepower, drunk as hell and with no consequences facing her, and to top it off, she has no idea how to drive properly!?
It makes complete sense that cars above a certain performance level should require a much higher degree of driver certification than does a Ford Focus.
If memory serves, wasn’t Porsche giving Carrera GT buyers an advanced driver training course when they purchased the car?
An exotic car buyer could certainly afford a Skip Barber-type advanced driving school. You’d think you would want to, in order to get the most from your investment.
Just make sports cars with only manuals. Not one of those starlets can drive a stick.
Only trouble: 75% of the owners can’t either. That would be bad news for the car companies.
Yes, only manuals in sports cars, just as God intended. I don’t know about the Carrera GT, but for the good old XJ220 you needed advanced driver training before Jaguar would let you have one, and even the 2001 Mustang Cobra R’s needed a racing license, granted those were street legal race cars.
Lets be honest here, those silly starlets are the intended customers for these cars. Who else can you convince to buy that dog of a exotic sports car the SLR McLaren for close to $400,000!
Lots of 100K cars and 25 cent drivers these days, the 1m cars just make the news.