Ditch Magnets

The original 911 Turbo had a reputation for being obstinate at higher cornering speeds.  IT decided where the rear end was going, not the driver.  This was not apparent upon first glance at the vehicle.  It was a cunning and sly car.  It lulled you into a comfortable zone before shattering your world with unexpected oversteer.  The car was in the weeds backwards by the time the driver realized there was a problem.  No Porsche employee will admit this, but there was demon blood in the Turbo's DNA.  That's how they powered the turbocharger.  That faint trace of malevolent genetics turned the car into a widow maker.  Or so everyone wanted you to believe.  Some of those same people still believe that guardrails and trees can move to obstruct a vehicle's path too.  Those explanations are good cover stories to hide the true source of the 911 Turbo’s wicked origins.

The reliance on demon blood for turbo power was massaged out of the car through successive generations, but even the current 911 Turbo will launch you off the road if you get it all wrong.  Sometimes you run out of talent, and sometimes there was no talent to give.  On rare occasions the road is to blame.

There must be a small amount of vehicles that have been punished by their chassis engineers for unknown reasons.  Most of the time the number one cause is a budget shortfall.  It doesn’t matter how it happened, the issue is that the PR department isn’t willing to announce to the world that the brand new vehicle available for sale has the suspension setup equivalent to an overturned wheelbarrow.  That doesn’t move inventory.  The sales department plays the long odds hoping that only a miniscule percentage of buyers push the car beyond its handling limits.  The problem is that the limits can be exceeded exiting the dealership’s lot.  A small amount of crashes can easily be explained as driver error.  That explanation becomes less credible as the number of crashes involving a specific vehicle increases.

One vehicle that I suspect may have had an inherent handling flaw is the F50 GT.  One was crashed multiple times by two drivers—one a legitimate pro—on warm up laps.  The damage from one of those crashes was significant enough to require a trip home to Italy for expensive factory bandages.  33% of the world’s total F50 GT production was crashed repeatedly.  The other two are rarely seen.  I think it’s because the owners are afraid of them and can’t get close enough to get in.  That car may be a legitimate ditch magnet regardless of driver.  I almost forgot about the FBI agent who crashed an F50 because of “the tires”.  Perhaps the base F50 was evil and the level intensified when it was transformed into the F50 GT.  I get cranky when I transform too, so I can understand.

The truth is that any car can kill you if you don't handle it properly.  The same applies to chainsaws and flamethrowers.  Today’s super heavy, super powerful performance cars might be working hard to secure ditch magnet titles.  We do extensive destructive vehicle testing at AcMo, and that includes driving in ditches.  Some cars announce their level of inherent danger the moment you look at them because the aerodynamics are flawed.  Others require getting in and realizing you can't see out of the windows and that the controls don't make sense.  The most diabolical class of ditch magnets are the cars that have two hundred more pound-feet of torque than the mechanical and aero grip of the chassis can accommodate.  The Hellcat may be one of those vehicles.  It appears that the new M3 may also be another.  At least two were crashed during a press event at a certain fast track in North America.

A lot of cases can be misidentified because it wasn't the car's fault the driver crashed.  When you do something wrong at speed, the physics involved aren't forgiving.  It is difficult and time consuming to do the forensics to determine if the car was a ditch magnet or not, and since we haven’t located a revenue stream in that area, we’re staying out of it for now.  Rest assured, the moment we discover there is a profit potential to accident forensics; we will be involved in causing way more crashes.

A few of my industry contacts have alerted me to some questionable crashes this year which may qualify the vehicles involved for ditch magnet nominations.

Corvette C7 Z06 – A convertible with manufacturer plates was spotted sleeping in the median on a highway in Michigan.  It was photographed trying to kiss an old Ford Taurus.  That was not the wisest choice.

Camaro Z/28 – Earlier this year I saw a video on YouTube of one being assaulted by a guardrail at Road America.  The guardrail won.  Where is the moral outrage over guardrail on car violence?

Hellcat (Charger & Challenger) – (Pending) the delivery trucks should be arriving at dealers now to release these vehicles to the public.  Expect to hear reports of mishaps rolling in soon.

It’s good to see American manufacturers getting involved in the crash game.  For a long time they left the high performance crashing to the European automakers.  This is a game all of the manufacturers can play.

The latest ultra performance cars are not immune.  They’ve evolved from a long line of expensive and crash prone predecessors.  Being extraordinarily expensive and exclusive doesn’t guarantee the buyers have the driving skill to handle the vehicles.  That has never been the case.

A Ferrari LaFerrari (that name!) had the indignity of being involved in a low speed impact with a VW.  This was a traffic misunderstanding more than attempt to pull itself into a ditch though.  That could have been disastrous since this accident occurred in Monaco and the closest thing to a ditch there is the ocean.  I don’t know, but I don’t think the LaFerrari can float. 

A McLaren P1 evidently suffered a high-speed impact today.  This was reported as an incident involving a guardrail.  It seems the P1 might have raised its nose to the guardrail.  I have heard that guardrails take extreme offense when they are snubbed and an immediate and extreme response usually occurs.  Guardrails are known to be incredibly tough with short tempers.  It doesn’t take much to set one off toward full boil.  In this case, the guardrail lashed out and smacked the P1 around for a good bit.

The McLaren F1 (road car, their current F1 car isn’t fast enough to get involved in a high speed crash) is no stranger to high-speed incidents.  A former BMW executive once famously crashed one at very high speed.  Mr. Bean was also a serial F1 crasher.  There are plenty more to add to that list, but I can’t bring myself to think about it.  I’m never going back to that dark place again.

There’s a mathematical formula in here somewhere, but it is going to take more time than I have to pry it out of the data.  In the meantime, don’t drive above your abilities and stay away from the demon blood.