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Most of these supercars are built in limited numbers, so losing them is even more tear-jerking.
They say accidents happen, and nearly every driver has been involved in an accident at one time or another. Some people have been lucky to get away with a ding or a dent, but others know the feelings of losing their car. Whether it’s your fault or another driver’s, it’s sad and frustrating. At least with all drivers having to buy insurance, some of the financial trouble can be more limited, but for other people who get emotionally attached to their cars, it’s not so easy to get over.
Sometimes, even crashes you aren’t involved in can make you sad. Chances are it’s not going to be a Honda Accord or a Ford Edge, but it can be especially true for a supercaror a hypercar. Most of those cars are built in limited numbers, so each one lost is more significant, and if it’s a classic car that’s lost, even more so. You may not feel bad for the driver if they were being irresponsible, and perhaps you can rationalize it by saying that if you have enough money to buy one of those cars, you can afford to fix it or replace it; however, you'll still feel bad for the car. No One Was Seriously Hurt In Any Of These Incidents.
Ferrari has now begun selling special, limited edition cars as part of what they are calling their Icona Series. Only the most elite of Ferrari’s customers were invited to purchase the first models, the SP1 (one-seater) and SP2 (two-seater), each of which cost $1.6 million. They were designed as a tribute to the 1954 Monza racing car with the drive train from the 812 Superfast.
In June 2022, 80 Monza owners paid $30,000 each to gather for the first annual Ferrari Cavalcade Icona festival. The event took place in Monaco, and the Italian and French Rivieras were chosen because the beautiful weather would be perfect for enjoying open-top windshield-less cars. Unfortunately, when they gathered on Italy’s Fiorano test track, the skies opened up, and a storm caught 80 Monzas off guard. Even though they could reach 60 mph in 2.9 seconds, they couldn’t outrun the rain.
Related: Ferrari Monza Vs Aston Martin V12 Speedster: How The Two Supercars Stack Up
Japan might be more known for exporting cars they build, but they also import cars. Like the rest of the world, wealthy Japanese citizens love to buy high-end European sports cars. More and more of them are imported each year, but only 340,000 were imported in 2021, and only a tiny fraction of those were supercars.
In 2011, shortly after a rainstorm, a 20-car convoy of those unique cars took off for a trip on the Chugoku Expressway in Shimonoseki. Then disaster struck. The vehicle at the front, a Ferrari 430 Scuderia, lost control, causing a serious crash. The wreck included a combination of 8 Ferrari 355s, F430s, and F360s. If that wasn’t bad enough, a Lamborghini Diablo, 3 Mercedes, a Nissan Skyline, and saddest of all, a Toyota Prius were also involved.
From 2019 to 2021, Bugatti built a total of 40 ultra-exclusive Divos. These cars were essentially designed to be racetrack-ready versions of the Chiron. The changes included a new exhaust, rear wing, chin spoiler, side skirts, air intakes, headlights, and improved venting for the radiators and brakes. There was also more carbon fiber and modified suspension, but the quad-turbo W16 engine remained the same. Owners had to cough up $5.7 million and be able to afford gas for the least fuel-efficient car in the world (10 mpg combined).
While some owners would choose to put their Divo in their garage and never drive it, one decided to take theirs out to use in Paris, a city known for terrible traffic. Somehow the driver managed to get their car to the Westin Paris-Vendôme hotel and park it. Unfortunately, upon leaving, the driver misjudged the distance to the Mercedes CLA parked behind it and reversed right into it. No reports of how much damage was done, but it’s a safe bet that fixing it wasn't cheap.
Related: Watch Three Highly-Customized Bugatti Divos Hit The Race Track
Tim Gillean is the founder of a successful private equity firm in Dallas, Texas. His total wealth has been estimated to be around $400,000.000, and he loves to spend it on his exotic car collection, which includes a Bugatti Chiron, a McLaren Senna, a Ferrari LaFerrari, a Rolls-Royce Dawn, and a Lamborghini Urus, among others. Gillean has a son, Gage, who inherited his father’s love of cars. Gage has access to his father’s car collection and has used it to start a successful YouTube channel called GGExotics.
Unfortunately, loving cars doesn’t always mean being able to drive them. In November 2020, Gage took one of his father's most expensive cars, a $3.4 million Purple Pagani Huayra, out to film a video. According to Gillean, while driving, he noticed the low tire pressure light come on and crashed the one-off Huayra beyond the point of repair shortly after. He says he was only going around 30 mph at the time, and luckily no one else was involved in the accident, though Gage did break his arm. It may cause you pain to look at the photos, but Gage Gillean seemed relatively unaffected. When asked about the crash, he’s been quoted as saying, “Sh*t happens.”
Christian Von Koenigsegg is known for hand-built boutique performance cars that compete with major players like Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Pagani. In 2015, they debuted the Agera, and later 25 upgraded Agera RS's, making 1,400 hp. One of those cars set a record for production cars, reaching a maximum top speed of 285 mph.
In 2019 an Agera RS was on a shakedown run before delivery to collector Manny Khoshbin in the United States. It made a detour to meet up with a Bugatti Veyron for a photo shoot in the Swiss Alps, and soon after the two cars parted, disaster struck. The car spun out and landed on some rocks near a railroad track. No one was hurt, but the accident resulted in the RS sustaining severe damage because of wet and uneven road conditions. The wrecked car was returned to their factory in Sweden, where it was to be repaired and become a test mule. The result was that only 24 Agera RS's were ever delivered to customers.
Related: Here’s Why The Koenigsegg Agera R Is Banned In The US
Of all 50 states, Florida has seen the most hurricanes and tropical storms. In June of 2022, Miami was hit by Tropical Storm Alex, causing billions of dollars in damage. Perhaps you saw the video of one Corvette C8 successfully driving through deep water, but not every owner was so lucky.
One such situation was an underground parking garage full of exotic cars. Caught up in the flooding were two Rolls Royce Cullinans, A C7 Z06 Corvette, a Mercedes AMG-GT Black Series, a Ferrari 360 Spider, a 458, a 488 Pista Spider, a Roma, an SF90 Stradale, and perhaps for the better, a Plymouth Prowler. There was so much water in the garage that the AMG-GT was lifted on top of a concrete divider. It hasn’t been reported if all the vehicles belonged to one individual, but the damage has been estimated to have been worth over $3,000,000.
In 2000, Toyota CEO Aikido Toyoda decided his company should build more than a standard car but a global icon. After nine years of development, the Lexus LFA (Lexus Future Apex) was finally ready to be sold. Five hundred of the 4.8L V10 cars making 560 hp and costing $375,000 were built. As of 2021, it has been reported that four of them have yet to be sold, probably due to the inflated prices that Toyota allows its dealers to set.
One of the LFAs purchased was delivered to a driver in Singapore. On a night in April 2019, the owner took the car out, but it never made it home. Witnesses reported that the driver was speeding, and the car lost control when they hit the accelerator. It swerved a bit, narrowly missing a bus full of passengers, before finally stopping on the sidewalk underneath a fallen light post. Thank goodness Toyota/Lexus knows how to make cars safe in the case of an accident, and the LFA’s passengers were unharmed, though not the same could be said for the limited production supercar.
Related: If You Have Some Spare Cash, This Lexus LFA Could Be Yours
For some supercar owners, the car they buy isn’t enough. For those drivers, their exotics can be sent to a tuner who can make them more unique and more extreme. One such tuning company is Gemballa. If you so choose, they can take a stock Porsche GT, upgrade the engine to produce 67 more horsepower taking the 0-60 mph time down 0.2 seconds, raise the top speed five mph to 208, and have a Gemballa Mirage GT. They also modify the interior and exterior with a new body kit and Gemballa details. All of this is available for the low, low cost of only $780,000, up from the stock GT’s price of $450,000.
One buyer was car enthusiast Benjamin Chen. At 7:30 am on April 7, 2020, Chen was in his Mirage speeding in the New York City neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen when he hit five parked cars, sped away from the crime scene, and totaled his own. At the time, he was arrested for drunk driving and reckless driving, but those charges were dropped after they couldn’t be proven. This wasn’t the first time Chen had ruined an automotive work of art. In 2013 Chen destroyed a rented McLaren MP4-12C on a public road in Texas, scrapped the bottom of his Mercedes CLK GTR leaving a gas station, and totaled a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SV in California while showing off in 2016. There are also allegations that he had accidents in a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Pur Blanc, a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren tuned by Mansory, and an Audi R8.
Ferrari built the 250 GTO from 1962-1964. Buyers had to be personally approved by Enzo Ferrari before they were allowed to purchase one for $18,000 (around $150,000 today). It holds the record for the most expensive car ever sold, costing the buyer an astronomical $70,000,000. Another buyer Anthony Bamford purchased a “less desirable” 250 GTO/64 for less than the most expensive one but still paid around $40,000,000 for his.
One of the highlights at the 2017 Goodwood Revival Festival was the RAC Tourist Trophy race. The race had been held before, and other expensive classic cars had crashed, but Bamford still decided to enter the 250 GTO/64. He entrusted the car to driver Andy Newell, which proved not to be the best idea. While trying to pass another car in a turn, Newell spun out and crashed the car into the tire wall. It wasn’t totaled, but repairs were sure to be extremely expensive and take time to do correctly. Bamford didn't’ have to wait to drive a 250 GTO again, though, as he was the owner of two of them.
Can you imagine how you’d feel if you had just paid $293,000 for a new Porsche 911 GT2 RS and crashed it almost immediately after you drove it off the lot? It’s hard to imagine, but you could ask one owner in Penarth, Wales, what it was like.
No videos of the crash exist, so the exact cause isn’t known, but the owner told the driver of one of the other five car cars in the impact that it was due to faulty brakes. It’s more likely that a driver not used to his new Porsche with 700 hp overdid things, and the rest is history. The GT2 RS suffered heavy damage to its front end, but thank goodness it’s a rear-engine car. These cars are often referred to as “widowmakers,” but everyone walked away from this accident unharmed.
A long-time car lover, specifically passionate about European super sedans and coupes. Also enjoys learning about future super and hypercars, His favorite brands include BMW, Audi, Aston Martin, and koenigsegg. Fan of car spotting, stand-up comedy, baseball, Liverpool FC, and his Bulldog.