What happens when you give an 18 year old a BMW M5?
Back a few days ago there was an accident in Florida when a brand new BMW M5 drove off the end of an elevated runway. The car sailed through the air for about 200ft before hitting a tree and splitting in two. The driver was 18 and it was his own car. I just checked the BMW site here and if you wanted to buy a new BMW M5 here, the base price is €140,000. Despite the car having 500bhp (about 8 times more power than a Renault Megane 1.4) like all German high performance cars the top speed is limited to 155mph.
Regardless of where he got the money to buy it, three of his friends all died in the crash as well. Just a few days before the accident he posted a question to a BMW M5 forum about the Formula 1 sytle gear change settings. If you don’t feel like going through all the posts they finally put 2 and 2 together regarding the crash on page 4.
Interestingly the accident happened on the Jumbolair Estates runway which is where John Travolta lives.
Update: Jalopnik.com has details of previous driving offences on four of the five who died:
Josh Ammirato: (Driver)
05/08/2006 1365EFW 1 UNLAWFUL SPEED 20-29 MPH
06/05/2006 6345SEZ 1 DRIVING WHILE LICENSE SUSPENDED
06/05/2006 6344SEZ 1 UNLAWFUL SPEED 1-9 MPH
01/23/2008 5243SKU 1 VIOLATION OF TRAFFIC CONTROL DEVICE
James Hime:
01/10/2005 4211DIB 1 VIOLATION OF TRAFFIC CONTROL DEVICE
07/26/2005 5014DLB 1 UNLAWFUL SPEED ON MUNICIPAL ROAD 15-19 MPH
12/13/2006 3592EFV 1 ATTACH UNASSIGNED TAG TO VEHICLE
01/02/2007 0320EWE 1 UNLAWFUL SPEED ON MUNICIPAL ROAD 15-19 MPH
Dustin Dawe:
12/21/2007 8968EZD 1 UNLAWFUL SPEED ON MUNICIPAL ROAD 15-19 MPH
Isaac Rubin:
07/24/2006 1261SEW 1 INSURANCE-NO PROOF OF
07/24/2006 1259SEW 1 CARELESS DRIVING
07/24/2006 1260SEW 1 DRIVER LICENSE-NO PROOF OF
01/10/2008 5581SKU 1 INSURANCE-NO PROOF OF
01/24/2008 5580SKU 1 DRIVING WHILE LICENSE SUSPENDED REVOKED
22 queries. 0.541 seconds.
apparently they can do 205 if you take off the limiter. would it be easy to take off the limiter? if he had gone a bit faster he might have missed the tree
You know I was thinking something similar. What would have happened if the missed the tree? Either way it wouldn’t have been a good outcome. The runway is only a mile and a half long so if he went from a standing start at the other end I doubt if he would have made 140mph. If he had a rolling start at say 40 mph or more then he could quite possibly have made it to 170.
Private property or not, It’s not a good idea to even attempt that speed like he did. Let alone at half 3 in the morning.
It’s sad for all those who have to deal with it though.
jeez what a muppet spose we will never know what made him decide to try it
I reckon he tried it because he could!
Oh man, that sucks big time.