Buying a new car is always fraught with complications, but this time is a little out of the ordinary. It takes a long time to adjust to new driving styles, positions, different equipment, and the clutch, to name a few examples.
Particularly when it comes to a high-powered model, So much so that in the United States a fairly unusual event took place on a novice Ford GT owner dropping his model into a tree.
Imagine taking your supercar out for a drive—and almost immediately crashing it.
Last Friday, a Florida man barely made it out of his housing complex before crashing his 2006 Ford GT Heritage Edition sports car into a palm tree.
The reason for the crash? According to the driver, a lack of familiarity with a manual transmission.
According to Road & Track:
While moving from first to second gear, the driver, later identified as 50-year-old Robert J. Guarini, lost control of the vehicle. The owner also claimed that “worn tires, muddy roads, and a fresh detailing were all variables that caused the 550-horsepower supercar to swing out and smash a tree,” but there’s a lot about this narrative that appears suspect.
“I don’t want people to think I was racing at 90 mph,” Guarini said“I was going 35 mph.”
Last month, the owner paid $704,00 for the Ford GT at a Barret-Jackson auction in Palm Beach. While that figure may appear high at first glance, it’s a pretty reasonable price for this model in current condition—or, at the very least, in its previous condition, the publication Road & Track added.
The new generation GT was debuted in 2005, based on the Ford GT40 concept that gained prominence in the late 1960s thanks to the fictional 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 346 is from the Heritage version, which features a specific livery that reflects the colors of Gulf Racing of victories on French territory between 1966 and 1969 when they also shattered the monopoly of Ferrari.
It has a 5.4-liter supercharged Modular V8 engine that produces 557 horsepower and 677 Nm of maximum torque and is exclusively connected to a “deadly” six-speed manual transmission.
Many people are fascinated by car accidents, especially when they involve supercars. And this isn’t the first time a supercar has crashed in the recent several years. A $3.8 million supercar catastrophe involving two distinct yellow Lamborghini Aventadors and another crash involving a GT that was torn in half in Beverly Hills happened only last year.
Watch it here: Youtube/Supercar Ranch
Sources: Westernjournal, Roadandtrack, Virginiatech.sportswar