Wedding Couple Crash Ferrari, But Their Day Could Have Been So Much Worse
A newlywed couple fresh from the altar crashed a Ferrari they’d rented as a treat for themselves. The crash happened in Burnley, Lancashire, England over the weekend, writes Stephanie Linning of the Daily Mail. No one was injured, but the £240,000 Ferrari didn’t fare as well. The white Ferrari 458 Spider was mashed against the side of a house.
Burnley is apparently a quiet town in England. This was, according to the Burnley police, the only accident to take place there that day.
The Ferrari is owned by a car company run by 21-year-old “Lord Aleem” Iqbal. Iqbal and his father, Saleem, own and operate a luxury car rental business, Platinum Executive Travel. Their company offers a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce Phantom at £600 (roughly $855) per day. The couple opted for the Ferrari instead.
That’s one way to react to a wrecked Ferrari. https://t.co/ARjwUWzQWy
— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) April 18, 2016
Aleem Tweeted his reactions quickly.
Thanks for all the kind messages. I wasn't at the wheel, and nobody was injured that's the main thing, have had a lot worse in business
— Lord Aleem (@aleem_official) April 17, 2016
At least people in Burnley have something to talk about for a few weeks ?
— Lord Aleem (@aleem_official) April 17, 2016
Business at the Iqbal’s company is apparently brisk enough to offset several recent heavy losses. Four more cars beside the unfortunate couple’s Ferrari have been trashed since 2014. A Lamborghini Aventador Roadster, another wedding rental, was firebombed. Lord Aleem said the attack targeted the wedding family. That particular attack torched a car worth £340,000.
Three more of his cars worth a total of £200,000 fell to arson. Iqbal had no comment on those.
As unlucky car days go, however, Lord Aleem and the Burnley wedding couple share plenty of company. A nearly identical accident happened in Luton, England, in 2015, according to Martin Robinson of the Daily Mail. Only this newlywed crashed into a taxi as well as the side of a house.
And the Mirror posted a story of yet another wedding couple demolishing a Ferrari on the way to their wedding reception in 2010. Despite the festive nature of weddings, alcohol was not involved, according to a police officer on the scene. None was needed.
“Neither of them had been drinking,” the officer said, “but with a car this powerful a small mistake can become very costly.”
Overjoyed and excitable English wedding couples aren’t the only ones wreaking havoc on cars that can exceed 200 mph. FoxNews aired a story on Fox and Friends in November 2015 of a man in Budapest, Hungary, who crashed his $1.9 million Ferrari on his way out of the dealership. He swerved the car, which can accelerate up to 60 mph in under three seconds, into three other parked cars.
The Hungarian man’s crash isn’t the most expensive on record, though. Andrew Hough of the Telegraph reported on a December 2011 pile-up in Japan that included 14 vehicles. Most of them, he said, were heading in the right direction. One, a Mercedes CL 600, was not. None of the drivers were hurt, but the bill was staggering. Eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benz, and a Lamborghini Diablo were totalled. A Nissan GT-R and a Toyota Prius rounded out the carnage. No one was seriously injured in the debacle. The cost, according to Hough, exceeded several million pounds.
The victims in these stories lost money and property, and a bit of dignity. However, Ferraris are prized for their speed, not their safety features. Twenty-three-year-old Victoria McGrath, a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing, and former boxer Cody Nixon were killed along with two others in a Ferrari crash in Dubai in March of this year. British businessman Keith Poynton was killed just minutes into his Ferrari 458 Spider test drive.
[Image via Frank Wasserfuehrer/Shutterstock]
