Sunday, April 3, 2011

McLaren MP4-12C Crashes in Seattle

Image Source: QuattroWorld User Gorobei



(April 3, 2011) 



According to multiple eyewitnesses, yesterday in Seattle a McLaren MP4-12C crashed after losing a wheel and spun around to a stop facing the wrong direction towards traffic. Users on AutomotiveForums and Quattroworld witnessed the aftermath of the accident and also discovered the reason for the crash.  User ChrisRT writes:

"I was driving on HY-99 Northbound at about 1PM wondering why traffic was so congested. To my surprise I saw 3 Seattle Police cars and 2 DOT trucks behind a wrong way facing Mclaren. It turns out the rear passenger wheel was separated from the car.
As unbelievable as this seems, at about 3:30PM, one of the software techs had it on a test drive and someone from the program came to my work and requested equipment to transport the car with only 3 wheels in their location. He also informed me that a Mclaren technician was dispatched immediately from overseas to tend to the car."


Two more pictures from Gorobei were posted:

The McLaren MP4-12C has been available since last year in Europe and was supposed to start going on sale early this summer in North America. Any cars spotted in America previously were owned and operated by McLaren as demo cars for dealerships, or press fleet cars for reviews. It will be interesting to see if this was a McLaren owned car, or one of the very first American delivered MP4-12Cs.


Update #2 - The guys over at Jalopnik have found out about the crash as well. They received a picture of the McLaren on the flatbed from their tipster Dana.

We'll update this post as we find out more.

Please drop us a line at: TheDailyHoon@gmail.com if you have any information.


6 comments:

  1. Wow. Epic fail. How'd it come off though? Someone didn't torque the lugs to spec I see...

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  2. Maybe the driver applied too many torques and the rim decided to jump ship...wait, there's no such thing as too many engine torques, it can't be that.

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  3. Saw this, you can't tell from that angle but it didn't lose a wheel, all the wheels stayed on. No idea what happened though.

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  4. Looks like the guy in the red (if he was the driver) overweighted it and the computers reacted by spinning the car and popping open to door and rolled him off at the bus stop there... Just saying, that car is apparently really smart...

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  5. Too much torque may have caused the rim to loosen up.

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