Impatient Bugatti and Porsche drivers set off chain-reaction crash
Closes Swiss pass for hours, seriously injures one
A collision in Switzerland between three cars is going to have supercar fans cringing, and Swiss insurance adjusters hiding under their desks, as a Chiron runs up the back of a Porsche 911 and a Merc wagon with a trailer behind it in what looks to be a very expensive crash.
The photos come via Rainier Johnson Supercars on Facebook, who fills in a bit of the story, and a Swiss news report from 20minuten fills in the rest. There was a group of cars following a camper, as anyone in a supercar stuck behind a camper would be, they were eager to overtake and get on with things.
The Bugatti was fifth in line, the report says, driving along the Swiss Gotthard Pass and was planning to put its quad-turbo W16 and 1,500 hp to use to pass all of the cars ahead. The Porsche 911 driver, in the fourth spot in the queue, also went to overtake and there was a collision.
When the Bugatti driver collided with the Porsche, the cars also collided with the Mercedes-Benz wagon ahead of them in line. The driver of the Mercedes sustained serious injuries and was transported to hospital. After the first two impacts, the report says, the Bugatti also struck the camper at the head of the line and at least two of the cars struck one of the large roadside boundary marker columns.
The damage estimate was a steep one, pegged at around 3.7 million Swiss francs. That’s 5.4 million Canadian. While lesser cars may have been totalled as a result of the damage, with a new Chiron running more than $3 million new, it has to be reduced to almost nothing before it won’t be sent to the body shop.