Mechanic crashes £2.5m Ferrari
Published: 20 January, 2022
A mechanic crashed a £2.5m Ferrari Enzo into a roadside tree stump earlier this week, just over a mile from the dealership where it was being serviced.
The crash occurred in Baarn, near Amsterdam on Tuesday (18 January). The technician was taken to hospital for a check-up, but was uninjured in the incident. The car was wrecked however, with two wheels ripped off along with the suspension. Airbags were also deployed.
As reported by Mail.Online. An eyewitness to the crash said: “The local Ferrari dealer is about two kilometres away from the scene. It's a customer-owned car. The weather conditions were damp and chilly, maybe three degrees in temperature. It hit a tree stump at the side of the road. It hit it on the passenger side and the stump was damaged. Not sure what happened, but I think he wanted to turn right back to the dealership.”
Ferrari built the Enzo between 2002 and 2004 and it was sold new for £450,000. A 2003 example was sold at Sotheby’s last August for $3,360,000 (£2,463,132).
- Majority of motorists knowingly drive faulty car
52% of UK motorists have used their car knowing it needs repairing, a new survey has found.
The research,from ClickMechanic, also showed that 62% of those questioned said surprise breakdowns were the caused more stress than anything else car ownership-related.
- New car sales crash by 97.3% in April as Coronavirus shuts showrooms
UK new car registrations fell by a whopping 97.3% in April, the lowest point since 1946, according to figures published today (Tuesday 5 May) by the SMMT. Just 4,321 new cars were registered in the month, some 156,743 fewer than in April 2019. The last time sales were so low was in February 1946, when 4,044 new cars were sold.
- UK car production lowest since 1956
UK car production fell 9.8% in 2022, according to the latest figures from the SMMT, giving last year the lowest annual production total for the country since 1956. Facing ongoing semiconductor shortages and ongoing COVID-19 related problems, UK car factories managed to pump out 775,014 units. The total was was also 84,561 units down on 2021 and 40.5% under pre-pandemic 2019, when the country managed to produce 1,303,135 cars pre-pandemic.
- New Platinum tier at LKQ Academy
LKQ Euro Car Parts has launched a new top Platinum membership tier for its LKQ Academy, covering all its IMI-approved courses. LKQ Academy Platinum offers garages access to 20 training days across 25 locations, and 20 eLearning courses each year for £2,499, with no limit on staff numbers from each business taking courses.
LKQ Euro Car Parts Workshop Solutions Director Bob Wiffen commented: “It’s important that everyone on the team has affordable access to quality training. That’s exactly what our Platinum membership has been designed to deliver, by giving workshops more flexibility within a single package than they’ve ever had before, and at an unbeatable price. We’re helping independent workshops tighten up their back-office processes, their marketing capabilities and the experience they offer at front-of-house, to ensure they continue to compete with the dealerships.”
For individual technicians, LKQ Academy also offers Gold, Silver and Bronze tier memberships, which begin at £649 for 12 months.
For more information, visit: https://lkqacademy.co.uk
- Calibrations: All about live data
Live data ensures calibrations are done correctly, but what we are seeing is a growth in the collection of the data from vehicles, whether they are single or multi-site operations. The data is accessed via the SRS module and once it has been harvested it becomes an asset to the business. The reason it is an asset is simple. It is because the data helps the business reduce key-to-key times for calibrations, while also enabling them to identify systems that need calibrating after a collision.
An example of this is when a technician uses the live data from a vehicle on the workshop floor to see the forces put on the car pre-and-post-collision. Once this data is reviewed, it enables the technician to understand where the forces have gone through the car easily. The next stage of the process is for the technician to check and carry out specific calibrations such as the radar at the front of the vehicle alongside any calibrations that are required at the rear to complete the job.
Live data also provides the technician with a safety blanket to ensure that the areas of the vehicle that have been worked on are checked and calibrated correctly before the vehicle goes back on the road.
So, live data helps on the workshop floor, but there are also other potential uses for it by insurers, who would use the data differently from the way the technicians on the workshop floor use it. Insurers would want to read and review the live data straight away from the vehicle that had a collision. Once this has been done and based on what they have seen, they could potentially write off the vehicle there and then rather than having a vehicle assessment done. This would be a cost-saving measure for them as they would not have to pay out for any work done.
We know live data is here to stay because ADAS systems are becoming common place on the newer models of car that are coming off the production line. This means that it is important that the people reading and reviewing the live data have the necessary knowledge and training to understand what they are looking at and the ways the data can help them complete jobs more efficiently and benefit their business.