"Wait! I forgot to put a chute on the MGB!" (Photo Credit: CC BY/Unknown/NASAimages.org)
If you love collector cars, you’ve come to the right place. These bizarre collector car stories seem hard to believe, but remember – the truth is often stranger than fiction. CLICK HERE if you missed the beginning of this article.
Close encounter with a telephone pole
Swedish national Bo Stefan Eriksson currently sits in prison for, among other things, illegally importing a Ferrari Enzo into America, stashing a loaded gun under the seat of the vehicle and being a drunken passenger in a 150-plus-mph crash that literally sawed the Ferrari in half. Apparently back in 2006, the car, which had been tearing down the California’s Highway 1 at breakneck speed, hit a bump, flew through the air and was split in two by a telephone pole. Amazingly, Eriksson survived. The driver allegedly fled the scene and escaped the U.S. on a yacht that same evening.
Do pack a parachute for the MGB, Jeeves
British auto manufacturer MG Cars was having trouble selling its MGB sports car as newer, better models were hitting the market. So in the early 1970s, the company staged a publicity stunt in the form of an advertisement. A man pushes his MGB out the back of a freighter plane, then jumps after it. Parachutes pop, and the jumper drives away in the MGB after both are safe on the ground. However, it didn’t work in the first take; the car’s chute didn’t open. The resulting “thud and puff of smoke” went off like something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, writes autoLanka.
The case of the buried Belvedere
The 1957 Tulsarama Festival in Tulsa, Okla., featured a promotion in which a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere was buried under the town courthouse lawn. The person (or closest heir of the person) who came closest to guessing what Tulsa’s population would be in 2007 would be given the perfectly preserved Belvedere. Unfortunately, the concrete casing used to house the car developed cracks over the decades. This enabled water from the sprinkler system to seep inside. What the winner got was, of course, a waterlogged surprise.
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And heeeere’s… your 1957 Belvedere!