Ferrari crash stuns car world
LOS ANGELES – It was a SigAlert made for Malibu.
A red Ferrari Enzo – one of only 400 ever made and worth more than $1 million – broke apart Tuesday when it crested a hill on Pacific Coast Highway going 120 miles per hour and slammed into a power pole.
The driver jumped out of the wreckage and ran into the canyon above, evading a three-hour search by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department helicopter and a search-and-rescue team.
The crash did not result in serious injuries. But it sent shockwaves through both the tabloid and exotic car worlds as one group wondered if the driver was a celebrity – and the other mourned the loss of a hand-built car revered by many as a work of art.
The car was certain to be owned by someone rich, if not famous. Actor Nicolas Cage owns one. And Malibu local Britney Spears has been chased in a Ferrari by the paparazzi.
But by day’s end the tabloids were disappointed to learn that the demolished car had been owned by a Swedish millionaire with no Screen Actors Guild card.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators identified him as 44-year-old Stefan Eriksson, a Bel-Air resident. Officials are trying to determine whether he is the noted Swedish game designer who, perhaps not surprisingly, created car-racing themed video games.
Authorities said Eriksson claimed to be a passenger in the Ferrari, which was being driven by a German acquaintance he knew only as Dietrich.
One witness told deputies that the Ferrari appeared to be racing with a Mercedes SLR northbound along the coastal highway when the accident occurred around 6 a.m.
“It took out the pole and part of the car went another 600 feet,” Sgt. Philip Brooks said.
While Eriksson told authorities that “Dietrich” ran up a hill toward the canyon road and disappeared, Brooks said detectives are far from convinced they have the whole story.
“(Eriksson) had a 0.09 blood-alcohol level, but if he’s a passenger, that’s OK,” Brooks said. “But he had a bloody lip, and only the air bag on the driver’s side had blood on it. The passenger side air bag did not. My Scooby-Doo detectives are looking closely into that.”
The crash left Ferrari fans anguished.
“I’m not surprised the driver ran away. He’d have been strangled by the owner,” said Tex Oitto, a Santa Monica graphic artist who edits magazines for Ferrari owners.
“This will have a big impact on the local Ferrari community. This was not a car. It was a rolling art form.”
Ferrari owner Chris Banning, a Beverly Hills writer who is finishing a book called the “Mulholland Experience” that will touch upon the cult of sports car racing on that mountain roadway, characterized the Enzo’s destruction as “a tremendous loss” to the automotive world.
“He destroyed one of the finest cars on Earth, maybe the finest. It’s like taking a Van Gogh painting and burning it,” said Banning, who is a leader of the Ferrari Owners Club.
Gil Lucero, a Mountain View telecommunications company executive who is president and Pacific region chairman of the Ferrari Club of America, said only 399 Enzos were at first scheduled to be assembled at the factory, each priced at $670,000.
But a final car was built and donated to Pope John Paul II and later sold to raise $1.275 million for charity, Lucero said.