34 year old Andy House of Lufkin (about 100 miles N of Houston) owns a company that restores damaged luxury cars for resale. Last month he had paid £0.75M for a Bugatti Veyron from a dealer in Arkansas and was driving it alongside a saltwater lagoon near the coast. He seems to have been on a slip road parallel to the I45. There are only 50 Veyrons in the USA. It is supposed to be the world’s fastest car with a top speed of 253mph, faster than Formula One cars which top out around 220mph.
Some enthusiasts in a car on the main highway recognized the car and videoed it. After a few seconds it veered off into the lagoon and came to rest half-submerged. House was unhurt, but the damage from the saltwater is expected to be significant. The video above shows the incident, with original commentary (fairly incoherent) and music added by someone who has put it together with footage of the car subsequently being winched out.
Google is trying hard to get more revenue from the loss-making youtube, but curiously although it starts with a short video ad when you play it on youtube, they have not figured out how to insert the ad when you embed it! It is a ten minute extract from Top Gear, showing the intrepid Jeremy Clarkson taking the car up to 253 mph on the Volkswagen private 60 mile test track in Germany.
The track has a 5.5 mile straight section. At 253 mph one covers a mile in just under 15 seconds. So you have only a limited time to get up from say 100 mph to the top speed, enjoy it for a few seconds, and then decelerate to leave the straight section at 100 mph.
Curiously, House was not driving particularly fast. His explanation to the police was that he dropped his mobile phone, and was then distracted by a flying pelican, causing him to veer slightly onto mud which was too slippery to allow him to recover, so that the car went into the lagoon. No pelican is visible in the video footage. So the assumption is that he dropped the phone and then rummaged around on the floor whilst the car sailed out into the lagoon, no pelicans needed.
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