MOT ends in RIP for sports car
A former fire chief took his prized Porsche into a garage for its MOT only to return to find it a writeoff.
Peter Ludlow’s Boxster S was wrecked after a four-car smash on the A229 Staplehurst Road, just an hour after he left it with Project Nine Engineering in Marden.
Having relied on the Hunton Road garage for five years without issue, the 56-year-old Maid- stone man expected to pick up his high-performance sports car in tip-top condition.
But instead he received a phone call from the garage telling him it had been involved in a crash on its way to the MOT centre.
It had collided with a Ford Fiesta, and ended up underneath a 4x4 Toyota after the accident outside Millbrook Garden Centre between Linton and Staplehurst.
Mr Ludlow, from Hayrick Close, accepted £12,000 from the garage’s insurers for the eightyear-old car, but believes it was worth somewhere nearer £26,000.
He had purchased it for £46,000 five years earlier, and it had clocked up more than 110,000 miles.
Mr Ludlow said: “That Porsche meant everything to me. After my divorce and having been estranged from my children it was all I had left”.
Project Nine Engineering had purchased the wreck, said Mr Ludlow, and were using it for parts.
Project Nine Engineering declined to comment when it was contacted by the Kent Messenger.
Mr Ludlow, who served as a fire commander in Maidstone, said that during his 33 years with the fire service he had pulled at least a dozen bodies from car wrecks on the same stretch of road where his Porsche was destroyed.
Police are still investigating the collision, but have not made any arrests.
A spokesman for the force said: “Officers are currently awaiting information, which has been requested from witnesses”.
‘That Porsche meant everything to me’