Lamborghini bursts into flames
PANIC and stomach-churning nausea gripped a Cape Town property developer as he scrambled out of the driver’s seat and watched a fire destroy his R2.5-million Lamborghini Murcielago.
Judd Smith, 39, was coming home on Kloof Nek Road above Camps Bay when his orange roadster inexplicably caught alight.
“A jogger started waving madly at me, like I was some sort of celebrity. I looked behind and saw this long plume of smoke. It was nearly 300m long,” he said.
“I finally managed to find a spot [to pull over] and as soon as I stopped the smoke and the fire came into the car. I jumped out and ripped off my T-shirt.”
As he screamed for help, bystanders filmed the spectacle. “Even the jogger who initially flagged me down started filming instead of trying to help me put out the flames.” Videos of the blaze were posted on YouTube.
“Eventually somebody came out of a guesthouse with a five-litre bucket of water. By then I had already called the fire brigade. By the time they arrived — t hey somehow got lost on the way to the scene — the flames were so high that they were scorching tree branches,” said Smith.
The blaze two weeks ago is one of several reported cases of the supercars being damaged by fire around the world.
There was an incident a week before Smith’s disaster, on July 20, when a Lamborghini that was part of a convoy heading for the Genting Highlands in Malaysia burst into flames.
“It was the most stomach-churning thing that I have ever witnessed in my life,” said Smith.
“I’ve had a lifelong obsession with the Lamborghini brand and was aware that the Italian sports car has a history of going up in flames, with several incidents reported worldwide since 2006,” he said.
Smith has owned several Lamborghinis. He got his first one when he was just 24.
Another of his Lamborghinis burst into flames in his garage four years ago after he punctured the gearbox on a kerb.
“There was no mystery to that one, but I need to get to the bottom of the latest one,” he said.
“I just thank the lord that I was alone in the car and not with my two-year-old son, Rocco.”
Smith’s insurance company has contracted forensic investigator David Klatzow to determine the cause of the blaze.
Klatzow was part of the investigation into a Honda Jazz that caught alight in 2009. Satirist Justin Nurse’s two-year-old daughter died in that blaze.
Smith said the probe into the cause of the fire was delayed by Lamborghini in Italy, which is closed for the summer holidays.
South Africans have a huge appetite for high-end sports cars. According to the National Association for Automobile Manufacturers, 1 569 new Porsches and 37 Maseratis have been bought in South Africa since January alone.