Too fast, too furious: Lamborghini, Ferrari in Beijing crash

BEIJING, China – Online speculation mounted in China Monday, April 13, as police detained the “unemployed” drivers of a Lamborghini and Ferrari that crashed in Beijing as the seventh stunt-filled “Fast and Furious” movie opened.

Pictures of the mangled wreckage of a lime-green Lamborghini, a damaged red Ferrari and other high-performance cars in a tunnel in the Chinese capital emerged online following Saturday’s (April 11) crash, which police said left one person injured.

A 20-year-old surnamed Yu from Changchun in the northeastern  province of Jilin drove the Ferrari, while a man surnamed Tang, aged 21, from Beijing, was in the Lamborghini, police said, adding that both were jobless.

“Socialism is so good that it allows unemployed people to drive supercars,” one posting said on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, mocking the country’s authoritarian system of Communist rule.

“What are their names? Who are their fathers?” another netizen asked.

A high-speed Ferrari crash in the capital in March 2012 killed the son of Ling Jihua, a close ally of then-president Hu Jintao. Two women passengers, one of them naked, were both injured.

The incident added to public perceptions in China of corrupt and high-living officials, and Ling has since been investigated for graft and dismissed from his post.

The latest crash happened at about 10pm, police said, during heavy rain. It occurred two hours before “Furious 7” broke the record for midnight screenings on its launch in China, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“Were they in a hurry to watch Fast and Furious 7?” one netizen said.

Earlier reports said at least one of the luxury vehicles’ drivers was a student, and that residents had complained about cars racing in the tunnel, which is near Beijing’s emblematic Bird’s Nest stadium.

Beijing police earlier drew derision online for referring to the cars involved as green and red “small passenger-carrying vehicles” in a statement released Sunday, April 12.

“These sure are valuable vehicles,” said one posting.

But Monday’s police statement identified the makes of both the Lamborghini, which sells for around $800,000 in China, and the Ferrari, which can cost around $500,000.

A 21-year-old driver crashed his Ferrari at high speed in the Chinese capital in February last year, killing one passenger and injuring another. – Rappler.com