More than $550K in luxury vehicles crunched in crash

A six-figure crash caught on camera is prompting questions about whether there should be training required for luxury car drivers.

The crash occurred on April 21 when an exotic car club gathered at Polson Pier for a photo shoot.

When a few cars were running late, the driver of a Mclaren 720 was taking passengers for a drive up and down Polson.

One of the passengers pulled out his phone to record a video and that’s when the driver hit the gas, spun out, and slammed into a parked Audi R8.

“I don’t know what happened but as soon as I get in I start filming, then he just punched it all the way. You have to have some experience to be able to control those kind of high-powered vehicles,” says the person who shot the video from the passenger seat in the McLaren.

His first name is Mike — though he asked CityNews not to reveal his full identity.

“It was a scary experience, yeah, especially, like I said, I was not even looking at the speedo (speedometer), did not know how fast we were going, so I couldn’t even gauge what kind of impact to expect,” he adds.

Mike says all he knew about the driver when he got into the McLaren was that his name was Neil.

In the video, the driver of the McLaren runs up to the Audi R8 shortly after the crash. He runs back to the Mclaren before running away. Mike says that’s the last time he saw him.

“He was nowhere to be found,” says Mike. “However, when the police came, they found the passport, they found the Chinese passport and then he just disappeared. Like, we have not seen the driver, I guess, since then.”

Two people were also inside the Audi at the time of the collision. Thankfully, everyone was able to walk away uninjured.

There have been multiple incidents involving sports cars in the GTA in recent weeks.

On April 28, the driver of a Porsche hit a Toronto police vehicle before fleeing on foot.

On April 1, one woman was killed when a Lamborghini crashed in Stouffville.

One of the country’s top drivers, “Crazy Leo” Urlichich believes the McLaren driver turned off his traction control and might have also been missing some important training.

Urlichich is the Canadian Rally Car champion and the founder of Race Lab.

“These cars are being sold because people buy them 99 per cent of the time for show-off, but those are proper cars. McLaren has how many world championships in Formula One?” says Urlichich

“You cannot expect young guys….to police themselves,” he adds. “So the system has to almost mandate the driver training, especially for somebody with that kind of car.”

But Mike says incidents like this one aren’t representative of the local luxury car community as a whole.

“It’s just a one-off, it’s an outlier, it does not depict the entire car community, especially here in Canada, we do try to be safe,” says Mike. “It’s not about driving recklessly, it’s not about showing off, or stunt driving. It’s none of those. It’s just about enjoying or appreciating other vehicles.”

The base price for a McLaren 720 is more than $366,000 Canadian, while the Audi R8 starts at $215,000.

Toronto police say an investigation into the crash is ongoing and they hope to have more information in the coming days.