Re: My Hairiest Supercar Moments
SSO.:I just posted up a new blog chronicling the hairiest moments I've had in a range of supercars over the years including the Ferrari F40, McLaren 675LT Spider, Ferrari 365BB & 512BB, Mosler MT900S, and Porsche 911 (993) Turbo:
https://karenable.com/my-hairiest-supercar-moments/
Comments?
What have been yours?
Great writeup. 
I do not want to bore you guys with my stories (I already do it enough 
), so here are two interesting encounters I won't forget:
1. France: I spent a few days with the family at Eurodisney Paris and while our family car (Cayenne Turbo) was parked on the official Eurodisney parking lot, someone tried to steel the car. They probably aborted their theft because my car alarm was programmed to honk longer than the usual 30 seconds. They were professionals, they drilled the door lock, didn't break any windows.
So we arrived at our car at around 5 pm with two small kids and the car was open, the door lock drilled. There was nothing visible to steal in the car. The bus station was 30 meters from our car but apparently nobody bothered to notice anything. We called someone from Eurodisney and they sent us to a local police station next to Eurodisney.
This has been the worst police experience I had in my life: None of the police officers knew English, thank god my wife is fluent in French, I only understand it well (school, work). Well, this didn't really help either. It was a huge police station with a huge fenced (and empty) parking lot. The police officers were either of Arab or African descent. Why I mention this? Well, they were talking in Arabic or some unidentified African language to each other. I am not kidding. We waited two hours there to get our report taken. Two hours! There was nobody else in that police station other than the police officers. One officer brought pizzas (huge quantity), they didn't bother to offer even a glass of water to our small kids. No smile, nothing. Horrible situation. Then came the "best" part: After taking our report and putting everything down for our insurance, I asked them if I can leave the "open" car in their fenced parking lot until the morning, when we would leave to head home. The officer said this is impossible, only police cars can be parked on the grounds of the police station. I begged him, explained to him that I cannot leave such an expensive car "open" at the hotel because my insurance would consider this negligence and if something happens, they wouldn't pay anymore. I also told him that we have two small kids and that we were at Eurodisney the whole day and they need to get some sleep at the hotel before we head home. Guess what? He didn't care.
I was furious. Never been that furious in my life. I was considering calling the German embassy in Paris through a contact and get this sorted out but then, I had no desire anymore to stay in France, so I told my wife: Let's drive home. This was at around 8 pm when we were heading back to the hotel. I left the car in front of the hotel entrance and one hour later, we were on our way back to Germany, usually a 10 hours drive from where I live.
Well, I did it in 7 hours, over 970 km. 
At night. In November.
I basically triggered every single fixed radar trap (lots of them along the route to Germany) in France on my way home. I saw so many flashes that I cannot even remember how many. I told my wife that I will never return to France after this experience, so I don't care. My wife was mad herself, so she didn't bother to care.
I never received anything in the mail from France but I guess it wouldn't have been too wise to go back to France in that same car with the same license plates. Actually, I really never returned to France by car, I only flew once to Paris with my wife and kids a couple of years later.
2. Hungary (while the USSR was still existing): We always traveled in a group of two cars minimum (I was working in the diplomatic service by that time) through Eastern European countries, for safety reasons. They usually didn't "touch" diplomats but here and there, they tried to show who is the boss, so they loved to annoy Western diplomats. Hungary was part of the Warsaw Pact at that time and they had Russian soldiers inside the country. We were traveling always very fast, Hungarian police usually didn't care (diplomatic license plates) . Traffic was quite low at that time, fuel was often rationed in these countries, so roads were bad but empty.
So we were doing around 200 kph on a straight and empty country road, when I suddenly noticed a group of men on the road right in front of us on the horizon. The road was straight and I saw them early, so no issues with slowing down.
Well, the group of men in the middle of the road were...Russian soldiers. They blocked the road, so we had to stop. The ones who stopped us had no weapons, just some white/red coloured sticks (similar to traffic cops in the 50s or 60s). Only the men on the side of the road had weapons.
I rolled down the window and told the soldier next to my car window "diplomat" in a very loud voice. Not even sure he understood me, he didn't care. Again I shouted "diplomat" (even in Russian, this makes sense 
). He just looked at me very bored. We were trained to keep our calm during such encounters and the cars were officially foreign territory anyway, so none of us stepped out.
One of the soldiers (the one next to my window) said "Cigaretta" or something like that. I didn't realize at first what he means (I should have...will explain later). Then, he made a gesture with this hand to his mouth, as if he would smoke a cigarette. Now I understood. He wanted a cigarette.
Ten minutes later and one full carton of Kent cigarettes less (we had several of them in the cars because in many Eastern European countries, this was the "currency" to bribe people ), we were back on our way towards our destination. You should have seen their happy faces when we gave them the whole carton of cigarettes. We had pity for them, they looked shabby in their brown or dark green (I don't even remember anymore) uniforms and their faces looked tormented, really really sad. I cannot say we were not scared in the beginning but after a minute or two, we realized that they just stopped us to beg for cigarettes, they didn't mean us any harm.
What we usually used the Kent cigarettes for? Well: Kent was the "bribe" currency for traffic police and even officials in the country we were working at. We always had at least a dozen of cartons with us when we were driving back to work after spending our vacation in Germany. This was not officially sanctioned by our officials but it made our life in that country much much easier in certain situations.
I hope you enjoyed my "hairy" car moments, I also have some hairy supercar moments but I thought I tell a story may not everyone here is able to tell. 
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RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Lamborghini Huracan Performante (2019), Mercedes GLC63 S AMG (2020), Mercedes C63 S AMG Cab (2019), Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk (2019 EU)
