Ferrari Roma crashes in dealer's elevator shaft
Someone called Palm Beach County Fire Rescue (PBCFR) on the late afternoon of January 31 about “a commercial structure fire,” and so Battalion 10 and a unit called Special Operations arrived at Ferrari of Palm Beach ready to rock. Instead of finding a fire, the first responders found all the elements of an action movie in progress, and they were suddenly main characters. Due to what was called “an elevator malfunction,” a Ferrari Roma had fallen tail-first into the empty shaft, the impact fracturing the coupe’s fuel lines, causing a leak. The dealership maintains a parking garage on the roof where it stores vehicles for service. The open door in one of the photos PBCFR posted to its Facebook page makes it appear the Roma fell from that floor onto the top of the elevator. A very expensive “ouch.”
The firemen cut the power to the building to address the leak and whatever might have been left in the Roma’s 18-gallon tank, setting up portable water supplies on the dealership’s first and third floors in case things got a little too “Die Hard.” When that was handled, they called Kauff’s Transportation Systems, a commercial towing company that will haul, pull and recover anything from cars to small planes. Kauff got its five-axle rotator wrecker on-scene, something like the roid-rage version of a regular wrecker you see pulling 18-wheelers down the highway. One 45-foot boom, “multiple 50,000-pound winches,” one chain harness that did no favors to the Roma’s paint, and four hours later, the Roma was out of the shaft and everyone could go home.
It’s not clear if anyone was in the vehicle when the smash happened, but no humans were injured in the mishap, only the Ferrari and perhaps a smidgen of corporate pride. If you see a resprayed Roma on Copart or Craigslist in south Florida soon, ask questions.
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