Going Down: Ferrari tumbles down dealership’s car elevator

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Elevator breakdowns feel, generally, like the stuff of nightmares. Turns out they only get worse when you add in expensive supercars, upside-down, spilling fuel all over the place. At least, that’s what we presume the employees of a Florida exotic-car dealership would testify, having experienced just that firsthand January 31.

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Workers at Ferrari of Palm Beach watched a new CDN$225,000-plus Roma coupe tumble several floors, after experiencing a malfunction in their car elevator while moving the vehicle. While, thankfully, no one was hurt in the initial fall, tensions were still pretty high when fuel was spotted leaking from the upturned Fezza.

Palm Beach County Fire Rescue (PBCFR) responded by immediately cutting the dealership’s power upon arrival at the scene; then installing a portable standpipe system on floors one and three, giving them a supply of water in case the gas pooling in the elevator shaft did ignite. The next step involved calling in a local towing company, Kauff’s Towing, which just so happened to have a newly acquired “rotator wrecker.”

“Kauff’s 45 foot boom and multiple 50,000 pound winches were the right tool for the job,” is how PBCFR put it in a Facebook post that day. Even with that specialized heavy equipment, the extraction took a total of about four hours to complete.

While the front end of the car, post-retrieval, looks pretty good, the completely crushed back end of the Roma doesn’t have us optimistic for this Ferrari’s future. If the dealership is able to restore the supercar and licence it for road use, it won’t be a quick fix, and we’re pretty certain that afterwards we can say this Roma wasn’t rebuilt in a day.