[Tony Ripepi]

Hello to All,

Saturday evening my wife and I were relaxing here at home when the phone rang. It was my 17 year old daughter who had just left to visit a friend here in Danville.

She was a bit excited because she had parked her car in the friends driveway, gotten into the house looked out the window to see her VW Golf bounced in to the air by a Cobra.

My wife and I went to the scene of the accident, NOBODY WAS HURT IN EITHER CAR. The owner of the car was in the passengers seat, he had bought the car three weeks ago, the driver was a friend and they had been drinking at the friends house near by. I called the police and as we watched they did the test, handcuffed the guy and put him into the cruiser. He later blew a .23 into the breathalyzer. In CA you are DWI over .08.

My teenager was lecturing the guy before the police got there about driving a Cobra on residential streets too fast, I heard the comment from her to him " ARE YOU CRAZY THESE ARE VERY POWERFUL CARS AND YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL".

Lots of lessons here....It was pretty quiet when the teens standing around watched the handcuffs go on in front of the guys wife and 9 month old baby. The good news nobody got hurt. Drinking and driving absolute stupidity, drinking and driving a Cobra absolute insanity !!!!!!!!!!

The VW drove away, the Cobra is an SPF with a 351 and it was on the back of a wrecker. Typical Cobra, the driver was coming out of a right hand turn with too much throttle, the back end broke loose and it spun into the driveway and hit the parked VW and spun backwards into the bushes in front of the house.

There have been some recent threads about new owners and accidents, this one hit too close to home, we need to be aware and help all of our bretheren be aware that these are race cars in thin disguise. I will try to bring some pictures of the Cobra and the VW to the BACC breakfast so we can see what happens to one of these cars when you do wreck them. The Cobra was trash from the windshield forward.

Best Regards,

Tony R.


[This message has been edited by Tony Ripepi (edited 04-16-2001).]