Top Gear’s producers go to great pains to make the show look as slick and as effortless as possible, and for the most part they succeed. Every now and then, however, it all goes horribly, spectacularly, catastrophically wrong.
Top Gear Korea has released video footage showing the moment a helicopter crashed while racing against a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 down a runway. It all started innocuously enough. Presenter Kim Jin Pyo throws the supercharged V8 Chevy down the runway with a 196mph Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter in hot pursuit.
The race ends without incident, the Vette claiming victory by some margin. However seconds later it all goes completely pear crashed helicopter shaped. As the presenter leisurely spins the ZR1 around to return to the start line and celebrate his win, the helicopter pilot appears to underestimate gravity, his lack of talent or his proximity to the ground and slams the Cobra into the ground.
Needless to say the ground wins, destroying the $11.3m chopper, which smashes to pieces, nearly taking out the Top Gear film crew in the process.
At this time, it’s not entirely clear whether the crash was caused by pilot error or mechanical failure, but somebody, somewhere, is bound to be very very annoyed.
Fortunately nobody was seriously injured. Assuming the pilot was to blame, his pride will have taken a hit of gargantuan proportions, but that’s better than him havingn to pick out a mixture of armoured plating and desert sand from his face.
If the stunt looks somewhat familiar, that’s because it was performed previously in a UK episode of Top Gear back in 2008, with Jeremy Clarkson attempting to outrun a chopper while driving a Lotus Exige. In this instance, the stunt went without a hitch.
Scroll on down and check out the video to see the spectacular fail for yourselves.
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