Massive Alpina BMW M8 GC Crash At Goodwood
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is aptly named. With that expectation of speed comes some pretty spectacular- and expensive– crashes. Now, this year’s festival has its first victim, thankfully with no injuries: An Alpina BMW M8 GC. It surely won’t be the last, but it’s a spectacular start to the weekend nonetheless. More interestingly, the YouTube footage of the incident has been removed, and the footage is nowhere to be found.
Crashing an Alpina BMW M8 GC isn’t cheap
Alpina may not be a familiar name to all but the most hardcore BMW fans, but it’s a storied brand with a history of making fast BMWs go faster. Rather, making fast things go a little too fast in this case. The car in question was Alpina’s version of the BMW M8 GC, or Grand Coupe. However, it should be noted the vehicle isn’t truly a coupe. It’s a four-door sedan with a slopey roof. Regardless, and expensive and fast piece of kit.
But, how expensive and fast? Well, the vehicles top speed is just north of 200 MPH, making a whopping 612 hp in this case. Nearly the whole vehicle is reworked by Alpina, who change everything from the cooling system to the new stainless steel exhaust. The vehicle will also fly up to 60 MPH in a mere 3.3 seconds, according to Road and Track.
The video has been taken down
Now, about that crash. It was a big one. A real big one. Additionally, the video has since been taken down, appearing nowhere on Goodwood’s YouTube channel, but more on that later. On watching the footage, it appears that driver Tom Diment came in a little too hot into the track’s Molecomb corner. As a result, the vehicle simply understeered straight into the hay, deploying the airbags and severely damaging the front end.
You can still find cell phone footage of the incident, but the “official” footage is gone. The screenshot above shows the moment the Alpina BMW M8 GC hits the hay, maybe forever. To an insurance adjuster at least, the vehicle looks to be totaled. Happily, Diment climbs out of the car moments later, appearing unhamed. It’s sad to see such a nice machine meet its potential end, but all that matters is Diment is unhurt.
Why is the footage gone?
As stated above, you can still find the footage in question on YouTube, but it’s noticeably absent from Goodwood’s YouTube channel. The channel features some other crashes, so it clearly wasn’t taken down for that reason. Perhaps there was a request made by either Alpina or BMW to take the footage down. Generally, brands don’t mind that, logic being any publicity is good publicity. Regardless of the reason, the footage is gone and leaves far more questions about the why than answers.
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