Rowan Atkinson crashed his McLaren F1 in 2011 and a Ferrari F50 was binned on a test drive near Silverstone recently, but despite these being the most expensive single-car crashes in British history, neither makes our list of cars we’d least like to damage. There are loads of reasons why you don’t want to crash. Fear of injuring yourself or someone else, fear of repair bills or even fear of being left without your vital car for days or weeks can make every drive a potential nightmare. But if one day we do have a smash, these are the nine cars we really hope we’re not driving at the time.
Your own car: What, were you expecting us to open with a Bugatti Veyron? Not a bit of it. The number one car we really hope we never have an accident in is our own. If you own it, you have to stomach either the repair bills or the insurance headache – and we don’t want either.
Parents’ car: Crashing your mum or dad’s car could be even worse than crashing your own. You’ll probably be made to pay for the damage yourself, and the shame would be unbearable. This one, we’re afraid to say, we might already be guilty of, in the shape of a big dent in the back of a 2002 Toyota Corolla estate.
Datsun Go: This Indian market special is about as safe as putting your head inside a hungry lion’s mouth and then insulting its mother. The way its structure folds catastrophically – and almost certainly fatally – in European-standard crash tests is horrifying. We’ll never drive one just in case.
Caterham Seven: “Crumple zones?” Mr Caterham says. “What are those?” Let’s be frank: the Seven is a driver’s dream, but it was designed back when death behind the wheel was more of an accepted inconvenience than a real social issue. Hitting something hard in one of these will not end especially well.
Ferrari 250 GTO: A bill for a few hundred thousand after crashing your McLaren F1 is small change compared to the financial battering you’d take if you damaged one of these. The most recent one to sell at auction fetched £23 million, so if you stuck it into a ditch you’d better run for the border. We suggest a destination with no extradition treaty.
Brum: Come on, now. You wouldn’t want to stamp on the childhood memories of half the 30-somethings in Britain, would you, you miserable dream-crusher? Brum was a regular kids’ TV fixture in the 1990s, back before retro cool was, erm, cool. Crash him too badly and you’d be lynched.
BMW Isetta: How do you fancy a small, cute, stylish and unfathomably cool little city car? Sure you do, but what if we told you its chief crumple zone was your face? That’s pretty much the deal in the so-called ‘Bubble Car’, and we reckon your brain would have to be in a bubble to spend much time in one of these on 2014’s roads.
The A-Team’s van: If you need this explaining to you, you’ve got problems. The iconic two-tone GMC Vandura was kitted out with the instantly recognisable red stripe, red wheels and a very angry owner/driver in the guise of one B. A. Baracus, who almost certainly pities the fool who does any damage to his ride.
The Queen’s Land Rover: Land Rover Defenders are pretty tough, so you’d have to crash this one hard to end its days. But remember: under British common law the sovereign can’t be prosecuted for any offence; not even murder. That might weigh on your mind as you stared at the smoking wreckage of her favourite country biffabout.