I posted this on the Alfa Romeo tribe, but a Crime of this proportion really deserves wider attention ....

From the AP newswire --

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- Jerry Seinfeld was in a harrowing rollover wreck but was unhurt after the brakes on one of his vintage cars failed.

Seinfeld was driving alone when the brakes on his 1967 Fiat BTM stopped working Saturday evening, East Hampton Town Police Chief Todd Sarris told the New York Post. Seinfeld tried the emergency brake, to no avail, and then swerved to keep the car from careering into an intersection, Sarris said.

The two-door sedan flipped over and came to a stop just yards from the highway, Sarris said, adding that the comic's maneuver "probably avoided a very serious accident." The wreck was attributed to mechanical failure, and no summonses were issued, Sarris said. Seinfeld, 53, did not require medical attention and returned to his East Hampton home.

This raises two important points --

(1) As the cognoscenti at Jalopnik.com have observed, there is no "Fiat BTM" of any year. Given the vagaries of model year designations for Italian cars in general, the wizards may have been a little too quick to rule out the possibility that it was an 850 of one body style or another ... But let me just say this: If he fucked up a cool old Abarth or a Fiat Dino, I'm gonna be pissed.

(2) Get this: According to the East Hampton Star, "Mr. Seinfeld told the officer the car was new to his collection, and that this was the first time he had taken it out for a spin." Jeez ..... didn't anybody tell him that brakes were generally considered an after-market option on Italian cars of that vintage???

(Except, of course, for the 1973 Alfa Berlina, which had the shortest stopping distance from 60 mph that Road & Track had ever recorded for a production car .......)