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Racing Porsche Mistaken for Landing Strip

DW staff (nda)July 6, 2005

A member of a private German racing club had the shock of his life when a single-seater plane swooped out of the sky and landed on the roof of his speeding vehicle on Wednesday.

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The Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe: Light aircraft not includedImage: AP

Modern motor vehicles come with an astonishing range of added extras these days but none, not even top of the range luxury models, come with an in-built landing strip on the roof.

This may not be news to most of the people on the planet, but someone may want to tell the pilot of a small one-seater plane which landed on top of an unsuspected Porsche driver's speeding vehicle as he was racing with fellow members of his auto club on what he thought to be a disused airfield in Germany.

The 12-strong Bitburg Porsche racing club were putting their sports cars through their paces on a former US air base on Wednesday when, out of the blue above them, the small plane swooped out of the sky.

Driver panics, sends plane skidding to tarmac

Despite driving at 160 kph (100 mph), one of the racing club members could not outrun the rapidly descending plane which eventually landed on his car. Such was the shock of suddenly having a propeller-driven aircraft as a roof accessory that the driver slammed on the brakes, sending the plane crashing to the ground.

"It was a miracle that no one was hurt. There was considerable damage done to the plane and the car," said Klaus Schnarrbach, spokesman for the Bitburg police. "The airplane managed to stay steady on the roof at first. They probably couldn't have done it that well if they had tried."

Bitburg police revealed that the pilot faces possible charges of negligence.