London is an amazing city with enough rich culture and history to keep your average tourist busy for months, but there is another reason The Big Smoke draws so many eyes to its streets: the world-class car spotting. Not everyone is wild about the colorful traffic, however. Residents have been complaining about the noise, unsafe driving habits of owners and pollution produced by high-end rides for years and now, London's Metropolitan Police service is cracking down on daily supercar rallies, seizing millions of dollars worth of cars in just a 48 hour period.
The police action against "anti-social" driving occurred over the weekend and involved 75 of the Met's Special Constabulary and Vehicle Enforcement Team, who partnered with the Motor Insurers' Bureau to identify car owners who were late on their insurance payments — or had none at all. The crackdown covered Hyde Park, Kensington and Chelsea, some of the highest of the high-class neighborhoods in London, which naturally resulted in a large amount of the vehicles seize being of the supercar variety. One notable seizure saw a pair of purple Lamborghinis from a pair of drivers, one of whom had only been in the country for two hours before losing their ostentatious ride. All told, the Met impounded 72 vehicles with an average cost of $125,000 a piece.
Read more: These Are The Dumbest Car Crashes You've Ever Seen
Police Clean Up With Extra Charges
Many of the cars were transported from overseas with their owners relying on the insurance of their home countries to cover them while on England's mountains green. This is not the case, as MIB points out. Uninsured driving is rampant in England if you believe MIB's number of one person every 20 minutes being impacted by uninsured or hit-and-run drivers. But it wasn't just insurance laws that got 72 cars, including a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 and a Ferrari 296, thrown into the dock. Here's a few more of the crimes London's finest ended up investigating thanks to the anti-social driving crackdown:
During this operation, in addition to the 72 vehicles seized, many of which were uninsured or inadequately covered, officers detected a range of other criminal activity, including:
Individuals wanted for ABH and criminal damage
Drug offences
Stolen vehicles
Immigration offences
Fraudulent insurance policies, known as Ghost Broking
Several tickets were also issued for a range of offences, including driving without a valid licence, using a mobile phone while driving, lack of a valid MOT, illegally tinted windows, not wearing a seatbelt, and operating vehicles in a dangerous condition.
Supercar Summer
London became an epicenter of wild supercars (and their wilder owners) when the city became a favorite destination for wealthy vacationers from oil rich nations like Russia and Middle Eastern countries over the past 25 years. Summers are unofficially known as "Supercar Season" in the British capital, as wealthy travelers brought their toys along for the ride, including some very beautiful and powerful vehicles. But while many of us could live on a racetrack or on the grounds of a Concourse d'Elegance day in, day out, the posh residents of London's swankiest zip codes have been battling the vehicular invasion for years.
Past crackdowns took the form of excessive noise fines and special public place protection orders, which promised stiff penalties for drivers who revved engines or performed stunts in their vehicles. Due to the "anti-social" driving habits of visiting supercar owners, London is also the center of high-end car crash videos, like when two Ferraris managed to crash into one another just four years ago or when a Lamborghini Aventador S took a bite out of one of those iconic London taxi cabs.
h/t Road & Track
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