Two Toyota Test Drivers Dead

[enzoferrari]

Lets try to be respectful, folks. :-(
We don't have much in the way of details yet, but according to a report out of Germany, Toyota (http://www.autoblog.com/make/toyota/)'s chief test driver has died in a crash on highway 410 near the Nurburgring after veering into the oncoming lane and colliding with two others test drivers driving a BMW.

While the two BMW test drivers survived the crash, the yet-unnamed Toyota driver died behind the wheel of the recently spied (http://www.autoblog.com/2010/06/22/spy-shots-lexus-lfa-nurburgring-shows-up-at-namesake/) LFA (http://www.autoblog.com/model/lfa) Nurburgring Edition (http://www.autoblog.com/2010/05/10/lexus-announces-lfa-nu-rburgring-package-only-50-available/) he was driving.

The report says that the driver of the LF-A was 67 years old and Toyota's chief test driver, which leads us to believe that he is Hiromu Naruse, In addition to being the company's chief test driver, Naruse is also Akio Toyoda's personal driver and the Godfather of the LFA.

More information should be forthcoming.

UPDATE: The two test drivers in the BMW sustained life-threatening injuries and one is in critical condition.
UPDATE 2: Video of the scene added after the jump (http://www.autoblog.com/2010/06/23/breaking-toyota-chief-test-driver-dies-lf-a-germany-ring/#continued).
UPDATE 3: Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,702480,00.html) is confirming that Naruse was the driver.

[enzoferrari]

Here's a video and pictures from the scene...

http://www.rhein-zeitung.de/regionales_artikel,-BoosNuerburgring-Chef-Testingenieur-stirbt-bei-Unfall-mit-Super-Lexus-_arid,102517.html

[vexor]

Rip.

[RC45]

Well, a couple things come to mind.

Hopefully it wasn't the dreaded "Toyota phantom acceleration" problem - crumple zones in a carbon fibre car dont really work, the forces transmitted to the driver are imense and nothing short of a 6 point and HANS device is going to save you and finally BMW really does make a really safe car and finally does that mean the price of the remaining 49 NU-LFA's just went up?

[ZfrkS62]

I'm really curious as to whether they will be able to determine why he crossed into the other lane like that.

For the BMW driver's to have sustained those kinds of injuries, and damage to the car, speeds must have been fairly high. Not understanding German, I can't tell if investigator mentions an estimated speed or not.

RIP to the Toyota driver, and hopefully I won't have to return to say the same for BMW drivers

[5vz-fe]

I am surprised by the degree of injury sustained by the BMW drivers....the cabin looks very much intact.

[Dylan]

Hello i was trying to open the link for the pictures and scenes of it but it was not opening.I think its got corrupted.So can you please repost the link???

[nthfinity]

re-posting the link wont help, the thread is 6 months old... please open new threads, or stick with recent threads...