Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

Jimmy Soni shares the story of Elon and Peter’s McLaren crash 🏎️

11 Nov 2022 · 1 min

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1:29

In this narrated anecdote, Jimmy Soni tells the story of Elon Musk’s first major car purchase—a McLaren F1—shortly after selling his startup Zip2. While learning to handle the ultra‑high‑performance vehicle, Musk picks up venture capitalist Peter Thiel for a drive from Palo Alto to Menlo Park. During the ride Musk accelerates aggressively, and the car strikes an embankment, flips, and is completely destroyed. Remarkably, both men escape without injury, attend their scheduled meeting afterward, and Thiel later jokes that they achieved “liftoff” together, referencing Musk’s future rocket ambitions. The tale highlights the reckless thrill of early Silicon Valley wealth, the fragility of even the most advanced machines, and the non‑chalant attitude of its protagonists toward near‑disaster.

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You mentioned the car crash. So a lot of people probably aren't familiar with Elon and Peter Thiel sitting in the McLaren F1 going down the road and then boom, what happens? Yeah, it's a moment that could have changed everything. So the very quick version of it is Elon, after the sale of his first startup, Zip2, he is newly wealthy. And one of the things that he does is he purchases a McLaren F1. It's a sports car, but that sort of undersells what it is. So he purchases it. He's still learning how to drive it, like learning the finer points of driving it. And he picks up Peter For a visit to a venture capitalist. So they're driving from Palo Alto to Menlo Park and Peter's in the car and the way they joke about it now, but Peter sort of looked at him and was like, tell me what this thing can do. And Elon was like, I think, explaining the car and explaining what it was all about. And Elon's like, watch this. And he kind of accelerates pretty rapidly. The details of what happened next are a little murky. According to both of them, as well as other published accounts, they had hit an embankment. The car spun in the air and then crashed into the ground. It was totally destroyed. And it was a really frightening moment because they were going at a pretty fast speed. The car is crushed. And again, this is not a car that's like designed to take the kids to soccer practice. Like, this is designed to be a very fast vehicle. And so they somehow managed to not be injured at all. They actually go to the meeting after the car is like towed away. They both end up going to the meeting. They don't say anything about it. And it's this incredible moment. And I think, you know, the final line in that section I gave to Peter because he said, I'd achieved liftoff with Elon, just not in a rocket, which I thought was pretty funny.