"Automobile" Magazine - June 2004
Seventeen-Car Pileup Mars Filming of TV Commercials
Bonneville, Utah --
Four people were hospitalized and seventeen vehicles destroyed when crews filming separate TV commercials for Kia, Mazda, Cadillac, Volvo, Nissan and Pontiac all converged on the same area of the Bonneville Salt Flats at high speed. A seventh group, on the scene to shoot opening sequences for the upcoming USA Network film Knight Rider 2010, narrowly avoided the giant accident.
"They just kept coming and coming," said a badly shaken crane operator on contract to the Mazda crew. "Our car was halfway through writing a big 6 in the salt, when wham! this Cadillac Escalade T-bones it doing 90. Then pow! the Nissan Maxima plows into both from the rear. A couple seconds later, in come the Volvos -- eight or nine of 'em, all silver -- one after the other. By the time the Pontiac GTO and the Kia Amanti got piled on, it was all just a big junk heap."
In addition to general safety concerns, Utah Fish and Game commissioner Arthur Burdock warns that skyrocketing ad agency traffic on regional lakebeds and alkali flats increasingly threatens native fauna such as jet cars, grizzled prospectors . . . and naked hippie performance artists.