South Africa Will Crush Smuggled Ferrari LaFerrari

Pro tip: pay your custom duties, because it's cheaper than replacing a $1.5-million hypercar.
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There are are only 500 Ferrari LaFerrari coupes in the world—a few painful crashes notwithstanding—so if we were lucky enough to get our hands on one, we’d do everything in our power to prevent it from getting crushed. But apparently, that’s just too much of a hassle for one owner in South Africa, who let his LaFerrari languish in a customs warehouse for three years over unpaid import taxes before getting it seized again in an ill-fated smuggling attempt last month. Now, the South African Revenue Service has had just about enough, so they’re getting ready to crush the damn thing.

“When it was first brought into the country, the owner failed to follow correct import procedures including paying the necessary customs duties and VAT. As a result, the vehicle stayed in a bonded warehouse for three years because the owner could not finalise the required customs processes,” SARS told fin24.

This February, after years of inaction, the owner submitted paperwork to move the LaFerrari out of the country to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The hypercar did indeed leave the country, but agents caught smugglers trying to sneak it back in the very next day, at the very same border crossing. Money can buy a hypercar, but it can’t make you smart.

SARS announced the seizure today, and CarBuzz notes the next stop in these situations is usually the crusher. In addition to all the tax shenanigans, it’s also now illegal to import new left-hand-drive cars into South Africa. So it’s a double whammy for this low-mileage LaFerrari. Imagine, all this could have been avoided if the guy had just bit the bullet and paid the taxes in the first place.