Tom Cruise is a well-known gearhead with a massive car collection spanning every potential genre and era of automobilia and a penchant for acting in movies about speed. Larry Ellison is a private and very wealthy entrepreneur—the eighth-richest person in the world as a matter of fact. The two reportedly can bond over Land Cruisers—or perhaps one less, because allegedly, Cruise just wrecked one of Ellison’s. According to Bloomberg, the crash happened this week while trail-driving on Ellison’s private island in Hawai’i.
The reports of Cruise’s crash are thin because even acknowledging that he was on the island is risky for Ellison’s employees. (One former employee of Ellison’s Four Seasons resorts noted they were suspended previously for mentioning that Cruise once visited.) However, at least eight sources told Bloomberg that Cruise, while driving dirt roads crisscrossing the island in Ellison’s Toyota Land Cruiser, rolled over and totaled it. Because Ellison owns virtually the entire island and every business on it (and controls the employment of nearly every person living there), there was no police report or outside tow company involved, and Ellison employees handled the entire cleanup of the wrecked SUV. Tom Cruise, fortunately, was reportedly uninjured; as a result, the entire event was previously uncovered until Bloomberg interviewed locals and employees on the island.
The 90,000-acre island, known as Lanai, is 98% owned by Ellison, who has used his massive wealth to transform the island into a getaway for the uber-wealthy. He bought it in 2012 for $300 million and, in the years since, has moved there permanently, although he remains reclusive. Roughly 3,000 native residents of Lanai have only reported seeing him in his bright-orange Corvette.
Ellison is relatively private, and no credible information about his car collection has been published, with the exception of a McLaren F1 he once owned. Unfortunately, the Bloomberg report doesn’t mention a year or generation of the truck that Cruise reportedly crashed. Cruise, Ellison, and Ellison’s son—who owns the production company that made “Top Gun: Maverick” and was the one who invited Cruise to Lanai—all refused to comment with Bloomberg, which means the doomed Toyota is a bit of a mystery. Personally, I would hope Cruise would choose something classic and go hard-core wheelin’; perhaps an old FJ60 would do the trick?
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