Fiat 500 Rally Car Has an R Kelly Moment, Comes Back Down with a Bang

The moment you’ll see a Formula One single-seater jump a few good feet in the air is when we’ll reopen this argument, but until then, the prize goes to the people driving rally cars. And they don’t even need to be top-of-the-line WRC affairs - a prepped-up Fiat 500 is all you need to produce some pretty impressive stunts.

There’s a reason why reconnaissance is allowed in rallying, where the driver and co-driver go through the stages before the competition and take pacenotes, which are then relayed to the driver during the race by the co-driver. There’s a jargon meant to transmit the information as clear and as fast as possible (“right five over crest into left four don’t cut”), but stuff like “jump” should be self-explanatory to anybody.

We will never know exactly what happened, but look at this video with R Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” song in the background and it’s probably the only way you can make any sense of it.

The little Fiat comes flying off the crest like it were a missile launching pad, does some hangtime before the nose dips down under the weight of the engine and slams into the pavement. The driver goes off-road trying to rescue the out-of-control car, but by the sound the clip ends with, he didn’t manage a clean recovery and probably drifted or even spun. He might have carried on afterwards, though.

There’s just one more thing that’s worth pointing out: credit to whoever installed that front bumper there - I would take my car to the shop where he works without a second of doubt.